MARIKANA: Heavily armed South African police patrolled Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine on Friday, where more than 30 striking miners were killed the previous day in a police crackdown that drew comparisons with apartheid-era brutality.
After more than 12 hours of official silence, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa confirmed that at least 30 people had died in the security operation at the mine, 100 km northwest of Johannesburg.
Police opened fire with automatic weapons when 3,000 striking drill operators armed with machetes and sticks ignored orders to disperse.
Mthethwa said the death toll from the incident, which cut to the quick of South Africa’s post-apartheid psyche and sent world platinum prices more than two percent higher, was likely to rise.
Mthethwa defended the police, saying officers had come under fire from the miners, members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), an upstart group that is challenging the 25-year dominance of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), a close ally of the ruling ANC.
“From amongst the crowd, people opened fire on police and the police retaliated,” he said in earlier comments re-broadcast on the same station.
President Jacob Zuma said he was “shocked and dismayed” at what was one of the bloodiest police operations since the end of white-minority rule in 1994. (Reuters)