Chechnya hit world headlines in 1994 when the brutal winter battle for the capital Grozny saw thousands die. Grozny was the prize for both Chechen separatists who wanted to be free of hundreds of years of living under Russian rule, be it under the guise of the Tsars or the Soviets.

This militancy came as a surprise to many, but three years before, Chechen militants had made their presence felt in the Bosnian war that ripped into the heart of Europe. Volunteer Chechens joined other ‘Jihadists’ to help the outgunned and overwhelmed Bosnian Moslems fight both Serbian and Croat extremists in Europe’s first war since WWII.

It was after the Second World War that Chechen anger and resentment really began to grow, when Stalin saw fit to use collective punishment against a nation for their supposed Nazi collaboration.

In today’s world of global Jihad, it is little wonder that the children who are heirs to a generation of battle hardened and brutalised men, would be perfect models of universal terrorists.

Here is a tale of a nation that was formed in the perfect crucible of violence, and unfathomable courage.

Time capsule from Grozny, 1995

The tiny Chechen republic to the south of the former Soviet Union, is home to Russia’s worst mafiosi. They have threatened to detonate an atom bomb in Moscow. The Chechens are criminals, and Moslem fundementalists to boot. Well, that is what the Russians say. A journey through these badlands in a series of thrice cursed vehicles gave a different view, one of a brutal repression of a nation wanting to be free.

A walk through the capital Grozny makes it even more difficult to believe anything will dislodge the occupiers. Despite closely following the televised drama of the heroic Chechen resistance to the Russian assault, the degree of physical destruction wrought on Grozny is a spectacular shock when first seen in the flesh.  It is a technicoloured version of Dresden after the carpet bombing. Buildings are skeletal fragments of their former selves. Apartment blocks look like sieves.  Next to the bustling market, where young widows come to sell their wedding rings to feed the children, are apartments built during the Soviet Sixties. There are many who might say that reducing the ugly buildings to rubble is an act of architectural euthanasia, but hundreds of people called it home. Still do.

Razyet Uspanova, 37, and her five children, live in the shell of their sixth floor apartment. After shrapnel and bullets gouged the walls and ceiling, after incendiary ammunition had scorched it, Russian troops looted everything inside. The family have collected a few pieces of furniture from friends and relatives. The husband is dead and they live off the charity of those slightly less hard hit. Razyet is lethargic, depressed and slips into nostalgia often. She keeps a creased old black and white portrait of herself propped up behind the kitchen sink, perhaps to help her get through the pile of unwashed dishes filling the porcelain.

In the rubble strewn streets, pimply Russian boy soldiers strut, shirtless and arrogant. They are dressed in an array of mismatched pieces of uniform and non uniform. Not much of a resemblance to the disciplined Soviet soldiers who used to parade every May Day through Red Square. It is in Grozny that the Russians and Chechens are holding negotiations to find a political and military solution to the war. The opposing bodyguards occupy the street outside the nondescript house where the talks are going on. Dark haired fighters, mean eyed with lack of sleep, stand side by side with blonde Russian conscripts. The Russians wear helmets and flak vests, their armoured vehicles close by, just in case. The Chechens laugh off body armour. Their looks alone are enough to turn bullets away. Beyond the barricades, a sweating, shuffling circle of Sunni Moslems grunt and sing ancient chants. The loping shuffle and rhythmic utterances are hypnotic, the participants edging towards ecstasy. Fierce women make another circle and shriek in Arabic.

This is the Chechen cheerleading squad. It is also where mothers and sweethearts wait for a glimpse of the fighters they have not seen in months.  When, at the end of a negotiating day, the Chechens stand on the back of a truck to report on progress, proud and tearful mothers call to sons standing on the back of trucks,  “What have you done to your hair?” one mother asks her shaven-headed son. He smiles back, unsure how to respond, more than a little embarrassed. Other guerrillas take a minute from duty to pose stiffly for Polaroid pictures alongside their moms. Polaroids are big business in Grozny. There is one snap being circulated showing a Russian soldier holding up a bloodied youth by his hair. They claim the Russians had beaten him.  True? Who can tell, but it certainly is in keeping with the belief that everyone hisses at me in explanation of the countries problems: “Ruskie schwein!”

One of the fighters, Shamil, says it is a phrase he often heard while serving with the Soviet army in what was then East Germany. He enjoys the irony. To let you in on a little secret, this is the password for access to the Chechen side. Just hiss “Ruskie schwein!” and a way to slip through the inpenetrable ring of Russian tanks into free Chechen territory is miraculously found.

Another way to escape from Russian territory may be when a former police detective appears at the door of the friend’s apartment you are staying in as there are no hotels left standing in the city and ushers you into a Volga. The Volga is one of those archetypal Soviet cars that are built like tractors, these cars go forever they say. But like all other Soviet vehicles, the starter motor is not meant to last more than six months. I never came across one that worked.  You either push or crank the motor with the hand crank that, no surprise, is standard issue. Imagine Stalin executing his driver as he tries in vain to push start the Zil stretch limo on a frosty Moscow morning. For a country that can invent the Mig 29; the planet’s best helicopters; put the first man in space and who have kept the remarkable Mir space station in orbit for years – something even the U.S. has not been able to do – they sure make bum cars.

In the southern village of Sefanyurt I make contact with the fighters. The village has been razed by the Russians and the inhabitants are desperately trying to do basic repairs before the winter sets in. Magamet is our contact. He lifts his head from under the bonnet of one of several cars in the yard. His is a hatchet face with a perennial five o’clock shadow. As usual, tea is offered. A visitor soon learns that tea means a full meal and that everyone offers you “tea” immediately after saying good day. It is the Chechen tradition of hospitality that is without precedent

Gospiprimnost, as it is known.

After a couple of weeks of heavy grease laden, admittedly delicious food, it is a toss up as to who will get you first: the Russians with bullets and shells, or the Chechens with cholesterol and gout.

So, tearing ourselves away from another killer meal, we begin the journey into the liberated zone. Documents are looked at and returned by Russian soldeirs at checkpoints without a hitch. We cross a swift and clear stream rushing over polished pebbles and then the struggling Volga sedan lurches uphill, into the mountains. As we pass a cemetery, my travelling companions all hold their hands upturned before them in prayer. Then, alongside the grave of a holy man, they lift their butts off the seat until the shrine is passed. How the car doesn’t go off the edge is a bit of a mystery.

After some time we pass some arcane reference point and Magamet reaches over from the back seat and taps my wristwatch, “Change it. We do not follow Moscow time anymore.” At this the perennially dour Chechen partisan flashes a grin that boasts four gold teeth and three silver ones. We are in free Chechenya.  It is fairy tale land. The landscape is of gentle slopes with trees laden with fruit. We turn off the gravel road onto farm tracks through grassy meadows covered by white, yellow and red flowers. After a half hour, the car can go no further.  From here we have to hike along paths hidden from the Russian snipers to get into the villages. It is not exactly Spartan like: there are two young women with us who do the walk in sandals and floral dresses. Somewhere in these mountains hides the President-on-the-run Johar Dudayev, folk hero Shamil Basayev and the last Chechen warriors.

Despite the ceasefire that is officially in place during the talks, the days are punctuated by the heavy thud of artillery and the rattle of machine gun fire, while the nights are lit up by arrays of Katyusha rockets screeching overhead and the intermittent harsh glare of flares that make shadows race across the ground alarmingly. The Russians rarely hit anything, but then they do not mean to. It is psychological warfare, to keep the fighters on edge and to break the villagers’ willingness to resist. They do not have much hope.

The Russians have been trying to bring the restive Chechens to heel for almost two hundred years. A Tsarist general on a mission to pacify the hill tribes built a fort on the plains and called it Grozny, meaning Horrible. He was right. In the Second World War, despite the Chechens repelling the German attack, Stalin claimed they had collaboration with the Nazis and sent hundreds of thousands of Chechens to gulags or labour camps in 1943. Few returned.  Think about it, if they had been collaborating, Stalin would not have been able to get his bear like paws onto them in 1943. And now Yeltsin is insisting that Chechnya remain under Russian rule. The Chechens have had their share of Russian neighbourlyness and want out. So in the face of overwhelming force, appeasing statements from Western democracies and even less from fellow Moslem states, the Chechens decided it was time for shock tactics.

A commander called Shamil Basayev and one hundred and fifty fighters drove down from the mountains, straight along the main road and into the Russian town of Budyanovsk. They took over the hospital and held the patients and staff hostage in order to get the Russians to stop bombing their villages and towns. How did that unit get through? Simple, the Chechens know the enemy and just bribed the checkpoint charlies as they went. $50 a throw. Another story says that the fighters lay in coffins in trucks given a fake military code 9 clearance, meaning the trucks contained the bodies of dead Russian soldiers from the front. It was a regulation the Soviets used to enable them to quickly and secretly get the bodies of their boys back from the war in Afghanistan, when they could not admit to getting whacked by hairy mujehadin. Even grieving mothers were warned to remain silent about their sons’ deaths. Whatever, it worked. And after the hostage drama was ended by the Russians being forced to the negotiating table; Basayev had another trick up his sleeve, to ensure the Russians remained honest. He announced to the media that he had been given a atomic bomb by allies and that he could have exploded it in Moscow if he wanted to. But as a gesture of good faith, here it is. Take it back. But insiders say that the Chechens actually acquired two bombs and only gave one back.

In a jerry-built plywood hospital in the village of Benoyi, teenage war veterans listen to Koran readings by an older fighter, a mullah. They were all severely wounded in the Budyanovsk hostage saga. Some are amputees, others blind. But there is nothing going on at the moment, I am just listening to shells landing nowhere and eating too much. Nice holiday, but perhaps it is time to get back down to the Russian occupied towns at the base of the mountains. Hopefully thing will be a bit more dramatic.

I take up residence with a family, opposite the Medicins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) house.  That night there is some kind of an emergency, Medicin Sans Frontier’s Katherine and Marc race off to the hospital after midnight. A Chechen male is pronounced dead on arrival. He had been shot at close range with a shotgun. His name was Alhuzar Tupsuev and he was twenty two years old. He had been shot by his younger brother and his mother had been the first to find him, bleeding to death. Alhuzar was the proverbial bad apple; he had been seen riding with Russian troops on their tanks and drinking vodka with them. Others say he was selling vodka to the Russians. And it is when the Russians conscripts are drunk that they begin shelling and shooting at random, often killing civilians. His younger brother had twice warned him to desist, on pain of death. They quarreled furiously. Like all older brothers, he laughed off his sibling’s threat. And so, he received both barrels of a shotgun in his chest. Vodka for Ivan, death for Allah. My friends nod and cast knowing looks at me.

Things are happening. There will be more.

The deep thud of exploding shells and the rattle of machine guns echo from the surrounding hills, but the market women in the Chechen town of Vedeno continue to haggle without missing a beat.  The talk among the old men leaning on their sticks, eyes shaded by felt hats, is of rumours that Chechen fighters have taken the nearby Russian garrison town of Shali. That the people are holding daily meetings in the town square. It is difficult to believe or verify.

Among the Chechens, fierce discussions mix rumour parading as fact, and of lies accepted as rumours. Rumours that the fighters will be coming down from the mountains, perhaps even tonight, but definitely by Monday. A Russian Interior Ministry soldier tells the Medicins Sans Frontier couple to prepare themselves as there could be many wounded. Soon. Maybe even tonight.The occupying Russian army seems in tight control of all but the southern most mountains of this querulous land. But after the second day of these rumours, I rouse myself from the midsummer torpor I have fallen into. The hot afternoons are custom made for siestas; and I feel I am challenging divine design by not napping. The thud of outgoing tank shells and the following, rounder crash as they explode in the hills where the last separatist Chechen rebels are holed up.  It should be a quick ride on the rough idling Russian motorbike with sidecar I am borrowing, but it has no documents to get past the Russian army checkpoints. It also needs a bit of repairing after I have driven it into a wall, but let’s rather let that story slide. Instead, I wave down a bus, the driver denies he is going to Shali and pulls off, but about a hundred yards down the road it stops and the door opens. I jump on and he says:  “You are not a spy are you?” No, no, of course not. “Welcome.” The other passengers are babushkas and clerks with the puppet administration installed by the Russians after they drove Johar Dudaev’s independence minded government from Grozny. They argue politics for the duration of the ride. The radio news speaks of agreements signed, of fighters disarmed and the Russian army of occupation leaving.

It is the usual fear driven nonsense, rumours of war, I’m sure. But after the old women at the market whisper that it really is true, I decide I’d better check it out.

It seems unlikely that the last of the Chechen warriors were going to come whooping down from their mountain redoubt and take on the entrenched Russian positions. The Russians have thousands of tanks and armoured vehicles, combat helicopters they call “crocodiles” and an endless supply of Migs from the former Soviet stockpile.  It is one thing to hold a defensive position, quite another for guerilla fighters to take heavily defended garrison towns.

The bus stops at the Shali roundabout where a rusting Soviet tank perches inelegantly on a pedestal, a reminder of some victory or the other. There is no plaque. Or maybe it was a defeat that has been twisted to resemble a triumph. Everything looks normal. No sign of wild-eyed fighters. But further into the town, at the square where once a statue of Lenin gazed imperially at the masses there is now a clutch of green flags hanging limp in the hot, still air. Below, thousands of people wave green banners and yell out “God is Great!” Young men in civilian clothes and dark glasses stroll around with AK’s and bazookas slung over their shoulders. A man is beaten in the front of the crowd for a some reason I cannot fathom. Babushkas slap him and he scuttles from the scene, blood dripping from his forehead.

It dawns on me that it is true, not a rumour: the Chechens have taken Shali. Ismael, a student of International law in Ankara back home for a holiday confirms this: “Yes, we took the Russian commander hostage to force the troops out.” Truckloads of Chechen patriots from nearby villages arrive trailing the green of Islam. A little convoy of heavily armed fighters arrive to raise the temperature even higher. But what about the Russians? There is no sign of then. What the hell is going on? Ismael is also confused. It is exhilarating, but still confusing. Soon, the commander takes me to one side and say perhaps it is best to return to Vedeno. “Why?” I ask, “Is something happening? Will the fighters take it too?” “We can’t say anything, it might be good if you take the next bus back. But first, you must eat something with us.” After a plate of borscht, the fighters walk me to the roundabout and warn the driver not to charge me for the fare, on pain of death. The fare is about eighty cents.

An hour later, the slow bus drops me at the centre of Vedeno. Nothing seems amiss, but I spot a green scarf hanging from a telephone pole. I hurry in through the old gates, and a group of Chechen fighters sit behind it eating watermelon. I recognise two from the mountains. They insist I sit and eat. It is like a Kalashnikov picnic, all around infantry weapons abound, and one fighter prays on a tiny prayer mat. Despite their calm exterior, at every approach of heavy vehicles, they jump up with the RPG’s and AK’s, but so far, no Russian reaction. Perhaps the Russians have not even noticed this tiny band of warriors.

Further in, towards the administration building and the leafy park, hundreds of women are gathered. They form a circle inside which the pretty girls dance to traditional music played on an accordion and a wooden box being beaten to a pulse raising beat. Some fighters and overweight shopkeepers join them. The male role is that of the aggressive sexual hunter; the woman must gracefully shy away as is expected of Chechen women, but her eyes should flash a different story.

Back at the gate, the Russian tanks have finally roared up with a belch of diesel, a platoon of the dreaded Interior Ministry troops perched on them. The fighters stand up and face them with their RPGs. I get banjo leg just thinking about 150mm tank shells crashing into our little group. But the Chechens are as cool as screen heroes. The deputy commander, Hussein, hops over the wall and walks towards them. The machine gun in the turret follows him. The Russians decide it is better to talk about all this. The talks are in a tacky boardroom from the Soviet era. The Interior Ministry commander is a massive man with military tattoos on his forearms. There are the local militia commanders, the Chechen rebel commander and the mayor, an aging creep in a shiny grey suit that sets off his golden teeth admirably. He tries to preside over the meeting, to show his authority, but it doesn’t come off. He knows his time has come to an end.

Outside, a little girl sweeps up broken glass in the town’s only cafe. It had been damaged in the initial fighting and closed, but now it re-opens, selling naan like bread and tea. Old women hug and kiss the fighters, welcoming them with tears. A few days pass in much the same way: wary standoffs, talks in smoke filled rooms, volatile public gatherings, tearful prayers for the dead and more erotic dancing. But one morning, the fighters come to pick me up.  “There is something you must see.”  Since my bad luck bike now has a tooth on the rear differential missing, I am back to walking and cadging lifts. Surely it can’t be the way I change gears?  We pile into a Lada and drive towards the nearby village of Vergatoj, some nine kilometres away. On the way, a suspension strut comes loose and they tie it back on with wire. Nothing unusual. We are to see the body of Musa Usmanovich Timiev. His body had been retrieved from a shallow grave where it had been rotting for two days.

Crowds of relatives and villagers pray and sing outside. On the porch women weep. Into the lounge, where a group of men stand around a sheet-draped body laid out on the floor. Patches of blood show through the cloth. They gently pull it off and the sickly sweet reek of decaying flesh is just a foretaste of the shocking sight. His head is formless from repeated beating that caved the skull in, his throat is slit from ear to ear and there are holes and wounds gouged out all over the torso. He had been severely tortured. He had also been castrated before death gave him relief. Horrific. The work of Russian mercenaries, the family says. On the way back to Vedeno we pass another funeral. An architect had come back to his home village from Grozny. The day before he had been whistling and excited to be able to go fishing in the clear, bubbling river of his childhood.  But as he waded into the water, he stepped on a Russian mine.

I wrote this is 1995. Chechnya is still a land of strife, though things have improved. But one can imagine how the brothers who bombed the Boston marathon grew up, were raised on stories of horror and hatred, of defiance and revenge. And their enemies have multiplied, it is not longer just the Russians, but all natiosn  they consider to be enemies of Islam.

Share on Facebook

On a hot autumn day, the remarkably obdurate police commissioner General Riah Phiyega, ducked and dived the questioning of the head evidence leader at the Marikana Commission, advocate Mbuyiseli Madlanga.

Question after question was evaded by the visibly uncomfortable police boss, as she sought to respond with one-word answers to questioning from an increasingly frustrated Madlanga.

Throughout the morning, the social network Twitter was alive with how ignorant and arrogant Phiyega sounded, and how she is unlikely to keep her job, given her performance under oath.

Some reporters tweeting seemed to feel she was being grilled, while others thought she was simply avoiding any tough answers. The sense of anger at her hindrance of a process that is meant to get at the truth of the Marikana massacre was quite palpable.

Yet it was just before lunch that Madlanga dropped a bomb. He had spent the morning weaving a web of her making to ensure that she was indeed standing by her initial statement of 17 August, 2012, the day after the massacre. In that statement, she presented the line that police were acting in self defence, and were upholding public safety. The police commissioner insisted that she had been told nothing, and seen nothing, to change her mind on that matter.

Then Madlanga read from a statement by a policeman in the dog squad, Warrant Officer Hendrich Wouter Myburgh. In that statement he tells of being under the command of Major General Ganasen Naidoo, who ordered him and others to follow the National Intervention Unit policemen and to search for weapons and firearms at the “koppies”.

Myburgh says that they were being shot at by miners as they approached Scene 2, or Small Koppie – Thaba Nyana, and so stopped, finding cover. When the gunfire had quietened down, he advanced into the “koppies” and “found 3 injured people lying down and (I) turned away from them, searching for other suspects. I suddenly heard a gunshot behind me, as I turned I saw a NIU constable who is unknown to me putting his side firearm in his leg holster while he was standing next to the injured I first met ,who was having a jersey wrapped around his arm. I asked the NIU constable what is going on, he replied by saying ‘they deserve to die’ and he moved away.”

As appalling as that statement is, what follows is equally startling. At this point that he simply stops his narration of events on 16 August, and the affidavit then skips to 1 October, some one-and-a-half months later. Myburgh says that on 1 October, he reported the incident of the miner being killed to a colonel, and then later that same day to his then commander, Gen Naidoo. He says that these were the only two policemen he had, until then, told of the incident.

When Madlanga questioned Phiyega on this, she replied that she was aware of the statement, but that Myburgh had just made an allegation. On being quizzed further on what she had done about it, she said that the incident had first been reported to Myburgh’s commanding officer, Naidoo, and then, the following day, Myburgh repeated his tale to Phiyega, Naidoo and deputy police commissioner for the North West, Lt Gen Mbombo. After this meeting, Phiyega said it was the responsibility of Naidoo and Mbombo to investigate further. The only result was that a statement was taken from Myburgh and sent to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID).

It seems that everyone was rather relieved by the fact that Myburgh said he could not recognise the face of the NIU constable, and had not seen his name tag. Conveniently, it would seem, the police did not pursue this further. Phiyega said it was very difficult to pursue the enquiries further.

It appears that the evidence leaders of the commission had no such difficulty.

The commission evidence leader, Madlanga, then introduced SAPS records of which policemen discharged what type of weapon. The records indicate that there were only four NIU members who fired 9mm pistols at Scene 2, Small Koppie.

Of those four NIU policemen who discharged their 9mm pistols there, only two were constables, Mkhululi Halam and Sebenzile Thafeni. Halam is said to have fired three 9mm rounds, and Thafeni to have fired two.

Interestingly, in Naidoo’s statement referring to the same day, he says that he formed the men under his command into a line, and describes how they took cover while under fire at one stage. It reflects all that Myburgh says of the event, with some further embellishments about who was firing at the police. Yet Naidoo does not report on an incident similar to Myburgh’s. In fairness, and in the chaos of the day, they might have not shared all the same experiences.

What is even more astonishing in Myburgh’s affidavit is that he states: “I did not inform anybody immediately after the shooting incident as I did not regard this shooting incident as that serious; as I only became aware that it is serious after we were briefed that all bodies found on the hill were to be accounted for by all responsible. I then decided to report all that I witnessed on that day.”

Myburgh did not consider the cold-blooded murder of a wounded man as “that serious”? Does this insight into his state of mind reflect that of the other policeman at Marikana that day? That murder is okay? Did they think it was a hunt, and there were to be no consequences? If they did believe this, what led them to think that?

So, as the commission closed the police commissioner’s testimony for the week, she stood by her statement that her cops were acting in self defence, based on what she knew at the time. That time being 17 August. Yet by her own evidence, on 2 October, she heard from a warrant officer in the SAPS that he had witnessed another policeman murder a wounded miner lying on the ground. This has never entered the narrative of the police, nor has the police commissioner ever changed her stance.

Let us not forget that Poloko Tau’s superb report in The Star of September of last year when told us of witnesses seeing policemen executing wounded miners. Let us not forget the DM’s own articles about the murder, in August and September of 2012, or the Carte Blanche programme on the murders at Small Koppie. There is no shortage of material that the commissioner could have used to fully inform herself.

If her answers continue in this vein, if she remains resolute that police acted only in self defence, even when she was in possession of facts that might indicate otherwise, even the most ardent police supporter would have to agree that the commission can only find Phiyega unfit to hold office.

Let us look at her statements to the commission. Her first, unsigned statement does not mention Police Minister Nathi Mthetwa at all. Her second, official statement, says that when it was decided by the operational command to go to stage three (the so-called “tactical phase”), she immediately informed the minister. Her final word on this was when she amended the submitted statement by hand, on the stand, today. There, she says that she only informed the minister afterwards. She further amended that statement from saying that the minister ordered her to Marikana, to that she had told the minister she was going to Marikana.

There is a clear and orchestrated cover-up, from the national police commissioner, to the provincial police commissioner to the operational commander, of the fact that at least one member of the SAPS said that he witnessed a murder. Besides not opening a murder docket, none of these people we are meant to entrust with our safety informed the Farlam Commission or veered from the line that all, all, the miners’ deaths at Marikana were because police had to defend themselves.

General Riah Phiyega is acting like a spokeswoman for whatever line her career police officers tell her to toe. She is a cheerleader for the “boys in blue”, as opposed to their leader. She has swallowed hook, line and sinker the porridge fed her by the cops investigating the Marikana massacre, the very same cops who were in command on the day.

Her neo-silence tells us more than she, and the state that stand behind her, ever openly will. She was clearly acting on orders from above, and she has been told to hold the line, to not let the dirt of the death of 34 miners besmirch her political masters.

Share on Facebook

When eighteen year old Norman ‘Herman’ Mokau and his friends walked from Meetsetshehla Secondary School in the western Limpopo town of Vaalwater on November 24^th, 2011 and changed from their uniforms into street clothes, they were happy, upbeat and planning to get drunk.

They had finished writing their last grade 10 exam for the year and they went to the Rhino tavern to have a ‘pens down’ party. As the afternoon progressed, Norman got pretty drunk. A disagreement between him and his friend David Moatshe over who should pay R2 for the next game of snooker led to Mokau falling and putting his hand through a pane of glass in the Rhino tavern’s door.

Working at the bar was a woman called Maria, who became worried that a fight was breaking out and called the police. It is unclear if she dialled the station or called officer Petrus Dihlora Lefoka on his cellphone, but as the police station is less than a kilometre up the road from the Rhino tavern, Warrant Officer Lefoka arrived swiftly.

The fight that Maria feared the drunken schoolboys would have never materialised, and by the time Lefoka got out of the van, the drama was over. Mokau’s hand, cut when he broke the pane, was being bandaged, and he had assured the bar that he would pay for the broken glass.

The bulky policeman grabbed the schoolboy from behind, his forearm across his throat. The patrons who had gathered started to laugh; they recognized they were in for some entertainment. Community members knew Lefoka as a cop who klapped first and asked questions later. One of Mokau’s friends, Sello Mokoena, was also amused. He had experienced the Vaalwater policing of unruly youth before, and knew it was good for a laugh, as long as he were not the recipient of that unofficial policing style.

The tall teenager resisted and broke free, and the crowd began to taunt the policeman, “Ag, you can’t manage a little boy!” This seemed to enrage Lefoka, and he slapped the drunk teenager teenager hard, dropping the boy to the ground. The crowd was not disappointed, but as Norman fell, Lefoka began to kick him, and some, including Sello, felt a chill of misapprehension. He began using his mobile phone to film what was degenerating from casual abuse into assault.

Some in the crowd are quietly asking “What has he done, what has he done?” while another says “Beat him, but don’t kill him.” As the casual yet brutal attack continued, even Norman’s friend, David, felt moved to try to obliquely intervene. The slight teenager with a sporty cap sidled into frame, and picked up his friend’s flip-flop sandals and hat, as he tried to keep close. He smiled fearfully tried to use his proximity to distract the policeman from the drawn out assault. Of the crowd, he was the only one to venture close enough to get involved, the rest remained spectators.

By then, Norman was slipping in and out of consciousness as the policeman kicked his head. His lithe frame, toned from regular soccer and rugby at school, was floppy and unresisting. Lefoka grabbed a handful of Norman’s shirt and dragged him to the back of the police van. He tried to push him in, but Norman regained enough awareness to hold onto the frame, and thwart Lefoka. The policeman dropped him, looked down, and stamped on his head, three times. The almost ghostlike figure of David slipped in and out of frame as he wanted to help the policeman heft the boy feet first into the back of the van. Norman is lifted by his trouser waistband and his head drags on the ground to the audible horror of an unseen woman in the crowd. Stubbornly his head did not go in.

It is not that clear in the video, but Sello and two other witnesses say that they understood that the irritated policeman wanted to kick Norman’s head into the van. That was when David could not bear to watch any longer, and slipped past the policeman to try and get his friend safely into the van. Lefoko slapped the boy, who retreated. Eventually, Norman was in, and the policeman makes to close the door, yet Norman’s head and fingers seem to be in the path of the closing door. The policeman then pushes the schoolboys head sideways and clears his fingers from the metal door frame.

The video ended shortly after the back door was shut, but not Norman’s torment. After Lefoka drove the short distance to the police station, with Norman’s unprotected head lying on the floor of the bakkie, he apparently left him unconscious in the van for two hours. Eventually, an ambulance from the neighbouring municipal compound was called, and Norman was taken to Modimolle town about three quarters of an hour to the east.

When Norman came to, he found himself lying in a bed, with people in uniforms standing over him. He was confused, fearing that the people around him were police, he got up and ran, escaping into the night. He had no idea where he was, or what was happening. He had no idea he was in Modimolle, or ‘Nyl’ as he and his mates call the former Nylstroom, and just began running, trying to escape whom he believed to be his assailants.

It so happened that another resident of Vaalwater’s Leseding township, Nico, was in Nyl for a Friday night out, and at around 11pm was on his way to the hitchhiking spot on the edge of town. Nico was surprised to see a bloodied and weakened Norman wandering the town. He called to him, and on assumed he had been mugged and beaten, he guided Norman to the hiking spot on the edge of Nyl. Nico paid for both their fares, and saw the boy home.

The next day, Norman, his brother and his friend David went to the police station to lay a charge against Lefoka.

Norman Mokau

Sophie & Norman MOkau

Outside a tavern, Leseding

Sello (right), Norman (rear) and unidentified boy

It is not clear what happened in the weeks following the charge being laid, but it was only after the video was appeared on the internet in January of 2012 that things began to move, at least publicly.

Back in February of 2012, the police spokesman for Limpopo, Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi, told The Sowetan that, “We are definitely going to charge our member with attempted murder and not assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm or just common assault.

“The top management of police in this province view the allegations against the member stationed at Vaalwater in a very serious light. We therefore assert that a criminal case against the officer in question has been registered and the investigation process is at an advanced stage. So are the internal processes which either vindicate the member or expose his abuse of power. If the latter is the case, the concerned officer faces suspension and or dismissal.”

Yet now, the same SAPS spokesperson now informs us that Lefoka faced only a charge of Grievous Bodily Harm (GBH). Mulaudzi says that this was a decision taken by the body that investigates police misconduct, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate, IPID.

IPID, on the other hand, through their spokesperson Moses Dlamini, say that it was a police investigation, and that the assault charge had already been laid by the time they got involved, in helping to check witness statements and in attempting to get the video entered as evidence.

It would seem that SAPS were a little confused on this, as the act that replaced the remit of the Internal Complaints Directorate (ICD) with those of IPID only came into being on April 1, 2012. Previously the ICD powers only allowed them to take charge of cases involving death in detention or when police killed someone in the course of their duties. Assault and GBH by police were then handled by the police themselves, as was the case in Vaalwater.

Nor was or is it up to the police to determine what charges are brought in court, that is the turf of the National Prosecuting Authority, NPA.

The upshot is that both the police are trying to lay the responsibility for the investigation of Lefoka on IPID, while this was not necessarily the case, even though it seems IPID did slip up on one critical aspect.

This is how IPID describes what happened, “When the video surfaced the IPID went to the Vaalwater police station to launch an investigation – we were told that a case of assault had been opened and that the docket was with the SPP (the prosecuting authority). We went to the SPP and perused the docket to confirm information obtained from the police. It happened that case was on the court roll in the next 2 days – being the first appearance of the suspect of assault GBH charges. The IPID’s investigator had to try and obtain the video an have it authenticated by an expert. The phone used to record the video was lost so the video was not used as evidence in the trial. The investigator also had to confirm the contents of the affidavits of the witnesses.

“Since the case was on the court roll, the trial took place and the accused was found guilty and sentenced as indicated.”

The main aspect that was problematic is the belief that the phone that recorded the assault was lost. This came about as the police believed that the person who made the video that afternoon at the Rhino tavern was the brother of the boy who was attacked. As we know, it was a friend of Norman’s – Sello – who did the filming.

A group gathers around Sello as he recounts how his video of Norman’s beating spread. He first showed the cellphone footage at 8pm that night to a friend, who copied it onto his own cellphone via bluetooth. The video spread across the township. “By midnight, everyone had heard that Lefoka had hurt a schoolchild,” Sello recalls. The next day, when Norman laid charges against the policeman, the video had been seen by most of the black population of Vaalwater.

The video only came to the attention of the wider world in January of 2012, when a friend who lived in Vaalwater itself, and had internet access, suggested they post it online.

Within days, Sello heard that Lefoka was searching for the person who filmed the video, but did not yet know it was Sello. He was scared, as he puts it, “As we grew up, we feared him, as he was the only cop beating us children. He was the only cop who was so scary. He ran the town, he was a mean man.”

Sello decided to leave town when he got a call from an unidentified male speaking Sepedi told him “I don’t know who you are, but believe me, we will meet and you will regret taking the video. I will beat you.” He stayed away from Limpopo province for three months before he felt it safe enough to return.

It was during his absence that the trial began. When the IPID investigator tried to track down the cellphone footage, the first person he asked was the complainant himself. Norman told him that it was his older brother who had taken it, but the cellphone was now lost. The investigator checked with the brother, who confirmed this was indeed so. The Mokau boys, not understanding fully how a court wants evidence verified, believed that the existence of copies of the footage was good enough. They were lying to protect Sello, whom they had good reason to believe was in real danger.

They, and their legal representative, thought that the evidence of the severity of Norman’s beating was very strong. The medical report showed he had serious injuries, and he was in fact still unconscious when the ambulance brought him to the hospital in Modimolle, hours after the assault. That he had absconded from the hospital in a a confused and fearful state indicated he had suffered psychological and emotional trauma.

There were several witnesses who watched Lefoka beat Norman, those who had witnessed what we see on the video.

On these grounds, it is clear that a severe sentence should have been handed down, should Lefoka be found guilty.

Lefoka was indeed found guilty by the Modimolle court, yet his sentence seems to have been barely a slap on the wrist. After finding the warrant officer guilty of assault with the intention to do grievous bodily harm, the court gave him a suspended sentence of just two months imprisonment, with the option of a R2,000 fine, suspended for four years.

Policemen spend a fair amount of time at court, as witnesses and when bringing in accused members of the public. They develop relationships with the prosecutors and with the court officials. This is especially true in a rural town like Modimolle. Had Lefoka had been a member of the public and not a policeman, the sentence handed down would have been much more severe.

Fifteen months later, Lefoka is still a warrant officer at Vaalwater police station after a brief suspension. An internal police disciplinary procedure fined him R500, with a dismissal suspended for six months in April of 2012. He does not appear to have spent a day in jail, and residents say that in fact he was appointed acting station commander for a while after the incident.

A police colleague says that the case affected him deeply, that “That man has been through a lot. That thing has pained him,” and that “he went through disciplinary (procedures), and was suspended.” DM attempted to approach Lefoka for his version of events, but the station commander, Captain KW Mpete said that this was not what Lefoka would want, “I cannot tell him you are here,” indicating that Lefoka would be dismayed at having the issue resurrected. He referred all comment to the Limpopo SAPS communications officer, Brig Mulaudzi.

Norman is unnervingly unclear about the outcome of his case against the policeman. There was a series of postponements and then it seemed to end rather abruptly. He says that he sometimes got calls from a Pretoria lawyer who represented him, and sometimes from an IPID official. He cannot recall their names.

Norman is now repeating grade 10 for the third time, even though he had always passed his previous grades at the first attempt, albeit by a slim margin. He says he has trouble concentrating on his studies. Teachers at his school say he has always been a quiet boy who is no trouble at all. In the wake of the attack on him, Norman says he twice lost consciousness for about half an hour and that he often gets headaches and back pain. The local clinic gives him pain killers and sends him on his way.

*****

Vaalwater is a farming centre on a fertile valley floor along the western route of the R33 from Modimolle in the unprepossessing Waterberg mountains. Numerous signboards for game lodges and the tall game fences hint along the road hint at more interesting scenery. The dense bushveld is dominated by the silvery green leaves of a dominant local tree. Vaalwater is small, really more of a village than a town, and the equally small township of Leseding nestles right up against it, just out of sight from the main road.

Leseding has a few paved roads, and the RDP houses that dominate seem to be of reasonable quality and on fair sized stands. There is a clinic and a small community hall. A largish patch of land seems to house a variety of formal and informal church buildings, ranging from a proper brick evangelical church to the pole and zinc amaZioni churches.

There does not appear to be much for teenagers to do in Leseding. After school, what passes for its main road is peppered with young people walking, chatting or just hanging out on street corners. This was where the young man who took the Vaalwater video, Sello Mokeona and a friend are eating their lunch, takeaway ikota, whilesitting on a curbstone.

Groups of other young men pass by, greeting him. Some stop to chat. While many of the girls are still in their school uniforms, the boys seem to have changed into street wear, except for Norman. His white school shirt is clean, and well-pressed, except for where creases have developed during the course of the day. His worn trousers neatly repaired where holes have appeared, the pocket edges fraying.

The boys of Leseding fear the police in general. They, and adults, speak of a general climate of fear. They tell tales of how young men and teenage boys bear the brunt of a vigilante-style of policing.

Several told us of how young men who have been out at night are made to run in front of police vans “like you herd cattle” until they got to their homes. Others tell of how police beat them, mostly for being on the streets at night. Mechanic and transporter, Morotsi Mokguathi, 52, is regularly woken in the early hours by the squeal of tyres followed by the screams of boys. When he gets up, he sees it is the police administering their own brand of rough law and order.

Older residents say that the problems with drinking and the concomitant police reaction has become an issue post 1998, when formal taverns were established. Prior to that, the local shebeens did not attract the youth much, “Few people have Dstv at home, so to watch soccer matches, the boys go to the taverns who have big screens. And they get drunk,” explains Mokguathi, pausing from his labours on a diesel bakkie engine in his Leseding yard. He is understanding of the youth sowing their wild oats, saying that they have few options, as there is no stadium and no park.

The youth usually head home by one or two in the morning, and they find police waiting for them. It seems, anecdotally, that it is Lefoka – a member of the tee-totalling Zion Christian Church – who cannot abide drunkards. Of course, there are laws against public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, or whatever mischief the youth may get up to, but residents say that informal policing methods are often preferred by the cops.

One might have thought that the older generation would find comfort in the fact that the police are disciplining the tough to handle teenagers, but most are against it. When Mokguathi saw the video of Norman being beaten by Lefoka, he was shocked, “He kicked him like a ball. He is still a child – we see him as a child.” The mechanic asserts that if the boy had done wrong, the policeman should, in Pedi culture, have approached the parents, as the youth was still living under his parents’ care, and a schoolboy.

Like the youth, Mokguathi knows the policeman “as a violent man who hits first and asks questions later.” Not that Lefoka is alone, it is common for police to beat both complainant and defendant in trivial disputes. Cases are often not opened, and the adversaries told to ‘sort it out.’ He himself has walked past the police station and seen police hosing down naked people locked in the back of a ‘mellow yellow’ or Canter police truck. “They do not even hide it, they do it in broad daylight, and leave them in the truck all night, releasing them the next morning.”

Mokguathi and several gathered residents claim that if you raise your voice about these abuses, you are targeted.

This apprehension and mistrust of authority could explain why 17 year old Poster Shongoape did not lay a charge after his experiences in a room at the police station dubbed the ‘di trankeng,’ in January of this year.

Poster and his friend, one of a pair of identical twins from the Nkomane family, had both been drinking, and they were walking home when they inadvertently crossed the street in front of an oncoming police van. His friend was pretty drunk, and holding an empty beer bottle, so when the police van screeched to a halt and the cops got out, they reckoned they were in for a beating, so they both made a run for it.

They got away, but unfortunately for them, Leseding is a small place, and everyone knows everyone. Poster went to a well-known tavern called Meriting ya Meloding, thinking he had escaped, as did his friend who first went home, and then made his way towards the tavern. In the interim, the police picked up Poster at the tavern, and then drove to the twins’ house, where they found the twin, Peter Nkomane, who had not been involved. The police refused to believe the innocent twin, nor did they believe Poster that they had the wrong twin.

The boys were taken to the police station, and into the ‘di trankeng’ which is actually the strongroom where the police guns are kept in locked trunks and has a large, reinforced door and thick, windowless walls. Once closed, only muffled sounds escape the strongroom. Here, Poster says, they were manacled hands to feet with handcuffs or as it is to referred to, ‘hak-’n-boy’.

The policemen began beating Peter with their hands and feet, despite his protestation of innocence, and Poster’s repeated interjections that it was this was the wrong twin. After some time, the police took the boys back to the township, and once they caught the ‘guilty’ twin, released the ‘innocent’, beaten twin, Peter. They brought Poster and the other twin back to the police station at Vaalwater, where they were again manacled in the gunroom, but not beaten. Apparently the police laid a charge against the ‘guilty’ twin and took him to prison. He was released when he paid a R2,000 admission of guilt fine, says Poster.

The gunroom is notorious among residents, “once a person goes into that room, then it really goes down,” said one young man.

It took the savage beating of a character as resolute, as stubborn, or even as ‘troublesome’ as Norman before someone finally laid a charge against the police in Vaalwater.

Yet in a community such a Leseding, everyone has a connection to everyone else, and Lefoka’s sister was a reasonably close acquaintance to Norman’s mother. In fact, the families are distantly related through marriage. That kind of relationship that does not mean much in Leseding, where such weak bonds are ubiquitous, but should they meet in a distant city, it would be reason enough for excitement.

Lefoka’s sister, came to visit Norman’s mother, Sophie Mokau, and suggested that the family accept the R15,000 that Lefoka was said to be offering for Norman to withdraw the charges. When Sophie refused, the sister angrily told her that she was foolish, as her brother had money, and it was easy to make the case disappear. It was also implied that money might be used to make something ‘bad’ happen to Norman.

Others in the area believe that this had, in fact, already happened. When the DM first asked two young women walking along the R33 road through Vaalwater how to get to the township, and if they knew Norman, they said he could be found wandering around the township, not right in the head. He had been bewitched, they said. Others say that the sentence was so light because Lefoka had paid the Mokau family compensation. The family say they have rejected any such offer.

The intimacy of the tiny community, the chance that the parents of someone you klapped will see you once or twice a week as you pass, does not seem to phase the policemen. Rather, it seems to be a source of their power, as the community has never once held a meeting to discuss police brutality, or inappropriate behaviour. Nothing on Leseding passes unnoticed, but little is done, as the fear of retribution at the hands of the police is all too real.

Despite the risks, the drinking by the young men and women, and indeed boys and girls, of Leseding continues. Besides booze, sex and gambling there is not much to satisfy the desire of young people. The police will continue to abuse late night revellers as a way of keeping civic order in the town, and the elders will remain quiet about their children’s woes. There has not been a single community meeting to discuss the incident, or other abuses, “We are only called to meetings when it is election time, or there is some work to be had,” said a resident.

Both school goers and those who have finished the education do not see much of a future for themselves. The only jobs are hard labour on the farms, or menial work at the lodges that dot the Waterberg. There is always the hope of work at the municipality, but for that “you have to have serious connections, not just casual ones.” The entrepreneurial options for survival in Leseding, people say, are the three T’s: ‘Tuckshop, Tavern or Transport’.

The courage of Norman in laying charges against Petrus Lefoka appears to have been for nought. They have not advanced his rights, or the rights of the community one iota. The failure of anything other than a thin veneer of justice to have been served has made the residents even more convinced of their impotence at the hands of the police.

Yet perhaps the case of the drunken schoolboy may have been the seed that takes root. As Norman says, “What he did to me was not right. He should be in jail; he should not be a policeman any longer.”

Greg Marinovich & Thapelo Lekgowa

Share on Facebook

Lungisane Nogwanya with Vvuzela in bus.

Miners sing or sit silently on way to court.

Vuvuzela courage.

Miners on way to court.

Mzoxolo Magidiwana, on crutches, says police went around finishing off wounded miners.

Miner’s footwear outside a compound room.

The Marikana Commission has finally begun to hear from the miners who were at the heart of the strike last year. Terrifying testimony from Mzoxolo Magidiwana who says police went around finishing off wounded miners at scene one.

He said that after he had been wounded in the leg and fallen among several other injured and dead miners, “I could hear voices of policemen approaching the place where we had fallen. When they got to me, I was again shot several times from close range whilst I was on the ground.”

“I sustained further shots in my abdomen. The last shot caught my testicles and caused me some severe injury. I pleaded with the police to rather kill me.”

Magidiwana says that he was laughed at, and told that he would die anyway and the police would not bother to finish him off.

Police, on the other hand, say he was seen firing a pistol at the police, something he denies, saying he has never had a gun of any sort.

In building his case that police had deliberately set out to exact revenge for the deaths of two policemen three days previously, the wounded miner’s counsel, Dali Mpofu also presented a video clip of North West police commissioner Zukiswa Mbombo telling journalists that “I do not want to explain to you what we will do if they won’t move, but today we are ending this matter.”

On the ground, the police officers reflected the same, one isiXhosa speaking cop even told a ‘homeboy’ miner from the Eastern Cape that they had been given the authority to shoot the strikers. Other police officers referred to the 16^th D-day, using the phrase that was the code name for the Allied forces landing on the Normandy beaches of occupied France and was the beginning of the end for the German Nazi forces of WWII. Within hours, the gunfire and bloodshed at Marikana was itself to resemble a war zone.

While Magidiwana’s testimony still has to be fully examined in the commission, it is seems unlikely that the video footage of the day will not determine the truth of either version. There is footage of the one miner at the initial scene who shot at police after the teargas and rubber bullets had been fired by the police. It should be a simple matter to determine if this was Magidiwana or not. On the other hand, if Madigwana fell wounded next to strike leader ‘Mambush’ Noki, and in the following minutes was shot at close range by police, this would have surely been witnessed or captured on camera by journalists at the scene. Perhaps the trauma of the day compromised his memory of actual events, though his wounds reflect that he indeed was shot several times.

These inexplicable failures of basic common sense in some of the discussions around the witnesses and evidence is not helping the nation get closer to what happened on the 16^th Aug 2012. And it would seem that the legal counsel are trying to show the motivation(s) of the various players by way of events on the ground.

Yet behind the scenes of legal thrust, parry and fumble as the truth or other is being pursued in a Rustenburg hall, there are dark manoeuvrings afoot. The Commission was meant to be the sole legal avenue being pursued regarding the events before and during the Marikana Massacre, yet the police in North West have, for months now, been extremely busy arresting and charging people – mostly, but not exclusively, miners – from the communities around Marikana.

The Associate Professor of Law at Wits’ Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) Bonita Meyersfeld says that “There was a strong call from all quarters, including parliament, that the Commission of Inquiry into Marikana be allowed to take it’s steps to operate without parallel processes.”

Despite this, other legal, and illegal, processes continue, but only against the miners and the communities they hail from. Recently, the 276 miners who had been initially arrested on the afternoon of the massacre of August 16 and charged with the murder of their own colleagues by the National Prosecuting Authority under the common purpose doctrine, had to appear in court again. While the NPA, under pressure from the public and Minister Jeff Radebe, withdrew the murder charges, it had not dropped the charges of public violence. Despite representations from the commissioners, the commission had to adjourn for two days as the hundreds of accused and their supporters travelled to the Garankuwa magistrate’s courts.

Here, the day was wasted as the men, in small groups due to the size of the courtroom, traipsed in simply to hear that the matter had been postponed until after the commission. It is not as if the justice system needed to check if the accused were still around – they have to appear three times a week at their local police station to ensure – most say they have to show themselves every Monday, Tuesday and Friday.

While the miners and supporters sang songs to bolster their courage on the bus ride in, many were clearly afraid. Some refused to be photographed for fear of being singled out by the police. Their fears are not without cause.

We have previously reported on the torture in detention of some strike leaders previously here http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-11-02-marikana-police-torturing-their-way-to-intimidation, and the attempted intimidation of people who might be damaging witnesses against the police, yet arbitrary arrest and the violation of the constitution seems to continue.

Many of the strike leaders live in fear, some still bearing the scars of previous assault. As the crowd of Marikana residents made their way into the court grounds, these policemen were so brazen that they lined up to try and spot who among the miners supporters they still wanted to arrest. The courage of many of the men disappeared when they saw the faces of policemen they say were complicit in their torture over the last months. Some of those cops are known by name to the DM. These policemen, dressed in civilian clothes, were pointed out to DM as being the Crime Intelligence members who led raids on the miners, and arrested them. As the throng of miners and their supporters made their way into the court property, they were hungrily watched by these policemen, who were mostly dressed in Pep Stores-Rhinestone Cowboy fashion. They mostly wore blue jeans and brightly coloured shirts boasting decorative detail.

What is curious is why restraining orders have not been taken out by the miners’ lawyers against the SAPS to prevent these arrests, detentions and tortures. These attorney and advocates arrived at the Garankuwa Magistrates Courts seemingly oblivious that the tormentors of some of their clients were watching their splendid vehicular entrance with narrowed eyes.

Professor Meyersfeld, an expert on torture, responded to the claims “If it’s true, it takes us back to some of the darkest days of apartheid police brutality. Violence is absolutely not allows as a method of interrogation. This is in fact one of the most undisputed principles of international law.”

The Independent Police Investigative Directorate, the body empowered to root out abuse by the police, responded by saying ‘Kindly note that the IPID cannot comment at this stage, as doing so could jeopardise ongoing investigations.” Which is interesting, as they have previously said they cannot investigate unless a charge has been laid. To our knowledge, the assaulted miners have been too scared to lay a charge, and their attorneys had not responded to our queries as to charges being laid. If there is indeed an IPID investigation, it is curious that the alleged perpetrators are allowed to continue to intimidate people, especially in such a high profile matter. If IPID are hot on the trail of the torturers, it would be good for the people of Marikana, as well as the witnesses, to know this. They, and we, need to be assured that police brutality is not simply a given in our land once again.

It is not that the police should cease all of their work in an area like Marikana because of the Commission, but it be done according to our and international law, and that the commission be allowed to do its work unhindered by policing that seems to be more intimidatory than seeking to further the interests of justice.

One of those strike committee members fortunate enough to have evaded arrest by the police is Lungisane Nogwanya. He is surprisingly youthful, the father of two very young children, and he evades capture by sleeping at different places each night. “The police are looking for me. Those that are arrested are asked where I live, how they can find me. (Their heads) are put in a plastic bag, the door is closed, a pipe is taken, those white electricity ones. They say they are beaten with these. They come back red in the body. They are asked to take their clothes off and they are beaten on the cement.”

“How is it that we can be arrested, when it was said that nobody would be arrested until the end of the Commission. The Commission will tell who will be arrested.”

Nogwanya says that it is the police and the trade union NUM who are looking for him. He says this while wearing the green t-shirt of AMCU, the union that has replaced NUM in the platinum belt miners’ workplace and hearts. Nogwanya acknowledges he cannot escape the police for ever, “Even those that are arrested, they are asked where I live, how they can find me. They say the police are looking for me. My day is also coming. I am afraid.”

He relates that even as another of the strike leaders, Xolani Ndzuza, was arrested, he managed to run and escape. Ndzuza claims he was beaten while in detention after that arrest, and the matter was brought up with the commission by his legal counsel advocate Dali Mpofu. Yet it seems that little or nothing was done to stop the reign of terror that is happening out on Rustenburg way, where that suburban facade that the police are there to serve and protect has no resonance.

Even women who are not mine workers are being targeted. Primrose Nomzekelo Sonti is a middle-aged woman who is an ANC stalwart in the shanty settlement of Nkanini. Well, she was, until the events of the 16th and then a month later, her friend and ANC counsellor Paulina Musohlo http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-09-20-marikanas-theatre-of-the-absurd-claims-another-life/ was shot by police. Public Order Policing members opened fire with rubber bullets at her and a group of women gathered outside the community hall in September. Two rubber bullets hit Paulina, one grazing her abdomen and the other embedding itself in her knee. She was operated on and due to be released from hospital when she inexplicably died. I won’t share the conspiracy theories of why she died after she was due to be discharged, but suffice to say that the community has nothing but anger and hatred for the police.

Of course, why no-one has been charged with her death is also odd. Rubber bullates are designed to be bounced off the ground, and are lethal under 50 metres, so when police fire willy-nilly into a group of woman at a women’s group meeting from the portholes of an armoured vehicle, it does not exactly shout out “In the interests of public order.” These same small, round rubber bullets easily penetrated the corrugated iron of the Nkanini shacks during that day.

Just three weeks ago Sonti was arrested for intimidation, she says, “They asked me why we were supporting the strikers. I said, our bothers and husbands are dead, so we are supposed to support them.” The police asked what they were there, Primrose answered that she was watching President Zuma and the ‘Kings from the Eastern Cape’, and Julius Malema. The police responded, she says, by asking “Where is that bladdy shit Julius Malema? How much money did Julius Malema donate to Wonderkop?”

Sonti says the police threatened to beat and jail her, but she remains unmoved “These police know that they themselves are guilty, but they want to blame the miners and the community for causing the death of these people, that is why they go everywhere, arresting us. But we know it is the police.”

Whilst it is unclear if these police actions are meant to further justice, or the interests of a narrow group, or the state. It is clear that they have lost the faith of the community. They have also managed to ensure the average person in Marikana feels abandoned, “The government don’t care about us, the government don’t care about us, never, more especially the ANC. I am angry with ANC,” says Sonti.

These people are not hardened criminals, they are workers who took part in a strike. Some them did indeed commit crimes, even murder. But collective punishment cannot be meted out by the police. Of course, not a single policeman has been arrested, suspended or even charged regarding the events of the 16^th.

The submission by the police to the Farlam Commission admitted that police killed 34 people, and while it remains to be seen if these killings will later be termed murder or not, equality before the law seems a foreign concept at this moment. Prof Meyersfeld says, “If I’m not feeling safe, secure, if I’m not feeling like I can come forward and tell my story and somebody is going to listen to me and give me the space, without fear of further persecution, then I would not personally feel that that is the pursuit of justice. I don’t think that’s fair.”

Quite simply, the prosecuting authority and the police are not acting with due impartiality, when it is needed most. And as usual, it is poor who suffer most at the hands of these arms of the state.

Share on Facebook

The crowd gathered at Moses Kotane Stadium at 10:00, believing that either Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Richard Baloyi, or Free State Premier Ace Magashule, would address them. The protestors, numbering over 5,000, accused Magashule of wanting to ruin Zamdela township for his own financial gain by merging Parys, a low-income area, into the municipality that governs Sasolburg, a relatively prosperous industrial area.

By 11:00 the crowd was angry and marched out of the stadium. At its rear, the crowd was quiet, but the leading protestors were more aggressive, carrying sticks, stones and bricks, ready to use them. Police made a line at the edge of the township, across the road leading past the heavily fortified Sasolburg refinery. Here, the situation immediately escalated. Police started shooting teargas and rubber bullets as protestors threw rocks in the drawn-out battle.

The crowd started to stone passing vehicles and journalists. A number of journalists were stoned, beaten and threatened while many reporters have given accounts of their cars being damaged.

While the fight continued, the majority of the crowd left and marched to the police station. They encircled the station, trapping police inside. A local commander said by telephone that the police had barricaded themselves inside and retrieved their R5 assault rifles from the armoury. Police armoured vehicles sent to relieve them were unable to get through, officers on the outskirts of the township said.

Clashes with police continued across Sasolburg, but after two hours a unit of the Tactical Response Team arrived and managed to drive the protesters away from the Zamdela police station. At about 15:00, spent shells of rubber bullets could be seen on the ground around the station but there was no sign that live ammunition had been fired from outside the building.

Two people are reportedly dead after a private bakkie ferrying four injured residents tried to pass through police lines. The four people could be seen lying down, none of them responding to the urgent efforts of a friend crouched above them in the cramped canopy. The man, in his mid-20s, was seen pleading with the still body of a friend. He moved to another man who lay face down near the cab of the bakkie, who also did not respond. It is unconfirmed that any of these particular individuals is dead, but police say that one man died on the way to hospital.

Police searched the driver’s backpack for looted items, and asked him in Sesotho about the injured men, “Are these the guys who were at the police station trying to kill the police?”  The scared driver’s response was, “We were just ordered to take these people to the hospital.”

The police reluctantly let the bakkie pass to the hospital. Officers were overheard saying, “Fix the dogs and then arrest them,” and then to the young driver, “Go you fucking dogs, go!”

A little later, a traffic officer was overheard discussing the police actions with an emergency worker, remarking that, “They are protecting white people, while they are busy shooting their own people.” He went on to say that he had heard that the police who had opened fire with live ammunition at the besieged Zamdela police station, were white police.

It was clear there was a marked animosity towards white journalists, who were targeted by the crowd, while black journalists worked unmolested and, on occasion, protected their lighter-hued colleagues. The rioting of the previous days mainly targeted foreign owned spazas and business, resulting in an orgy of looting, though no people were harmed. Two chain stores, a Cashbuild and the SaveRite supermarket next to the police station were looted. (A local police officer said “BEE businessmen” owned them.) Millions in damage will set the local community back years.

During the protests, looting and robbery spread across the township. Liquor worth more than R2 million was stolen from a single store, with some protestors appearing extremely drunk or hung-over. Petrol stations were looted and three ATMs ripped apart and robbed. A private house was set alight, as was the taxi operator office.

It is clear that this was more than just anger over yet another careless and undemocratic decision to move people from one municipality or province to another. Looted buildings and walls carried numerous examples of crude graffiti saying “Fuck Ace Magashule” and more restrained posters called for action. Residents said Magashule has “dozens of relatives” employed in the Parys/Ngwathe municipality, which was, they said, broke.

One resident denied that the protests had anything to do with the alleged chicanery over delegates to the ANC’s conference in Mangaung at the end of last year. It was purely a matter of the demarcation, he claimed.

Yet the targets that the rioters could reach were initially the foreign-owned shops, where there was also the added attraction of looting. One such victim was Zimbabwean hair-salon owner Norlan Mangwadu. Surveying the soaked remains of  Letie’s Salon, which he and his sister opened four years ago, Mangwadu was quite phlegmatic, saying, “We’re going to start again.” The criminals among the protesters stole all their equipment, stock and the television. They destroyed the furniture. “The people who did this are people we live with everyday,” he added.

By nightfall, Magwadu and his sister had simply retreated from the scene, fearfully locking themselves in their home.

Once the crowd could not vent their grievances on a government official or politician, and thwarted in their plan to loot the “white” town of Sasolburg, the easiest targets of choice were the journalists, guilelessly moving among the crowd.

It would seem that the anger and easy violence of the crowd was inflamed by the cavalier approach of the state to their lives and wishes. Yet deeper down, there is a great anger among these economically disenfranchised people, an anger that the have-nots direct at the haves. Be it the barely-haves, such as industrious and prudent foreign business owners, or the middle-class journalists, who appear to revel in their right to swan into impoverished and frustrated communities when there is a good story afoot.

The final target of their anger harks back to the protests of the 1980s when puppet black municipalities imposed financial hardship on township residents. The crowd of several hundred belligerent protesters said they would burn the homes of local councillors and police officers who lived in the township. For the most part, local police were apprehensive about what would happen during the night.

“I would rather lose my job, but I will not let my family be endangered.  If anyone comes to my house I will shoot them and we will discuss the rest later,” one police officer was overheard saying to his two colleagues.

Share on Facebook

After the ritual at the site of his death, the white hearse took Andries Motlapula Ntsenyeho’s corpse away from Marikana and headed east and then south. Hours later, it was again slowly negotiating dirt roads, but this time in Sasolburg, a chemico-industrial town built to host a plant for refining oil from coal. The township of France is an expanse of depressingly similar cheap RDP houses.

The settlement had its origins in 1998 as shacks built on as land occupied by people from Zamdela township as well as those forced off farms by lack of jobs. The name was because in 1998, the football World Cup was held in France. Later the RDP houses were built, as the needs of those people for land was accepted.

Ntsenyeho’s body was delivered to his widow and five children at house 11356. It was here that an overnight vigil was held, the coffin behind a screen and women wrapped in blankets sitting on the floor with their legs to one side, squashed together in the tiny room.

It was the deceased’s brother, Tebogo, who washed the body. He saw three wounds, one at the juncture of the neck and collarbone, and two in the upper thigh/groin area on the left leg.

Early the next morning, a bitter wind whipped the sand and ash into the eyes of women preparing large three-legged pots of food. Men gathered under the stark branches of a peach tree that prevaricated on budding. They were Ntsenyeho’s miner comrades and they were angry.

Some spoke isiXhosa, others Sesotho. Sam, a bespectacled man, said that the miners would not return to work until their demand for R12,500 nett pay was met. “It would be a betrayal of our fallen comrade.”

All agreed on this, and Sam further voiced that they would stop the ten percent or so who have returned to work. Another chimed in “We pay Zuma’s salary so that he can have all his wives.”

Sam, “I and my friends will never again vote ANC. Never.” On being quizzed as to whom they might vote for, he responded “No-one.”

Their friends body was found at Small Koppie they said; where they had prayed the day before. He was one of the 14 who were killed there. They were convinced police had murdered Andries Ntsenyeho.

Let us see what we can find out about this man, who lived between Marikana and Sasolburg.

Well, he was 42 years old and hailed from Meqheleng, in the Eastern Free State, before moving to Zamdela township where he hoped to get work. In 1998, he was one of the first to erect a shack at France.

He was married and had five children. He worked for Lonmin at the Marikana. His Lonmin employee number was 20039750, and he was employed on July 22, 2011. According to his April pay slip, his basic wage was R5,197. After overtime, stope bonuses, housing allowance, etc, and various deductions and tax, his nett pay was R6,742. He was a rock drill handler or operator.

As such, he had the toughest job on the mine, and was one of the core group of workers who began the strike for more better wages. He was a paid up member of NUM, the National Union of Mineworkers.

He was a key figures in the strike, a leading member of the informal inner council of men from underground. One of his fellow miners, let’s call him Mpo (his real name is known to DM), says that Ntsenyeho was in charge of miner discipline. On the 16^th he was to ensure no-one ran; that they stayed on the mountain. But then all hell broke loose.

In the chaos that followed the initial shooting Mpo says he saw Ntsenyeho running north east, towards Small Koppie.  He believes that Ntsenyeho was identified and targeted by police.

The police certainly knew who the leadership was – they met in tight huddles in front of the mass of the miners on several occasions. And they might well have decided to target the leadership.

Other witnesses say that Xolano Nzuza, the most prominent of the leadership, was followed by a police helicopter as he fled across the veld. He is said to only have managed to escape when another miner gave him his shirt to throw police off his tracks.

Another prominent leader killed was a man called Mambush. He was allegedly one of those killed by the police. Versions of how this happened differ; some say he was killed in the first fusillade of gunfire, others that he was wounded and taken to hospital where a lethal injection was administered. I do not give credence to this, but in light of the fact that many of the miners believe this to be true, I have decided to include this view. This version is based on the belief that Mambush, Ntsenyeho and three other key leaders were protected by some secret and powerful intelezi, or magic potion

Whatever the truth of what happened to Ntsenyeho and Mambush, the release of the autopsy reports will lay the debate to rest.

Under a blue and white tent that subsumed most of the front yard, the miners stood close around the coffin. His wife sat among the women of the family in the front two row of chairs. One by one, mourners passed by the coffin, peering at the glass-covered face of Ntsenyeho, bidding a last farewell.

Ntsenyeho’s remains were then carried to the hearse, which led the funeral procession to the cemetery. Friends stayed behind to spray down the dusty yard and wash off the traditional mourning whitewash from the windows of the house; cleansing the house of death.

Share on Facebook

The unseasonal heat baked Nkaneng settlement on Friday, 31 August. Litter was strewn across the empty veld like peculiarly ugly wild flowers. In the distance, thousands of denizens waited patiently outside Lonmin’s Marikana plant for their turn to board a minibus taxi or a bus for a grim trip to the Eastern Cape or Lesotho. The majority of the slain miners were Pondo speakers, to be laid to rest in remote villages there, most of them over the weekend.

Next to the squat cone of Wonderkop, a sparkling white hearse made its way along the rutted dirt road that circles the hill. Eventually the hearse halted; it could drive no further. The rear door was opened, as if to give the corpse a breath of fresh air, and the handful of men who had followed the vehicle continued on foot.

The group approached Small Koppie, and passed by a large patch of blood that someone had fenced with branches. An open container of snuff lay in the centre. It was an offering to the ancestors by relatives and colleagues who had earlier come to take the slain miner’s spirit to accompany the corporeal remains home. It was here crime scene investigators had named two bodies A and B.

Passing the blood stains of A and B without breaking stride, the group of mourners swiftly climbed over the largest of the granite extrusions, leaving behind several spray-painted yellow dots whose meaning I could not discern.

They eventually stopped at a nondescript patch of earth. This was where Lonmin rock drill handler Andries Motlalepule Ntsenyeho died, aged 42. The earth showed no yellow paint markings, nor letters to demarcate key evidence or bodies. I myself had unknowingly walked over this spot several times.  A man gathered soil and gave it to Ntsenyeho’s younger brother, Tebogo, to put in a crumpled white plastic bag. Then they lowered their heads and prayed quietly.

(There are two logical layman’s possibilities to this apparent oddity of no spray paint showing where Andries Ntsenyeho had died: that this is not where he died, or that the spray paint on the sand has been walked over and weathered in the two weeks since the scene was investigated. The third possibility is that the esoteric requirements of the crime scene investigators do not need to put paint next to bodies lying in the open; where they are easily detected in an aerial photograph, and matched to GPS co-ordinates.)

I was at Small Koppie with CityPress’s Charl Du Plessis. We wanted to try to find the missing letters and fill some of the gaps in our understanding of the tragedy. While clambering some four meters up on a boulder, Du Plessis found a stick and a pipe. Nearby were bloodstains. Then, precariously close to the edge, he spotted a bullet. A bent and scraped bullet that looked very much like an R5 bullet. It had obviously ricocheted once or even twice off the granite.

We called the Independent Police Investigative Directorate, IPID, who sent investigators within a couple of hours, as well as a specialist crime scene investigator.

It was instructive, and morbidly fascinating to watch: the site of the bullet was logged and contextualized with regard to the other forensic markings. The blood was swabbed and samples taken, to see if they matched any of the bodies.

The police trio would not be drawn on any of the evidence (so ungrateful of them, really, after we had found them the bullet). They did not need to.

Since the publication of the article positing that police had murdered some of the miners at the Small Koppie http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-08-30-the-murder-fields-of-marikana-the-cold-murder-fields-of-marikana, individuals close to various arms of the investigation have approached DM, verifying the main thrust of the argument.

Our reliable sources tell us that only one firearm was found at the scene – a pistol – at F. We have subsequently found that the demarcations go up to the letter X and that some of them show where bodies lay. G and H were indeed two miners who died next to each other, as were E and D, and J and K. X, too show where a body lay.

The critical letter N was, however, incorrectly marked: it should have been the letter M. The file might reflect M for the position marked N on the rock. This is something that could have led to a lot of confusion, clouding events, making justice elusive. Whatever the crime scene error, the rock marked N above the pool of blood indeed does mark a body. And thus miner N (or M) did die there, trapped. The rocks and trees round him have no sign of bullet marks. He was not killed in a wild spray of bullets.

And now, for the main point: There were indeed 14 corpses found at Small Koppie, including that of Andries Ntsenyeho. We have been told that many of the corpses were shot in the back. Some of these corpses apparently had three bullet wounds in a close grouping. These point to the miners being shot at close range by automatic gunfire. There are precious few rocks that display bullet marks. I counted less than ten, rendering a theory of spraying of the area with long-range bullets a lie.

Ntsenyeho had three wounds, one in the neck and two in the groin area.

So, did the police, as they were attacking Small Koppie, think they were in danger from the trapped miners? Only the one handgun was found at the scene, at F. Despite this, the police could have believed they were in danger, if they went in on foot. Yet large tyre tread marks and small trees pushed over at one of two possible entries into the central clearing, where several bodies were found, indicate that armoured Nyalas could and did indeed enter. It is not clear when they did, but they could have ferried the police into the clearing on that fateful afternoon, and been able to afford the police protection.

We have eye-witnesses who saw Nyalas encircle Small Koppie in the events that followed the televised shooting at Wonderkop, some 300 meters to the south east. Complete physical protection was available to police involved.

The police were either not in extreme danger, or could have chosen not to be in danger. This may have been personal choice or an order from their commander.

And this begs the question: What where police doing using deadly force and moving into the Small Koppie anyway? What was their aim? The police state that their aim on the day was to disperse the miners. This had already been achieved by the time Small Koppie was attacked. If they wanted to arrest those who might possibly have been involved in the killing of three miners, two security guards and two police officers in the previous days, they would not have ended shooting 14 people; the miners were trapped already. If the bringing to book of potential killers, ALIVE, were on their mind, no assault rifles need have been used.

So what was on their mind, if I may collectivize this, following the recently much-used logic of common purpose?

In the days following the hacking to death of the two police officers, gruesome cell phone pictures were circulated throughout police circles. Policemen around the world view the killing of their own with extreme anger. We are informed by the comments that range from Bheki Cele and Susan Shabangu’s shoot to kill statements, to current police commissioner Riah Phiyega’s following the massacre that the policemen at Marikana had done no wrong.

In the afternoon heat of the 31^st of August, the handful of family and fellow miners of Andries Ntsenyeho swiftly made their way back to his coffin. I asked if they had seen the autopsy report. His brother Tebogo answered that they had the death certificate, “It only says that he died of unnatural causes. Nothing more. We have many questions.”

As do we all. But the true story of what happened on the Small Koppie on 16 August 2012 is out there and, every day, we’re getting closer to it.

Greg Marinovich

Share on Facebook

Greg Marinovich, Marikana.

In a tumble of boulders quite near the hill called Wonderkop, yellow spray paint defaces the ancient granite. This is not graffiti, yet something far worse than vandalism took place here, at the spot locals dismissively refer to as Small Koppie.

One rock, encompassed closely on all sides by solid granite boulders, is the letter ‘N’. N refers to the 14^th body of a striking miner found at in this isolated place by the police forensics team.

The thick spread of blood deep into the dry soil shows that N was shot and killed right here. It would have been outside of the scope of the human body to crawl here bleeding so profusely. There is no trail of blood leading to where N died.

Approaching the spot N from all possible angles, it is clear that to shoot N, the shooter would have to be close. Very close, almost to within touching distance. It does not take too much imagination to believe that N might have begged for his life on that winter afternoon.

The death of miner N happened far from the prying eyes of media and their lenses. The killing of 34 and wounding of 78 mineworkers at Marikana is one of those few bitter moments in our bloody history captured by the unblinking eye of the lens. Several lenses, in fact, and from various viewpoints.

This has allowed scrutiny of  the actions and reactions of both the strikers and the police  in ways that undocumented tragedies can never be. Thus, while the motives and rationale of both parties will never be completely clear, their deeds seem to be quite apparent.

This has allowed a dominant narrative within the public discourse to develop. The police, various state entities, and many among the media have guided this narrative. The main thrust of which is that the strikers provoked their own deaths by charging and shooting at the forces of law and order.

Indeed, the various images and footage can be read to support this claim. The contrary view is that the striking miners were trying to escape police rubber bullets and teargas when they ran at the heavily armed police task team (our version of SWAT). An alternate reading of the available footage and stills can also support this opinion.

It took several days for police to release the total number of those killed. The number 34 surprised most of us. The footage showed no more than a dozen dead. Where exactly had the remaining miners been killed?

Yet most journalists and others among us did not properly interrogate this. The violence of the deaths we could watch, over and over, was enough to contend with. The police certainly did not mention what happened outside the view of the cameras. They were content to express the opinion that pangas, sticks and a few pistols were a threat to our most highly trained police task team armed with assault rifles.

According to strikers interviewed, many of the other deaths occurred at a nondescript collection of boulders some 300 meters behind Wonderkop.

From the outside of the jumble of granite at Small Koppie, the weathered remains of a prehistoric hill, it would appear that nothing more brutal than the felling of the straggly indigenous trees for firewood occurred here.

Once within the outer perimeter, narrow passages between the weathered rocks lead into dead-ends. Scattered piles of human faeces and toilet paper mark the area as the communal toilet for those in the miners’ shack community without pit toilets.

It is inside here, hidden from casual view, that the rocks bear the yellow letters methodically sprayed on by the forensic team to denote where they found the miners bodies. The letter N appears to take the death toll at this site to 14. Some of the other letters are difficult to discern. Many have used the site for their toilet in the days after the killings, obscuring the markings on sand and grass.

One of the striking miners caught up in the mayhem, let’s call him ‘Themba’ though his name is known to us, recalls what he experienced once the police began encircling their hill with razor wire.

“Most people then called for us to get off the mountain and as we were coming down, the shooting began. Most people shot near the kraal were trying to get into the settlement – the blood we saw is theirs. We ran in the other direction, as it was impossible now to make it through the bullets.

“We ran until we got to the meeting spot and watched the incidents at the (small) koppie. Two helicopters landed, soldiers and police surrounded the area. We never saw anyone coming out of the (small) koppie.”

The soldiers he refers to were, in fact, part of the police task team dressed in camouflage uniforms, and in a brown military vehicle.  On being quizzed about this, Themba added that he believes that people who ran to the killing koppie were hiding there when police went in and killed them.

The University of Johannesburg Chair in Social Change and Professor of Sociology researcher, Peter Alexander and two researchers interviewed witnesses in the days after the massacre. Researcher Botsong Mmope, spoke to a miner Tsepo* on Monday August 20th.  Tsepo witnessed some of the events that occurred off camera. Botsong relates the discussion. “Tsepo said many people at the small koppie and it had never been covered (by media). He agreed to take us to the small koppie, because that is where many, many people died.”

After the shooting began, Tsepo relates that he was among many who ran towards the small koppie, and as the police chased them someone among them said ‘Let us lie down, comrades, they will not shoot us then.’

“At that time there were bullets coming from a helicopter above them. Tsepo then lay down. A number of fellow strikers also lay down. He says he watched Nyalas drive over the prostrate, living, miners.

“Others miners ran to the koppie and that was where they were shot by police and the army** with machine guns.”

When the firing finally ceased, Tsepo managed to escape across the veld to the north.

The yellow letters speak as if they are the voices of the dead. The position of the letters – which denote the remains of once sweating, panting, cursing, pleading men – tell a story. A story of policemen hunting men down like beasts. They tell of possibly tens of murders at close range.

Person N for example, died in a narrow defile surrounded on four sides by solid rock. The soil below the letter is soaked in copious amounts of blood. His is not the type of wound that would allow the victim to run or crawl to sanctuary; but rather he had to be shot at that spot. His killer could not have been further than two meters away from him – the geography forbids any other possibility. Did N plead, or was he defiant?

N’s murderer could only have been a policeman. I say murderer because there is not a single report on an injured policeman from the day. I say murderer because there seems to have been no attempt to uphold our citizens’ right to life, and fair recourse to justice. It is hard to imagine that N would have resisted being taken into custody when thus cornered. A ring of police, on foot, in aroured vehicles, in helicopters and on horseback surrounded the men. They had no chance of escape.

Other letters denote equally morbid scenarios. G and H died alongside each other. They too, had to have been shot at close range, and had no route of escape. Other letters mark the rocks nearby. A bloody handprint stains a vertical rock surface where someone tried to support himself once wounded. Other rocks are splattered with blood as miners died on the afternoon of Thursday August 16^th.

None of these events were witnessed by media, or captured on camera. They were barely reported on at all.

In the days after the shooting, Themba visited friends at the nearby mine hospital, “Most people who are in hospital were shot at the back. The ones I saw in hospital had clear signs of being run over by the Nyalas.”

“I never got to go to the mortuary but most people who went there told me that they couldn’t recognise the faces of the dead (they were so damaged by either bullets of from being driven over).”

It is clear that heavily armed police hunted down and killed the miners in cold blood. It is a minority that was killed in the filmed event where police claim they acted in self defence. This is murder on a massive scale.

Why did this happen?

Let us look back at the events of Monday, August 13, three days prior to these events.

Themba, who is a second-generation miner from the Eastern Cape, was present then too. He was part of a group of some 30 strikers who were delegated to cross the veld that separated them from another Lonmin platinum mine, Karee.

It was at Karee mine that other rock drill operators had led a wildcat strike to demand better wages. The National Union of Mineworkers had not supported them, and management took a tough line. The strike was unsuccessful, with many of the strikers losing their jobs. The Marikana miners figured that there were many miners there still angry enough to join them on Wonderkop

The strikers never reached their fellow workers; instead mine security turned them back, and told them to return by a different route from the one they had used.

On this road, they met a contingent of police. Themba says there were some ten Nyalas and one or two police trucks or vans. The police barred their way and told them to lay down their weapons. The workers refused, saying that they needed the pangas to cut wood as they lived in the bush, and more honestly, that they were needed to defend themselves. The Friday before, they say people wearing red National Union of Mineworkers t-shirts had killed three of their number.

The police line parted and they were allowed to continue, but once they were about ten meters past, the police opened fire on them.

The miners turned and took on the police.

It was here, he says, that they killed two policemen and injured another. The police killed two miners and a third was severely wounded, from what Themba says was gunfire from a helicopter above them. They carried the wounded man back to Wonderkop, where he was taken to hospital in a car. His fate is unknown.

Police spokesperson Captain Dennis Adriao, when asked about the incident by telephone says that public order policing officers were attacked by miners, who hacked the two policemen to death, and critically injured another. He further said that the police had arrested eight people so far for that and incident as well as the other ten deaths prior to Thursday, 16^th August, “Two are in custody in hospital who were injured in the attack on the police.”

The police version of how this event took place is quite different from that of Themba’s, but what is clear is that the police had already arrested people they considered responsible for the murders committed thus far. Why then the urgency to confront those among the thousands camped on Wonderkop?

Let us return to the events of August 16^th. The South African Government Information website still carries this statement, posted on the day of the Marikana massacre:

“Following extensive and unsuccessful negotiations by SAPS members to disarm and disperse a heavily armed group of illegal gatherers at a hilltop close to Lonmin Mine, near Rustenburg in the North West Province, the South African Police Service was viciously attacked by the group, using a variety of weapons, including firearms. The Police, in order to protect their own lives and in self-defence, were forced to engage the group with force. This resulted in several individuals being fatally wounded, and others injured.”

This police statement says the police acted in self defence. This is despite the fact that not a single policeman suffered any sort of injury on August 16^t

And as we discussed earlier, it is possible to interpret what happened in the filmed events as an over-reaction by the police to a threat. What happened afterwards, 400 meters away at Small Koppie is quite different. If police armoured vehicles did indeed drive over prostate miners, that cannot be described as self defence, nor as any kind of by-the-book public order policing.

The geography of those yellow spray painted letters tell a chilling and damning story. They lend credence to what the strikers have been saying. One miner on the morning after the massacre, August 17^th, told Daily Maverick that “When one of our miners passed a Nyala, there was a homeboy of his from the Eastern Cape inside, and he told him that today was D-day, that they were to come and shoot. He said there was a paper signed allowing them to shoot us.”

The language reportedly used by the policeman is strikingly similar to that used by police spokesperson Captain Adriao early on the 16^th August, and quoted on iol.co.za: “We have tried over a number of days to negotiate with the leaders and with the gathering here at the mine, our objective is to get the people to surrender their weapons and to disperse peacefully.”

“Today is D-day in terms of if they don’t comply then we will have to act … we will have to take steps,” Adriao said.

A little later he commented: “Today is unfortunately D-day. It is an illegal gathering. We’ve tried to negotiate and we’ll try again but if that fails, we’ll obviously have to go to a tactical phase.”

Speaking to the possible intention of the police, let us look at how the deployed police were armed. The weapons the majority of the 400 and some police on the scene was the R5 or LM5, an assault rifle designed for infantry and tactical police use (a licensed replica of the Israeli Galil SAR). These weapons cannot fire rubber bullets. The police were clearly deployed in a military manner – to take lives, not to contain possible riotous behavior.

The events three days previously set the stage for the police to exact their revenge. Police who have increasingly been accused of brutality, torture and death in detention. What is unclear is how high up the chain of command this desire went. The Human Rights commission is investigating the police commissioner, Riah Phiyega, for the instructions she issued for the events on August 16^th.

There has been police obfuscation and selective silence, in a democratic society where the police are theoretically accountable to the citizenry; as well as to our elected representatives. We live in a country where people are assumed innocent until proven guilty; where summery executions are not within the police’s discretion.

Let us be under no illusion. The striking miners are no angels. They are as violent as anyone else in our society. And in an inflamed setting such as at Marikana, probably more so. They are angry, disempowered, feel cheated and want more than a subsistence wage. Whatever the merits of their argument, and the crimes of some individuals among them, over 3,000 people did not merit summary and entirely arbitrary execution at the hands of a paramilitary police unit.

In the light of this, we could look at the events of August 16^th as the murder of 34 and the attempted murder of a further 78, who survived despite the police’s apparent intention to kill them.

Back at the rocks locals dub Small Koppie, a wild pear flowers among the debris of the carnage and human excrement; a place of horror that has until now remained terra incognita to the public.

Note: We have put these questions to the police and they state that they are unable to comment as to what happened at and around Small Koppie, as well as more detail on Monday 13^th. The IPID has also not responded othe than to say this is speculation until the Inter-Ministerial Commission has done its work.

*not his real name

** References by several witnesses and speakers at miners gathering to the army (or amajoni) actually refer to a police task team unit who wore camouflage uniforms and carried R5 semi-automatic files on the day.

Daily Maverick reported on this http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-08-23-marikana-what-really-happened-we-may-never-know

For police comment on 16^th August

http://www.iol.co.za/business/business-news/marikana-bodies-seen-on-the-ground-1.1364299#.UD3mtNYgeVo

Share on Facebook

Violent clashes between police and striking miners have left between seven and 18 people dead at the last count. But the miners – specifically, the rock drillers – are determined to stay on their outcrop until they are heard. But it’s more than a strike, writes GREG MARINOVICH – it’s become a war, with more than 40 people killed, including 34 massacred by police trying to break the strikers.

Several thousand men cover the orange outcrop of igneous rock like a single organism, spilling onto the dry thorn-veld below.

Share on Facebook

In this moment of celestial celebration, I perhaps express a rather dark perception of human nature. The reason I don’t think our introduction to any extra-terrestrial  intelligent or other life form will be to their benefit is that our history as a benevolent species is not great. We don’t need Lucifer, Shaytan, or whoever to egg us on towards evil, all we have to do is relax a little and let our true nature run free. Before you send an exorcist to my door, consider that there is irrefutable proof of our unholy inheritance all around us, even without giving credence to the tale of Cain.

And while I know there are a handful of you out there who cling to the idea of Earth being divinely constructed in six days some 5,000 years old; but most folk believe that dinosaurs really did roam the planet and human evolution from our apish precursor cousins as some kind of almost predetermined linear progression.

We’re all familiar with the t-shirt; chimp to Boeremag prototype, right? It feeds into our sense of our ‘right’ to be the dominant life form. The simplistic human story arc has our simian predecessors start catching and eating protein rich animals, evolving language and figuring out to stand on our hind legs to spot danger or opportunity on the African savannah. And so we evolved through pre-humans like Homo erectus into our ‘final’ manifestation as Homo sapiens. You know, the folk who conquered fire and then invented the soufflé and Viagra.

But then, back in Africa other pesky paleontologists recently found another African skeleton with a flat faced skull that matches a single find from the 1970s called Homo rudolfensis. (They knew his name was Rudie?) Seems this is a parallel species of human (I use this loosely) from some 2 million years ago that is outside of our lineage. And of course we had Homo habilis from the same era. So there were three lines of pre-humans existing simultaneously in Africa. At least.

So the almost deific – and heroic – story of our evolution has been dealt a mortal blow. Maybe we are just a completely random event, with a cruelly intelligent bent that enabled us to survive.

And then there are the Euro quasi human – the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. The Neanderthals seems to have been an annoying glitch, an evolutionary dead-end that our ancestors might or might not have shagged. Talk about coyote escape tactics from the lust cave the morning after!* Actually some scientists say Neanderthals were red headed and pale skinned, so quite possibly they looked a little like those cute Scots lasses.

And they disappeared rather suddenly, last seen sunbathing outside a cave on the Iberian riviera some 28,000 years ago.

More recently scientists made a discovery in a collapsed Siberian cave, and suddenly there was another extinct European species or sub-species they call Denisovans.

Sadly, they managed to extract DNA samples from both of these human-ish things, and it seems that, yes, we did indeed sleep with both these species – their genes are intermingled with ours.

Eurotrash takes on a whole new meaning here. But boys will be boys, hey?

Yet they disappeared. Were they badly adapted to the environment? Did they fail to deal with climactic changes? They couldn’t come up with a decent bride price? Perhaps, but I doubt it. I think they and good old rudolfensis and erectus and whoever else we dig up out there fell foul of our own fine species, Homo sapiens.

I think we called them makwerakwera or Hottentots, and whacked them; killed them off. Just like the poor Neanderthals who fled our human propensity to rape, pillage and enslave, until all they had left was a little redoubt at the southern tip of Europe. You see where I am going with this; why we have to keep inventing devils and demons and the like to blame for what is intrinsically us?

Pity those poor innocent Martians, should they ever have to deal with us face to face, however fearsome they figure themselves.

*(http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=coyote%20ugly)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19184370

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120225110942.htm

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/05/110513-neanderthals-last-stand-science-tool-kit-russia-slimak-tools/

Share on Facebook