Miners Charged in Deaths of 34 Killed by Police

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By MICHELLE FAUL Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG August 30, 2012 (AP)

About 270 miners were charged Thursday with the murders of 34 striking colleagues who were shot by South African police officers, authorities said, a development that could further infuriate South Africans already shocked and angered by the police action.

The decision to charge the miners comes under an arcane Roman-Dutch common purpose law, and it suggests President Jacob Zuma's government wants to shift blame for the killings from police to the striking miners.

Firebrand politician Julius Malema, who has seized on the shootings to score political points, told supporters of miners outside the courthouse that the charges were "madness."

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http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/miners-charged-deaths-34-killed-police-17116118#.UD_MWiLIB2E

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1. South Africa is about to erupt

over this outrage.

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2. More. From the NYT

LUANDA, Angola — Two weeks after the police opened fire on a crowd of 3,000 workers engaged in a wildcat strike at a platinum mine near Johannesburg, killing 34 people in the bloodiest labor unrest since the end of apartheid, prosecutors are bringing murder charges against a surprising set of suspects: the miners themselves.


Using an obscure legal doctrine frequently relied upon by the apartheid government in its dying days, prosecutors did not accuse the police officers who shot and killed the strikers as they surged forward, machetes in hand. Instead, officials said Thursday that they were pursuing murder charges against the 270 miners who were arrested after the dust settled and the shooting stopped.

It was the latest astonishing turn in a saga that has gripped South Africa, unleashing a torrent of rage over deepening inequality, poverty and unemployment.

The shootings have fed a growing sense of betrayal at the country’s governing party, the venerable African National Congress, many of whose senior members have joined a wealthy elite a world away from the downtrodden masses whose votes brought them to power at the end of apartheid in 1994. Now the prosecutors’ decision to charge the miners in the killings threatened to intensify that rift.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/world/africa/south-africa-to-charge-marikana-miners-in-deadly-unrest.html