Re: [SycamoreCanyon] Prosecutors provisionally -- provisionally -- drop murder charges against S.A. miners

According to Portside, the miners remain in jail and will begin to be released later this week.  

So they do some time, and they draw out the releases (perhaps) to minimize public demos.

In my trips to S Africa, it has been clear that the ANC was indeed carrying out its perspect of a "bourgeoise revolution," tempered a little by SACP and a lot by COSATU. 

But COSATU has been becoming increasingly business as usual and in some cases much worse.  And this latest incident shows how bad it has gotten.

There is a huge amount of anger among the working class in S Africa.  It looks like this may have been a trial balloon by government to see how far they could go, and they decided to back off some.

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Hunter Gray <[email protected]>
To: Bear Without Borders <[email protected]>
Cc: Redbadbear <[email protected]>; SycamoreCanyon <[email protected]>; marxist <[email protected]>
Sent: Mon, Sep 3, 2012 3:28 pm
Subject: [SycamoreCanyon] Prosecutors provisionally -- provisionally -- drop murder charges against S.A. miners


  
    
                  

South Africa Lifts Charges of Murder in Mine Strike
By LYDIA POLGREEN  NYT

JOHANNESBURG — Prosecutors provisionally dropped murder charges against the 270 jailed miners who had been accused under an obscure legal doctrine of killing 34 of their own colleagues when the police opened fire on them while engaged in a wildcat strike. 
The police fired live ammunition into a crowd of about 3,000 platinum miners armed with clubs and machetes while trying to disperse the illegal strike on Aug. 16. When the firing stopped, 34 miners were dead and South Africa was outraged by the bloodiest confrontation between the police and civilians since the end of apartheid. The police have claimed they acted in self-defense. 
The outrage grew when prosecutors announced last week that under a legal doctrine known as “common purpose,” the miners would be charged with murdering their colleagues. Under the doctrine, which was frequently used in the waning days of apartheid to charge members of protesting crowds with serious crimes committed by a few individuals, people in a mob can be charged as accomplices. 
In a hastily arranged news conference Sunday, officials from the National Prosecuting Authority said that they would await the outcome of further investigations into the shootings, but they did not rule out bringing murder charges again. 
“Final charges will only be made once all investigations have been completed,” Nomgcobo Jiba, the acting national director of prosecutions, told reporters. “The murder charges against the current 270 suspects will be formally withdrawn provisionally in court.” 
Prosecutors also said they had not ruled out charges against the police. 
“The actions of the police will be sorted out still,” Johan Smit, a provincial prosecutor in the region where the strike took place, told reporters. “We’re not ignoring that.” 
The murder charges against the miners, who remain in jail pending a hearing this week, had caused considerable consternation among the top leaders of the African National Congress, who were already being criticized for acting too slowly to end the wildcat strike peacefully and not responding quickly enough once the killings took place. 
Justice Minister Jeff Radebe said last week that the decision to charge the miners with murder “has induced a sense of shock, panic and confusion within the members of the community and the general South African public,” and demanded an explanation from prosectors. 
Lawyers for the jailed miners sent a letter to President Jacob Zuma demanding that he intervene. Mr. Zuma had earlier created a commission of inquiry with broad powers to investigate the shooting. 
The miners went on strike in Marikana, a town 80 miles northwest of Johannesburg, in early August to demand higher wages from the company that owns the mine, Lonmin of London. 
The strike and the government’s iron-fisted response laid bare the frustration with the slow pace of transforming South Africa’s economy, deepening the sense among many of the nation’s poor and jobless that the A.N.C. and its allies have become too cozy with big business, disconnected from the masses who put them in office. 
The sight of heavily armed police officers shooting into a charging crowd of workers at the strike — a scene replayed endlessly on television — reminded many South Africans of the days when the police opened fire on protesters during the apartheid era. 
Then when prosecutors said they would charge the miners in the murder of their colleagues, legal experts and Cosatu, the federation of trade unions that is one of the A.N.C.’s main allies, denounced the move as “absurd.” 



HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)
 
See Outlaw Trail: The Native as Organizer:
http://hunterbear.org/outlaw_trail1.htm
[Included in Visions & Voices: Native American Activism [2009]
(Much expanded with new material in 2012.)
 
And see the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded and with more photos in June, 2012.)
 
For the new, just out (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial introduction by me.  We are now at 
the 50th Anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement of
1962-63. (This page expanded 9/12):  http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
 
Witch Hunt: SCEF, FBI stuff, etc (with links):
http://www.hunterbear.org/witch_hunt_continuesthe_southern.htm