Arrested miners denied medicine

Marikana - Some of the mineworkers arrested in connection with the murder of 10 people at Marikana, North West, have not had their TB and HIV and Aids treatment since August 16.

So said advocate Lesego Mmusi yesterday while fighting for the release on bail of 260 mineworkers arrested in connection with the murders, which included two police officers and two security guards, at Lonmin’s Marikana operation.

“Do you have any evidence that the accused are the ones responsible for the murders [of the 10 people]?” asked Mmusi.

Brigadier Jacobus van Zyl, North West head of detectives co-ordinating the investigations, replied: “At this moment I have no evidence”

Thirty-four striking miners were shot dead by the police when the 260 were arrested.

Only 24 of the accused miners appeared in court on Monday because there were too many to accommodate in court.

Mmusi, who leads the legal team representing the miners, expressed concern over the accused’s TB and HIV and Aids treatment in responding to the State’s request for a postponement as detectives working on the case, among other reasons, had not had sufficient time to verify the suspects’ addresses.

Earlier, Van Zyl, the North West head of detectives in Potchefstroom, who has been co-ordinating the investigations, gave a chilling account of the events leading up to the massacre.

In his evidence-in-chief, Van Zyl revealed that two Lonmin security guards were killed and disarmed of their shotguns on the Sunday before the fateful Thursday of the massacre.

One of the guards, he said, had been set alight in his vehicle.

He said the police had found another body of a civilian next to a railway line on the Wednesday, after another illegal gathering on a koppie the previous day.

The man, he said, was later identified as a supervisor at one of the shafts at Lonmin’s mine.

Van Zyl said up to 5 000 miners had again converged on the koppie on the Thursday, armed with pangas, knobkieries, assegais and an assortment of other dangerous weapons.

He said the police, the National Union of Mineworkers and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union had on several occasions tried in vain to negotiate with the miners to disperse and surrender their weapons.

“A decision was taken to disperse the crowd by using crowd-control measures. First of all, a barbed wire was rolled out using a police vehicle.

“The crowd moved away… all the time… It was a planned formative movement,” he said, adding that there had been two groups, one on the foot of the mountain and one on top.

He said some of the striking miners had fired shots. “As far as I can remember, there was gunshot [sic] fired at police,” he said, adding that some firearms were found on the miners.

Van Zyl revealed that the arrested mineworkers would no longer be employed at Lonmin. The court also heard that only about 125 of the suspects’s addresses have been verified. - The Star

• We have no food - arrested miner’s wife

• Probe Lonmin’s profit, says ANCYL