7 day forecast
Justice minister in South Africa questions court action
Share with others:
JOHANNESBURG -- South Africa's justice minister on Friday challenged the top prosecutor's decision to charge 270 miners with the murders and attempted murders of 112 striking co-workers shot by the police, a development that indicates more divisions in the government over the killings that shocked the nation.
The National Prosecuting Authority's decision to charge the arrested miners under an apartheid-era law leaves the government open to accusations that it is acting like the former brutal white rulers.
The Aug. 16 shootings by police that killed 34 striking miners and wounded 78 near the Lonmin platinum mine were the worst display of state violence since apartheid ended in 1994.
Justice Minister Jeff Radebe said the prosecutor's decision to charge the miners "has induced a sense of shock, panic and confusion," leading him to demand an explanation. "It is therefore incumbent upon me to seek clarity on the basis upon which such a decision is taken," he said in a statement.
The National Prosecuting Authority has no immediate response to Mr. Radebe's statement, authority spokesman Mthunzi Mhaga said.
Rabble-rousing politician Julius Malema declared, meanwhile, that he will make the country's mines ungovernable, and took his first battle to a mine owned partly by President Jacob Zuma's nephew, Khulubuse Zuma, and by Zondwa Mandela, a grandson of anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela.
"Our leaders have lost their way and have been co-opted by mine owners and fed profits. They don't care about you," Mr. Malema told cheering miners Thursday.
Mr. Malema was expelled from the governing African National Congress party in April and is pursuing a vendetta to get Mr. Zuma ousted. "We are going to lead a mining revolution in this country," he said. "We will run these mines ungovernable until the [whites] come to the table," he told workers at Aurora gold mine east of Johannesburg.
The politically connected Aurora Empowerment Systems took over two working gold mines in 2009 from a company that went into liquidation. Since then, workers have not been paid, and the mines have been stripped of their assets. About 5,000 people lost their jobs.
The company has ignored a court order to pay its workers 4.3 million rand ($537,500) and refuses to comment on the affair.
Mr. Malema's threats come at a time when tempers are running high, with many demanding that everyone involved be held accountable, including the government, the unions and the companies that some accuse of supporting breakaway unions to feed disunity among workers.
The powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions welcomed Mr. Radebe's move, saying it was "absolutely outraged" at the prosecutor's decision, and that he should have waited for the findings of a judicial commission of inquiry tasked with uncovering the truth about the shootings.
Like many among the African National Congress leadership, Mr. Radebe has his own ties to mines. His wife, Bridgette Radebe, and her brother, Patrice Motsepe, have become billionaires through their ownership of mines under a post-apartheid dispensation to share the country's wealth.
But only a small black elite has benefited, often through corruption, with the majority of South Africa's 48 million people becoming more mired in poverty.
First Published September 1, 2012 12:00 am
