About 270 miners were charged on 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 used under the apartheid regime, 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.”
“The policemen who killed those people are not in custody, not even one of them. This is madness,” said Malema, who was expelled from the governing African National Congress in April. “The whole world saw the policemen kill those people.”
The Mail and Guardian newspaper quoted constitutional law expert Pierre de Vos as saying the decision to charge the miners with the murders was “bizarre and shocking and represents a flagrant abuse of the criminal justice system in an effort to protect the police and/or politicians like Jacob Zuma and [Police Minister] Nathi Mthethwa.”
National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Frank Lesenyego saod that “It’s the police who were shooting, but they were under attack by the protesters, who were armed, so today the 270 accused are charged with the murders” of those who were shot.