Post date: Oct 01, 2012 9:4:25 PM
Ian Farlam has four months to uncover the events surrounding the August 16 "Marikana massacre", which sparked intense criticism not only of the police but also of mining bosses, unions, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and President Jacob Zuma.
More than 40 people had been killed during the six weeks of industrial action that rocked South Africa's economy.
A retired judge officially opens the Marikana Judicial Commission of Inquiry to investigate the deaths of more than 40 people during a six-week strike by Lonmin mineworkers in South Africa.
MARIKANA, SOUTH AFRICA (OCTOBER 01, 2012) (REUTERS) - A retired judge toured the spot where police killed 34 striking platinum miners in August as he opened a judicial inquiry on Monday (October 1) into South Africa's bloodiest security incident since the end of apartheid.
Farlam told a hearing in the platinum belt city of Rustenburg that the commission would "work expeditiously to ensure the truth is revealed".
About 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, Rustenburg is closest town to the Lonmin-owned Marikana mine.
The names of the 34 dead, most of them from the poor Eastern Cape province, were read out at the start of the inquiry before lawyers for the police, victims' families and 270 miners arrested after the shootings locked horns over procedure.
But one analyst said the commission's scope was too narrow and focuses on the Lonmin company.
"The commission is too narrow in terms of reference, because it excludes the kind of proximate factors that have led to these very complex incident, and so they are too narrow, but at the same time perhaps they are too wide and unclear on what is the objections of the commission, what exactly is being investigated," Claude Baissac said.
"When one reads the terms of reference, one has the impression that there is tremendous amount of focus on the company Lonmin you know, but then it raises the point of, you know, the company is not directly responsible for the death of 43 people. They (company) did not pull the trigger," Baissac said.
As well as probing the August 16 shootings, the Marikana commission has a broader remit to look into labour relations, pay and accommodation in South Africa's mines, issues seen as behind the wildcat strike that preceded the killings.
However Baissac said there should be more investigations into what triggered the strikes leading to the massacre.
"We would have like perhaps the commission to be a bit broader in way, to be looking at the kind of factors that have led to such an incredibly tense and unpredictable situation leading to such dramatic incident," he said.
The commission and its findings could be politically damaging to Zuma and the ANC, especially if security forces are found to have been as trigger-happy and ruthless as their apartheid predecessors.
The Eunomix analyst added that the country's lack of leadership is a cause for concern.
"Analysts, including ourselves, think that the incident is actually the culmination of a lot of structural failures, and if the commission does not look at it properly, the risk is that it's going to happen again. And we are seeing that the strikes are continuing. They have left the platinum sector, and they have been affecting the coal sector, and they have been affecting the gold sector against all predictions," said Baissac.
However, the inquiry's four-month timetable means its final findings will come after an internal ANC leadership election in mid-December.
Zuma is expected to be re-elected head of the ANC in the vote - teeing him up to win a second five-year term as South African president in 2014.