Riah Phiyega
National police management decided to disarm the Marikana strikers
on August 16 2012, the inquiry into suspended national commissioner Riah
Phiyega’s fitness to hold office heard today.
No local or provincial police took the decision, Captain Monwabisi
Ntlati, who was a member of the North West Tactical Response Team at the time,
told the Claassen Board of Inquiry.
He was deployed to Marikana in August 2012, during the wage-related
strike at Lonmin’s platinum mine. At 2.30pm on August 16, North West operational
response services unit head Brigadier Adriaan Calitz summoned all the commanders
in the area to a briefing.
Lieutenant-Colonel Duncan Scott, who was responsible for drawing up
the tactical plan, briefed the commanders.
“During the briefing, we were informed that the national management
instructed that the police must act against the armed strikers as they have to
be disarmed and dispersed.”
Public Order Policing members were meant to disperse the strikers
and Tactical Response Team officers would encircle small groups and disarm the
strikers, Ntlati read to the inquiry from a statement.
Evidence leader Ismail Jamie SC asked Ntlati where he had heard the
words “national management”.
Ntlati said Scott had used them during the briefing.
“I understood him to mean all the managers of policing were
instructing that action be taken. All the generals,” Ntlati said.
Ntlati was the first witness to give evidence at the inquiry since
it started yesterday.
President Jacob Zuma established the inquiry, chaired by Judge
Neels Claassen, in September last year. His decision followed recommendations by
the Farlam Commission of Inquiry, which investigated the deaths of 44 people in
the mining area during the strike.
On August 16, police shot dead 34 people, mostly striking miners,
and wounded 78, while trying to disperse and disarm them.
The Farlam Commission heard that senior police leaders had decided
to implement the “tactical option” – the use of maximum force against strikers –
at a police national management forum meeting on August 15.
Ntlati was listed as one of the witnesses at the Farlam Commission,
but was never called to testify. However, during cross-examination at the
commission, Ntlati’s statement was read to Scott.
Scott was asked whether he knew about the decision, prior to August
16, to implement a tactical response.
“All the decisions were made. I wasn’t aware that there was a
meeting of any sort on that Wednesday,” Scott said at the time.
Following allegations of misconduct against Phiyega during the
Marikana strike, Zuma suspended her, based on 14 allegations.
The Farlam Commission’s findings included:
» A police operational plan entailed
using barbed wire to surround a relatively small group of strikers on the koppie
at Marikana early on August 16;
» They would be offered an exit,
through which they would have to move, while handing over their weapons;
» This phase could only be
implemented early in the morning when there was a relatively small number of
strikers. Police tried to negotiate with the strikers;
» The encirclement plan was replaced
by the tactical option, which was defective, but was implemented at 3.40pm that
day;
» The commission found it would have
been impossible to disarm and disperse the strikers without significant
bloodshed, on the afternoon of August 16;
» Police should have waited until the
following day, when the original encirclement plan, which was substantially risk
free, could have been implemented;
» The commission found that tactical
commanders on the ground did not decide to forcibly remove the strikers from the
koppie on August 16 if they did not voluntarily lay down their arms; and
» The then-North West police
commissioner, Lieutenant-General Zukiswa Mbombo, made the decision. South
African Police Service leadership endorsed it at an extraordinary session of its
national management forum.
– News24
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