Opposition parties condemn Zuma’s defence on Marikana cops

The Congress of the People (Cope) and the Democratic Alliance (DA) on Wednesday added their voices to the condemnation of President Jacob Zuma’s comments on Tuesday about the Marikana massacre.

Zuma reportedly told a heckler at the Tshwane University of Technology that "those people in Marikana had killed people and the police were stopping them".

Cope’s Dennis Bloem said the remarks show that Zuma "will seek to pin the blame on the miners and conclude that‚ in as much as he regretted the police violence‚ the police had no other choice".

The DA’s Dianne Kohler Barnard said Zuma’s "reckless remarks demonstrate that the president does not care about the families who had their loved ones ripped from them by a trigger-happy SAPS"‚ who gunned down 34 mineworkers on August 16‚ 2012.

But‚ "of even greater concern"‚ Kohler Barnard said‚ "is the heinous remark Zuma made about apartheid-era South Africa and using it as a threat by which to quell social dissatisfaction".

She quoted Zuma as saying: "Do not use violence to express yourselves‚ or I might be forced to relook the apartheid laws that used violence to suppress people."

Said Kohler Barnard: "The president is actually threatening ordinary South Africans with violence and using the state’s apparatus to do so.

"This is the same attitude that got us in this Marikana mess in the first place and makes us more confident than ever that he and his police commissioner (Riah Phiyega) should bear ultimate political responsibility for the Marikana massacre."

Phiyega is on record as telling the police officers in Marikana: "Whatever happened represents the best of responsible policing. You did what you did because you were being responsible."

But Kohler Barnard described it as "the grandest failing of the SAPS in democratic South Africa and those responsible must not be encouraged and congratulated as Phiyega and Zuma seem to be inclined to do‚ but must be expelled from the police service at once".

Zuma will release the Marikana Report‚ complied by Judge Ian Farlam‚ which he has been applying his mind to for three months‚ by the end of June.

But Cope’s Bloem said his party "knows that Zuma and the ruling party will once again present such a scandalous report…that it will beggar belief".

"Zuma has taken the measure of South African society. He reckons he can get away with almost anything‚ regularly taking us for fools‚ Bloem said.

"It is so bothersome for the ruling party‚ with its majority‚ to be constrained by the Constitution and the law."

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) earlier on Wednesday said "Zuma has singlehandedly found the Marikana workers guilty of murder and thus condoned a death sentence on them before even their side of the story was heard."

EFF spokesperson Mbuyiseni Quintin Ndlozi said: "Zuma is saying it is correct that his police massacred workers in Marikana and we must accept a massacre as an act of crime prevention."

"Instead of releasing the report he is handing out its conclusions in piecemeal fashion and subjecting the Marikana widows and their families to more trauma. There is no care or sensitivity in his pronouncements.

"It is not his place to hand verdicts and sentence anyone."