S.African police of Marikana massacre in new crackdown: report

At least two police officers who took part in the deadly crackdown on Marikana miners in 2012 were implicated in the killing of three protesters this week, a press report said today.
A police crackdown on demonstrators demanding the restoration of their water supply in Mothotlung, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Marikana, left three dead.
At least two of the officers took part in the massacre of 34 striking platinum miners in August 2012, the City Press weekly reported.
Contacted for comment by the SAPA news agency, a police spokesman said: "Let us allow IPID (the Independent Police Investigative Directorate) to do their work... We can't deal with senseless rumour-mongering."

An investigation into the Marikana massacre has yet to be wound up, the South African presidency having extended its deadline to April 30.
Police have maintained that they were acting in self-defence against armed miners. The killing, caught on camera, shocked the world and reminded many in South Africa of apartheid-era police brutality.

The inquiry has been marred by accusations of police lying about events, violence against witnesses and stoppages caused by a shortage of legal fees for the miners.
It has found that some of the victims were shot in the back at pointblank range.
At the funerals of the Mothotlung victims in last two days, officials of the ruling African National Congress were taken to task over police repression and poor public services, local media reported.

The brother of one of the victims said on the radio that he would never have imagined that his 62-year-old brother, after surviving apartheid, would die in such a way "under the new dispensation" in democratic South Africa.