African press review 26 June 2015

The blame game breaks out in South Africa as President Jacob Zuma unveils a damning report on the Marikana killings. The victims' widows are still expecting answers to what happened amid rising calls for the axing of officials responsible for the tragedy.

We begin in South Africa where the papers are all highlighting President Zuma’s statement on the findings of the investigation into the Marikana tragedy in Lonmin’s platinum mines. Mail and Guardian says the evidence presented by the commission strongly suggests that 17 of the 34 miners shot dead during the violent crackdown on striking workers in 2012 posed no threat to the police and were executed away from television cameras.

Daily News Durban observes that in the long-awaited report of the commission of inquiry into the fatal shootings President Zuma faulted Lonmin on five counts, including failing to defuse the dispute and protect workers.

Presenting a summary of the report in a special television broadcast Thursday evening Zuma noted that the commission found that Lonmin “did not use its best endeavours” in the disputes that arose between itself and workers in the unprotected strike, and between striking and non-striking workers.

In its special report, Mail and Guardian also looks at the housing shortage in Marikana, which was one of the motivating factors behind the 2012 strike, and tests the current temperature in the town as residents come full circle with the findings of the commission. The Johannesburg newspaper says the revelations have unleashed a blame game in Pretoria as the government and officials at the Lonmin mining company try to dissociate themselves from the overwhelming use of force on the miners.

City Press on its part takes up what it calls “the broken promises of Marikana”. It points out that the report delivered by President Zuma adds insult to injury for the miners’ widows. According to the paper, the families of the miners who were killed, wounded or arrested at Marikana in 2012 found no comfort in the report which lacked specific details about the shootings. The paper reports that some of the widows had draped themselves in blankets and were waiting for taxis to take them to where their husbands were killed.

Several papers report that two weeks ago, President Zuma’s lawyers had verbally agreed to give at least 48 hours of notice before releasing the report. Now, according to City Press, the widows were reeling as apprehension, fear and finality settled in after the government’s will to get to the bottom of the truth.

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa is reportedly studying the contents of the report with a view to answering mounting media queries.

The Sowetan on its part takes special interest in a major point raised in the Marikana judicial commission’s recommendations – whether the two top officials responsible for managing the Marikana miners' strike, National Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega and then-North West provincial commissioner Lieutenant-General Zukiswa Mbombo, are fit to hold office.

BusinessDay meanwhile examines how Marikana is “digging its way out of the dark into light”. New shacks have sprung up along the road that separates the Nkaneng informal settlement from the koppie where police shot and killed 34 striking miners, reports the paper. Its correspondent also found out that new faces have arrived in the area, while some of the people who left in 2012, fearing for their lives, have returned.

The investigative report concludes on a happy note for the long-beleaguered town citing a new energy and optimism for business. However the journal also documented a rise in fears by local business people that their new rivals are eating into their profits.

Still, a local liquor store owner interviewed by BusinessDay noted that the deadly strike in 2012 was a turning point for his business. "It seemed as if the killings had made this place more popular," he said.