Why The STATE is RIGHT to charge the Lonmin Marikana MINERS with murder!

(SACNS)


From a Cape Town Constitutional Law lecturer who never shuts up, or ceases to amaze with his stretched and ridiculous revisions of the actual constitution of 1996, to Julius Malema... there has been outcry over the National Prosecuting Authority, charging the 270 arrested Lonmin Marikana rock drillers, with Murder, Attempted Murder, and Public violence. These ridiculous critiques say that the police shot at the miners, and killed the miners, how can the miners be guilty of murder? The Capetonian law rewriter, goes further and calls the charges unconstitutional.

In a decided case, a person told their partner to go through with killing their self, when they threatened to. The victim shot their self, and the person who told them to, was convicted.

Another fact, is South Africa acknowledges common purpose: when a group of people act as one body, they are all guilty of all of the possible acts the group carries out, which could have been foreseen. It is likely on dolus eventualis and common purpose that the miners are being charged with murder, and direct intention, that they are being charged with attempted murder.

ENCA footage showing that miners shot first, has been detailed here before. I will not go into it. The fact miners were given muthi, possibly narcotics by a sangoma who told them they would be invincible, that they ignored tear gas and rubber bullets, and the fact their strike was illegal. That the rock drillers, armed with newly construed, and deadly traditional weapons charged police, at least 8 armed with firearms, all point to a common purpose, whether stated or through action.

It is my personal view, that the National Prosecuting Authority was only doing their duty under the law. There is such a thing as suicide by police... likewise there is convincing a person to take actions, which would force police or others to kill a person or others, or die themselves.

A famous suicide cult in the early days of civilization, would threaten to kill strangers if they did not kill the cult member. The stranger was put in a life or death circumstance, by the cult member, and in the Roman Empire, where this occurred, was the victim. As recorded by Augustine, the Roman Empire wiped out this cult by force. They understood who were the guilty parties: it was not their victims.

And who are those shouting on the side of miners who want their salaries tripled, while the platinum industry struggles to stay above water: Malema and sundry: who want mines nationalised. If all our mines are bankrupted, what better excuse to nationalize than that?

The NPA are right in their decision. The miners, if they are not a special case, alien to the proceeding criminal law, which applies to all others, could well be guilty of murder or at least culpable homicide. Or are they so special that they are above the law?