This week, police Lieutenant Colonel Salmon Vermaak dropped a mini-bombshell at the Farlam commission of inquiry into the police's killing of 34 striking miners at Marikana in August 2012. Vermaak said he had been told to lie to the inquiry by his superiors, and he named national police commissioner Riah Phiyega, North West provincial commissioner Zukiswa Mbombo and North West deputy commissioner William Mpembe, as well as a colleague, Brigadier Adriaan Calitz, who was in charge of the police on that blood-soaked day. Vermaak says he was told to misrepresent what happened and to take the blame for the 18 deaths on the "small koppie".
Mbombo testified before the commission last month and did not give a good account of herself. She blamed her deputy, Mpembe, for briefing her inadequately. She said she gave the order to go ahead with the dispersal of the strikers, but that she did not have a specific method of doing so in mind. That, she said, she left to the officers on the ground. Asked by advocate George Bizos whether the provision of mortuary vans and huge amounts of live ammunition didn't mean the police were prepared for "war", Mbombo said testily: "I am not responsible for the day-to-day running, how much toilet paper was issued, how much water was drunk …"
If that line of defence sounds familiar, it's because it has become the standard method for authorities trying to avoid taking responsibility for wrongdoing: blame others. If that fails, claim ignorance.
Before Vermaak testified in person, an earlier memo he had sent to Mbombo had already been entered into evidence. In it, he outlined some of the background to the police's disastrous handling of the Marikana situation, including lack of proper training, no intelligence, and the provision of R5 rifles and live ammunition rather than rubber bullets and the like. This evaluation Mbombo dismissed out of hand, before the commission, as "not … the truth".
It seems more likely, however, that the evidence given by Mbombo and others such as Calitz is dodgy, and that Vermaak is speaking the truth. He may be doing so out of a need for self-preservation, and his evidence has yet to be tested fully, but it fits with the fact that, in September last year, the commission found that information had been withheld by the police that would point towards some kind of cover-up. There were documents, said the commission, that "appear … to have been constructed after the events to which they refer", and others that "in our opinion demonstrate that the SAPS version of the events at Marikana … is in material respects not the truth".
Apart from this evidence of the police brass's lies and attempts to whitewash themselves, Vermaak's evidence indicates that events a few days before the August 16 2012 massacre contributed to how the tragedy unfolded, as we report this week. The commission is mandated to find the truth; we long for more public officials capable of simple honesty.