Magistrate D Hoffman also described police evidence as unreliable and evasive" and rejected police claims that they had fired because they feared their lives were in danger. The incident — which was filmed by an American network – caused an international outcry.
The image of police leaping out of crates on the back of a truck and firing pump-action shotguns at a crowd, which included young children, became a symbol of South African repression that flashed throughout the world. Michael Miranda, 11, Shaun Magmoed, 16, and Jonathan Claassens, 21, died after members of a police task-force who were hidden in wooden crates on the back of an open railway truck fired into a crowd gathered in Thornton Road, Athlone, Cape Town, on October 15, 1985.
At the inquest into their death yesterday, the magistrate said police witnesses exaggerated the size of the crowd and the damage done to the truck. He said there was no evidence that Miranda and Claassens had been identified as stone-throwers and the balance of probability was that Magmoed also could not be identified as a stone-thrower. He said police were not taken by surprise in the incident. They went to the area with the intention of catching the stone-throwers by surprise and teaching people a lesson. (Police evidence was that their orders were to catch the "ringleaders" and that they fired because their lives were in danger.)
Hoffman described the operation as "poorly prepared and planned". He said it would have been impractical for men 'to jump one and a half metros from a box and then another one metro from the truck to arrest people. Policemen's oral evidence also did not tally with evidence shown in the form "of a video.
Hoffman said 'one of the policemen tried to mislead the court about the size of the burning barricade the truck came upon on its second journey down Thornton Road on the day of the incident. He found police witnesses also exaggerated the size of the crowd which had gathered by the time the truck made its second journey down the road. They claimed it had been between 150 to 200 strong. Hoffmann found this an exaggerated and that it was more likely half that size.
Police claimed everyone in the crowd had stones and bricks, which was not substantiated by the facts. Hoffmann noted that utmost 40 rounds of buckshot and birdshot were used in the shooting. He said police evidence in the inquest hearing contradicted that given in an earIier public violence trial arising from the incident.
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
