* Police say officers had no choice but to open fire
* Some strikers had participated in witchcraft ritual-police
* Confusion at moment of shooting, no order to fire heard
* Firearms, other traditional weapons recovered from scene
By Pascal Fletcher
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Aug 17 (Reuters) – In a loping,
crouching run, striking South African miners advance towards a
line of police in helmets and flak-jackets who are pointing
automatic rifles at them. The police open fire.
In less than a minute, the men, some of whom police say
conducted witchcraft rituals they believed would protect them
from bullets, crumple and fall in a hail of gunfire that kicks
up clouds of yellow dust.
Television footage starkly captures the moment of the police
shootings at a dusty platinum mine northwest of Johannesburg on
Thursday that killed at least 34 protesting workers and tore a
gash in the soul of post-apartheid South Africa.
The sight of protesters falling dead before guns fired by
government security forces strikes a jarringly painful chord in
a nation ruled by Africa’s oldest liberation movement, the
African National Congress.
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