False evidence has been given by SAPS officers to the Marikana Commission, which implicates AMCU officials in threats to kill police officers just before the massacre on 16 August 2012.

Evidence from SAPS CCTV was manipulated to give the impression that AMCU condoned the killing of police officers.
In the film, six strikers speak to the crowd on the mountain. The last of them finishes with what evidence leader Matthew Chaskalson SC describes “as a short murderous speech by protester six indicating that he wanted policemen ... to be killed, to be finished off.”

In the film, protester six is immediately followed by AMCU organiser Dumisani Nkalitshane:  “That has to be respected, because that is your belief. Be strong” He is followed by Joseph Mathunjwa, President of AMCU.
Now we know that the video was edited and manipulated. The six strikers did address the crowd at the mountain, one after the other, but Dumisani Nkalitshane and Joseph Mathunjwa addressed the strikers before they had spoken, by almost forty minutes.
In cross examination Colonel Duncan Scott, who was responsible for sequencing the video, provided no satisfactory explanation for the manipulated footage. When Chaskalson asked him if this was “highly prejudicial to AMCU” Scott said he had “no option but to say yes”.

Last week the Farlam Commission was adjourned. In a press statement the Commission said the police had:
• Failed to disclose evidence
• Said  evidence did not exist when it did
• Made up documents after the event claiming they were contemporaneous
• Gave evidence which is not true.
This is a shocking indictment of the police service in South Africa. It is a clear indication that for a whole year SAPS have hidden thousands of documents to cover-up their responsibility for the massacre of 34 miners.
The Marikana Support Campaign demands to know:
• Who in the police knew about the lies and distortion?
• What did the SAPS lawyers know? Why didn’t they uncover the truth?
• How high in Government does this cover-up go?
SAPS Senior Advocate Ishmael Semenya SC told the Commission at the very outset that SAPS had “set out to assist this commission with establishing the facts.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.

Thirty four miners died. Ninety miners were injured. Two hundred and seventy miners were arrested and charged with murder. Seven miners have committed suicide, two of them witnesses waiting to give evidence at the Commission.