South Africa mining massacre victims offered £75m in damages

The South African government has offered to pay 1.17bn rand (£75m) in compensation to victims of a 2012 police shooting that left 34 mineworkers dead and dozens wounded. 'The 1.17bn rand presented here is an amount linked to a certain number of individuals’ loss of support’ injuries and of course fatalities,” the police minister, Nathi Nhleko, told lawmakers.

The sum will cover 652 claims made by families whose relatives were killed, miners who were injured and those who were unlawfully arrested. The 34 miners were gunned down after police were deployed to break up a wildcat strike that had turned violent at the Lonmin-owned Marikana platinum mine, northwest of Johannesburg, in August 2012.

According to several reports, it was the worst police violence in South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994.