Farlam commission continues
Updated | By Catrine Malan
The cross-examination of a senior police officer was due to continue at the Farlam Commission of Inquiry in Rustenburg on Monday.

The cross-examination of a senior police officer was due to continue at the Farlam Commission of Inquiry in Rustenburg on Monday.
Last week Dali Mpofu, for the arrested and injured miners, argued police officers who took part in the Marikana dispersal plan were ordered to act. Mpofu said a police official identified as Cornelius Botes said he heard Brigadier Adriaan Calitz issue the order. According to a statement by Botes, Calitz said: "Engage, engage, engage" over the police radio.
Mpofu, who was cross-examining Maj-Gen Charl Annandale, argued that this showed that the officers who shot at the striking Lonmin mineworkers were acting on orders, and not in self-defence. Annandale headed the police's tactical operations team during the Marikana wage-related unrest in August. He told the commission, sitting in Rustenburg, that the police had been given an order not to attack unless they were attacked. "The instruction was to engage only if the target engages you first," said Annandale. Mpofu asked him what "engage" meant in that context.
"Brigadier Calitz was busy with the dispersal team.... My observation is that perhaps this was part of his dispersal action plan, which involved the use of rubber bullets and water cannons," Annandale said. The commission, chaired by retired Judge Ian Farlam, is investigating the circumstances surrounding the deaths of 44 people -- 34 of them at the hands of the police -- during wage-related unrest near Lonmin's platinum mine in Marikana.
-Sapa
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