AP
South African police officers stand guard near the scene of the shooting of miners near Rustenburg, South Africa Friday.
JOHANNESBURG ? South African police officers killed more than 30 miners who charged them at a Lonmin PLC platinum mine, authorities said Friday, as a national newspaper warned that a time bomb ticking over poor South Africans has exploded.
Thursday's shootings are one of the worst in South Africa since the end of the apartheid era, and came as a rift deepens between the country's governing African National Congress and an impoverished electorate confronting massive unemployment and growing poverty and inequality.
They "awaken us to the reality of the time bomb that has stopped ticking ? it has exploded," The Sowetan newspaper said in an editorial. "Africans are pitted against each other ... fighting for a bigger slice of the mineral wealth of the country. In the end the war claims the very poor African -- again."
Police ministry spokesman Zweli Mnisi told The Associated Press on Friday that more than 30 people were killed on Thursday in the police volleys of gunfire during the strike, now a week old. He said an investigation into the shooting near Marikana, about 70 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, is underway. Political parties and labor unions, including the ANC, called for an independent inquiry.
Makhosi Mbongane, a 32-year-old winch operator, said mine managers should have come to the workers rather than send police. He vowed that he was not going back to work and would not allow anyone else to do so either.
"They can beat us, kill us and kick and trample on us with their feet, do whatever they want to do, we aren't going to go back to work," he told The Associated Press. "If they employ other people they won't be able to work either, we will stay here and kill them."
On a chilly, sunlit Friday morning, police investigators and forensic experts combed the scene of the shooting, watched by about 100 people. A woman with a baby on her back said she was looking for her miner husband who had not come home Thursday night.
Provincial health spokesman Tebogo Lekgethwane said no wounded people have been treated at nearby hospitals.
Shocked South Africans watched replay after replay of video of the shooting that erupted Thursday afternoon after police failed to get the striking miners to hand over machetes, clubs and home-made spears.
Some miners did leave, though others carrying weapons began war chants and marched toward the township near the mine, said Molaole Montsho, a journalist with the South African Press Association who was at the scene. The police opened up with a water cannon first, then used stun grenades and tear gas to try and break up the crowd, Montsho said.
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