Pretoria - The Farlam Commission of Inquiry's hearings into last year's violence and deaths at Marikana, North West, will resume on Wednesday, spokesman Tshepo Mahlangu said.
Mahlangu said on Monday the adjournment of the public hearings on October 15 gave the commission time to reflect.
“These breaks are necessary from time to time so that the commission (can) reflect on the work covered. It also allows evidence leaders to review the topics they have covered and still need to cover on a particular witness,” he said.
“Even though we are not sitting for the public hearings, work continues to go on in the background. This background work allows us to spend the necessary time with a specific witness.”
Mahlangu said evidence leader Matthew Chaskalson, SC, would still be cross-examining police Lt-Col Duncan Scott when the commission resumed.
Last week, lawyers for the miners wounded and arrested at Marikana returned to the public hearings. The miners' legal team, led by Dali Mpofu, SC, had temporarily withdrawn from the inquiry because of a lack of funding. This was pending a review application to set aside a decision by the justice minister and Legal Aid SA to refuse the miners state funding.
At the time of his withdrawal, Mpofu said that without the miners' input, the commission's only function would be to “whitewash the police”.
The High Court in Johannesburg ruled last Monday that Legal Aid SA pay the legal costs of the survivors of the Marikana shooting.
The inquiry, sitting in Centurion, is probing the deaths of 44 people during strike-related unrest at Lonmin's platinum mining operations at Marikana, North West.
The police shot dead 34 people, almost all of them striking mineworkers, wounded 70, and arrested 250 on August 16, 2012. In the preceding week, 10 people, including two policemen and two security guards, were killed.
President Jacob Zuma established the judicial commission, chaired by retired judge Ian Farlam, shortly after the unrest.
Sapa