Rustenburg - One of the miners wounded at Marikana last year was cross-examined at the Farlam Commission of Inquiry, in Rustenburg on Tuesday.
Karel Tip SC, for the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), started the hearing on Tuesday by asking to show the commission video footage.
The inquiry's chairman, retired judge Ian Farlam, asked: “Is the video likely to cause distress?”
Tip assured the commission it would not, and said the footage had been shown to the commission before.
On Monday, Farlam asked that videos of the police shooting the miners not be shown unless necessary.
Farlam said Lonmin miner Mzoxolo Magidiwana's life had taken a “dramatic turn” during the shooting and that watching the clip was causing “tremendous emotional turmoil for him”.
The commission was adjourned when Magidiwana broke down during cross-examination last week.
The footage on Tuesday showed hundreds of mineworkers gathered at a hill in Marikana. They sat while being addressed.
Tip pointed out a gap in the group. Magidiwana said it was there for delivery vehicles to bring food to the workers.
When Tip asked him why the mineworkers in the front of the group were dressed more warmly than the group behind the gap, Magidiwana said it had to do with the weather.
“People who dressed heavily did so because it was cold in the morning,” he said through an interpreter.
This is the second day this week that Magidiwana has given evidence on his version of the August 16 Marikana shooting and the events leading up to it.
On Monday, Tip tried, in his cross-examination, to gain clarity on why miners at Lonmin's platinum operation, who were not rock drill operators, embarked on an illegal strike last August. Before the commission was adjourned, it heard that Magidiwana
was not a rock drill operator, but that all Lonmin workers wanted R12 500 a month and went on an illegal strike in demand of the increased wage.
The commission is probing the deaths of 44 people during the strike at the mine in Marikana last year. On August 16, 34 strikers were shot dead and 78 were injured when the police opened fire while trying to disperse a group gathered on a hill near the mine.
Ten people, including two police officers and two security guards, were killed near the mine in the preceding week.
Sapa