South African cardinal still shocked at police shooting of 34 miners

(August 24, 2012) South Africa’s leading Catholic prelate feels the deep shock and pain of most South Africans even a week after the police shooting of 34 striking miners. “The first feeling is a feeling of sorrow and disappointment that this has happened,” Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban told Vatican Radio on Thursday. “The second feeling I would say is a feeling of shock - shock because we never thought that something like this could happen, and that our police force would be involved in a shooting of so many people,” he said. “We also need to look at the deeper problems that lie in our society at present,” he added, “and one of the deepest problems, I believe, is that life has lost its meaning, has lost its value for many people,” the cardinal said. South African police opened fire on striking miners armed with machetes and sticks at Lonmin's Marikana platinum mine on Aug. 16, killing 34 men in scenes that evoked comparisons with apartheid-era brutality. “We thought such police actions would never take place,” Cardinal Napier lamented, recalling the notorious 1960 Sharpville massacre, when police killed 60 persons.