Murder By Proximity

Two hundred and seventy South African miners have been charged with the murder of their colleagues who were shot by the police two weeks ago. The police fired on strikers who supposedly charged at them with clubs, machetes and "at least one gun", although it is as yet unclear whether the South African police can aspire to anything like the veracity of our own Metropolitan Firearms and Headbangers' Club. Thirty-four miners were killed in what Britain's leading liberal newspaper calls "violent strikes"; fortunately, despite the usual absence of violent policing, the forces of the law appear to have suffered no losses. Accordingly, the South African government has dug up an old common law which was used in the bad old days when apartheid was based on race rather than income and, doubtless to gasps of admiration in Whitehall and Scotland Yard, is attempting to enshrine survivor guilt as equivalent to murder. Now that the advent of digital video and citizen journalism has put so many policemen at risk of acquittal here on the mainland, our own Home Office and Ministry of Justice will be watching carefully for points to emulate.