Greg Marinovich's Photos of the Miners' Strike in South Africa Greg Marinovich is an award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker from South Africa. As a member of the famed "Bang-Bang Club" - which included Kevin Carter, Ken Oosterbroek and Joao Silva - he chronicled his homeland's rocky transition from apartheid to democracy. His photo of a suspected spy being hacked and burned alive by supporters of the African National Congress earned Mr. Marinovich the Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography in 1991. He recently spent several weeks investigating a brutal clash in August when security forces killed 34 miners who had gone out on a wildcat strike. WONDERKOP, Marikana, South Africa - Tholakele (Bhele) Dlunga was impassive as he pulled the plastic shopping bag over his head to reveal the torture he had endured. His hands did not tremble as he mimicked how police officers clamped their hands over his nose and mouth when they thought he was somehow managing to get enough air to breathe despite the black bag. That was just a hint of the beatings and torture that would last for five days. Mr. Dlunga is a rock-drill operator at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana, in South Africa's North West Province. He is also one of the ad hoc strike committee members elected by miners who had rejected the established unions as ineffective and corrupt in their dealings with Lonmin's management. More important, he was a key witness to the events leading to Aug. 16, when the police shot 112 of the wildcat strikers, killing 34. That clash - dubbed the Marikana massacre - was a grim watershed for South Africa's teenage democracy, coming 18 years after Nelson Mandela took over as the first post-apartheid president. The hated and politically burdened police force was supposed to have been transformed from a force of repression into the protectors of the constitution and human rights. In a flashback to the old days, five plainclothes police officers broke down the door to Mr. Dlunga's one-room shack around 5:30 in the morning on Oct. 25. After suffocating and beating him, they found the pistol that he kept next to his television. Mr. Dlunga claims he had not used the pistol, but kept it, fearing for his safety in the dangerous mining settlement. Arrested on charges of possessing an unlicensed weapon, they hauled him off to several different police stations, where the torture continued as his interrogators sought to learn the whereabouts of other strikers and their leaders. After six days, he posted bail and was released. A judicial commission was appointed by South Africa's president, Jacob G. Zuma, to investigate the violence in August, even though ministers within the ruling African National Congress have backed the police, who said they fired in self-defense after being attacked by heavily armed strikers. The miners had gone on strike for fair wages and reasonable work conditions. Some of them broke the law. A few among the thousands who went on strike did indeed kill people. Several implicated in those murders have been in police custody since before the Marikana massacre. Still, the events have only confirmed fears that the police have gradually regressed into a tool of oppression. Residents of impoverished communities speak of late-night raids by the "intervention unit" following street protests against corrupt local governments that fail to meet basic needs for water, sanitation and electricity. The raids are brutal, with alleged ringleaders beaten, tortured and on occasion, killed. The various state security agencies are said to support political factions within the ruling A.N.C, with key figures regularly purged. E-mails have emerged that appear to show former unionists and a current A.N.C. executive committee member Cyril Ramaphosa - a billionaire who owns some 9 percent of Lonmin through Shanduka, a company he founded - tried to influence the state to intervene in the labor dispute. After 1994, the ruling party has increasingly close links to mining and other corporations, with several top members being deployed to businesses through state rules on black ownership of companies. The massacre at Marikana was not hidden, but played out in plain sight of local and international television crews. It shocked the nation - yet the outcry was initially muted, even among South Africa's robust civil society organizations. The official police line was that the heavily armed miners had charged at officers when they attempted to disarm them, and had fired in self-defense. Yet out of sight of the journalists, another tactical response team hunted down fleeing miners, some of whom where shot at close range while trying to surrender. Fourteen of the 34 dead were shot in the back. Dozens of surviving miners have made statements saying that some police went among the miners who lay on the ground, checking if they were alive, and finishing off some who were not yet dead. The Farlam Commission of Inquiry - which began on Oct. 22 - has been hearing opening statements by counsel for the police, unions, Lonmin and relatives of the dead. At the same time, police have been arresting the strike leaders on charges that seem to change daily. They have been shuffled from police station to police station, to thwart lawyers looking for them. Advocate Dali Mpofu's team, which represents more than 300 miners and their families, including 78 of the wounded miners, secured the release of nine of the jailed leaders by posting bail. Some of the leaders had spent up to 14 days in custody. Four of them had been severely tortured. Anele Zonke, 26, was among the leaders arrested on Oct. 23 by plainclothes police officers. Now free, he arrived at Mr. Dlunga's shack looking dazed, his face trembling. As he sat down on a backless plastic chair, he seemed pained. Mr. Zonke, too, had been beaten and suffocated, though he tried to gloss over the details of his torture. Mr. Dlunga gently prompted him. During his ordeal, he admitted, he lost control of his bowels and soiled his pants. Unable to get clean clothes from the police, he washed his trousers in the basin and was left naked, waiting for them to dry. He did not wash his underpants, but kept them to present as evidence when he and other jailed miners bring assault charges against the police. When he finally appeared before a magistrate - inexplicably charged with the murder of 34 men the police have already admitted to shooting - he wore no underwear. Mr. Zonke was likely being charged under a law known as "common purpose," in which members of a crowd can be prosecuted as accomplices to a crime. The doctrine was used to arrest over 270 survivors of the massacre. Though a magistrate recently threw the charges out, police rearrested Mr. Zonke outside the courtroom. He could not say exactly what he was charged with. "Murder and a few other crimes," he stammered uncertainly. He cannot say whose murder he was being charged with. Mr. Zonke is not a well man; he cannot control his bowels. He has pain deep inside his abdomen, and squirmed as he sat. The torture he suffered has left him withdrawn and ashamed, because he was rendered powerless and at the mercy of his tormentors. He is also ashamed that he gave the police answers to many of their questions. Besides Mr. Zonke and Mr. Dlunga, two strike leaders, Xolani Ndzudzu and "Rasta" Thembele Sohadi, were also tortured. Elite soldiers and spies are trained to survive torture, not resist it. They know it's simply a matter of when you will break down under extreme duress. These miners have not undergone that kind of conditioning, and were at the mercy of men clearly versed in savagery. It is clear that the police are abusing their power to intimidate and terrify the miners, who are expected to be important witnesses against them in the Farlam Commission. The miners are scared. They fear the police and the consequences of speaking out. Yet they have spoken. Follow Lens on Twitter and Facebook.