JOHANNESBURG - Very little has been done to improve public order policing, and recommendations made about the policing system have been disregarded since the Marikana tragedy according to policing expert, David Bruce.
Bruce says there are lessons to be learned from the massacre, but more could've been done.
He said, "there's two very basic things that happened, one thing was that the SAPS has learned and internalised the lesson that you do not use automatic rifles of this kind in the policing of protests."
"With one significance exception, where one student was killed in a protest in a university in Limpopo, we haven't seen continued use of automatic weapons in the policing of protests."
"There hasn't been anything of that scale and to a large degree, the principle has been institutionalised that responses to protests need to be under the command of trained public commanders."
"So there has been more far reaching recommendations that has been made relating to public order policing and other aspects of the policing system and other types of recommendations have largely been disregarded and at a very basic level there's been some kind of fundamentals that have been internalised within the SAPS."