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JOHANNESBURG ? Frantic wives searched for missing loved ones, President Jacob Zuma rushed home from a regional summit and some miners vowed a fight to the death Friday as police finally announced the toll from the previous day's shooting by officers of striking platinum miners: 34 dead and 78 wounded.?
Police Chief Mangwashi Victoria Phiyega said that Thursday was a dark day for South Africa and no time for pointing fingers, as people compared the shootings to apartheid-era state violence and political parties and labor unions demanded an investigation. Phiyega took over in June after two police commissioners were indicted for corruption and other charges. She already had her work cut out trying to reform a corrupt and scandal-ridden force.
VIDEO: (WARNING - GRAPHIC FOOTAGE) SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE FIRE ON MINERS
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Thursday's shootings are seen as a microcosm of the myriad problems facing South Africa 18 years after white racist rule ended, including growing inequality between a white minority joined by a small black elite while most blacks endure high unemployment and inadequate housing, health care and education.
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Zuma's government has played down demands that South Africa's mines and farms be nationalized. His party's powerful youth wing argues that nationalization is the only way to redress the evils of the apartheid past. Zuma's office confirmed that he had left a regional summit in Mozambique and was on his way to the mine, 70 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.
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The shootings "awaken us to the reality of the time bomb that has stopped ticking ? it has exploded," The Sowetan newspaper said in a front-page editorial Friday. "Africans area pitted against each other... They are fighting for a bigger slice of the mineral wealth of the country."
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At hospitals in the area, people gathered, hoping to find missing family members among the wounded. At the scrubland scene of the killings, a woman carrying a baby on her back said she was looking for a missing miner.
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"My husband left yesterday morning at 7 a.m. to come to the protest and he never came back," said Nobantu Mkhuze.
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At least 10 other people were killed during the week-old strike, including two police officers battered to death by strikers and two mine security guards burned alive when strikers set their vehicle ablaze.
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