The Lonmin platinum mine shooting (video here) is all everybody is talking about at the moment, and if you’ve been anywhere near any news source it’s the only thing that’s been on the TV. Nearly every single major news publication has been running with the story – which makes you wonder about the kind of PR this might bring for us.

Yesterday’s shooting made the front page of all the following news websites:

• The New York Times
• The Guardian
• The Globe and Mail
• BBC
• Reuters
• Al Jazeera
• Der Spiegel
• Le Monde
• and many, many more…

The images and videos have already been compared to scenes from pre-1994 South Africa, where police would routinely fire on black protestors. Questions are being raised as to how the matter could have been dealt with in another way, and if the use of automatic weapons was really necessary.

The biggest concern however is that of South Africa’s international reputation. What level of damage has been done now that essentially the entire world has seen this incident? South Africa doesn’t have the greatest of reputations to start with, with Apartheid, corruption, crime and Jacob Zuma all doing their bit to tarnish the global image of our country.

This incident has undoubtedly done a lot of damage, and the next few days are going to be crucial. It’s all going to come down to how the government handles this – not an easy task, as all eyes are on us right now. Police firing on citizens, even those engaged in protest, is not looked upon lightly. We’ve already seen the Rand and the JSE take a dip as a result.

Spin doctors, the ball’s in your court.

[Source: Various International News Sources, see gallery]