Miners down tools as unrest spreads

Striking South African platinum miners stayed off the job yesterday and marched to press wage demands at major producer Lonmin as 15,000 workers at the world’s fourth biggest bullion producer, Gold Fields, also downed tools.

Thousands of Lonmin workers were defying yesterday’s deadline to return to shafts that have been idle for a month at the Marikana mine, 100km northwest of Johannesburg.

Growing labour unrest is challenging the ruling ANC’s claim to be able to defend workers’ interests while ensuring stable economic growth.

It culminated in mid-August in violent clashes with police in which 44 people were killed at Marikana, most of them strikers shot by police officers. The killings conjured up painful memories of similar incidents under racist apartheid rule, which ended in 1994.

Police have said they opened fire in self-defence but fresh testimony that officers shot men who were fleeing or surrendering seems likely to deepen anger against the security forces and the African National Congress (ANC).

Yesterday morning about 4,000 of the Lonmin strikers, some armed with sticks, spears or machetes, stood their ground 50 metres away from heavily armed riot police backed up by armoured vehicles.

The marching strikers chanted “The White Men are shaking!” and “The police who shot us areshaking!”. Lonmin said only 6.3% of its shift workers had reported for work yesterday. This compared with 2% on Friday.

Labour unrest, fanned in part by glaring income disparities in Africa’s largest economy, has been spreading from the platinum belt to the gold sector, unnerving investors despite attempts by government officials to reassure them.

There is swelling discontent against the NUM among poorly-paid mine workers who see its leaders as out of touch and too close links to the governing ANC and its political agenda.

The violent rise of AMCU is the most serious challenge to the unwritten pact at the heart of the post-apartheid settlement — that unions aligned to the ANC deliver modestly higher wages for workers, while ensuring labour stability for big business.

Opponents of President Jacob Zuma, particularly Julius Malema, the expelled former leader of the ANC Youth League, are using the labour unrest to attack the record of Zuma’s government ahead of a party conference in December.

Lonmin, the world’s third largest platinum producer, has had £327m knocked off its market capitalisation since the strike started.

The price of platinum, used in catalytic converters in cars, has been depressed because of weak demand, but has risen 14% since the stoppage began.