South Africa police disperse 3,000 ‘violent’ miners

South African police said they used stun grenades and rubber bullets to disperse 3,000 “violent” striking miners in the restive platinum belt near Marikana, where 34 workers were shot dead in 2012.

Strikers “carrying dangerous weapons, such as knobkerries (clubs) and sticks, blocked the road and were threatening to remove non-striking workers at the shaft”, police said in a statement.

Miners “threatened to attack the police with stones” and pushed officers around, the statement said, so police “were forced to use stun grenades and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd”.