Clashes break out ahead of SA strike deadline

American (Amplats) workers faced a Thursday-night deadline to return to the job.
Mable Makgetla, 30, whose husband works for a mining contractor, had earlier claimed police fired rubber bullets “and afterwards they poured teargas, that’s why we put the rocks.”
Police denied using rubber bullets.
“There was an illegal gathering that took place this morning. Police used teargas as well as water cannon to disperse individuals,” police spokesman Dennis Adriao said. “Stun grenades were used as well.” Black smoke billowed in the Sondela informal settlement next to a shaft, as miners and residents blocked roads with rocks and burning tyres to keep the police out. The unrest at Amplats in Rustenburg, about 120 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg, appeared to be escalating just as a deadly six-week strike at a nearby platinum mine run by Lonmin wound down. The unrest had spread to Amplats from nearby Lonmin, where workers returned to work yesterday after a deal was brokered to end a crippling strike in which 46 people died.
The Lonmin workers’ wage demands and threats of deeper strike action have been taken up by other gold and platinum miners, raising fears of a major economic fall-out.
Amplats reported a less than 20-percent turnout at four of its mines as it gave its workers an ultimatum to return to work by yesterday night shift after declaring the strike action illegal.
“No one is willing to go back, absolutely no-one,” workers’ representative Gaddhafi Mdoda said, adding that the area was relatively calm aside at one shaft.
The Lonmin deal has raised alarms of a dangerous precedent for the hammering out of worker wage demands, with the deal secured after workers bypassed recognised union structures and after shocking bloodshed.
“It is giving us an advantage just because . . . Amplats can pay more than that,” Mdoda said.
Workers will not go below demands for US$1 500, the same amount Lonmin staff had been pushing for, he said. Though Lonmin’s deal fell slightly short of that figure, the mine rebounded into action.
Workers chatted loudly as the queue shuffled to the turnstile entrance for the morning shift. — AFP.