Although several, pay-related, gold mine strikes have just ended in South Africa, this doesn’t by any means mark an end to struggles for elementary economic justice on the part of large numbers of workers. In a statement of 28 July 2011, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) stated: “[T]his industrial action by mineworkers should not be de-linked from the broader class struggles of radically changing the ownership and control patterns of the strategic sectors of our economy such as steel, banking and mining… The mineworkers should also use this industrial action to call for progressive taxation, so that the rich pay more in the form of taxes and the disclosure of company profits as a platform from which to advance the quest for a living wage.”
AngloGold Ashanti is one of the companies affected.
See http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=11099.