Long-term Investors in South Africa’s mining industry are divesting from company stocks, according to the country’s Business Day newspaper. Workers are extending their strikes to even more mines, and no resolution of the current, tension-ridden, impasse appears to be in sight.
Meanwhile, a branch leader of the National Union of Mineworkers was shot dead near a Lonmin platinum mine, in mysterious circumstances.
Last Friday, UK-based Anglo American Platinum fired some 12,000 workers it alleged had engaged in an illegal, “wildcat”, strike . In response, the Youth League of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANCYL) condemned the company as “a disgrace…to the country at large, a representation of white monopoly capital out of touch and uncaring of the plight of the poor.” The League went on to “pledge solidarity with the dismissed workers”, and called upon “all progressive forces to support the call for their immediate return”.
See http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=11944.