S. African Strike Continues, May Cripple Mining
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JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — About half of the country’s black miners stayed off the job again Tuesday in the second full day of South Africa’s largest strike.
The strike by gold and coal miners, called to press demands for better wages and benefits, threatens to cripple the nation’s $50 million-a-day mining industry.
The black National Union of Mineworkers said that about 340,000 men were on strike, but officials of the Chamber of Mines put the figure at about 230,000.
The stoppage has been marred by sporadic violence that has injured 21 miners.
An unidentified 36-year-old man who had refused to join the strike was found dead Tuesday at the idled Blinkpan colliery northeast of Johannesburg in a possibly strike-related killing, a mine manager said.
A union spokesman said nine miners were injured at the Kinross gold mine “when they were attacked by mine security trying to force them to work.”
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