The fatal shooting of a labour union official at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in Rustenburg just four days shy of the first anniversary of the deaths there of 34 striking miners at the hands of police is a tragic reminder of the violence still troubling South Africa’s mines amidst a bitter inter-union power struggle.
Last year’s massacre triggered two-months of wildcat strikes and unrest across the platinum belt and beyond, denting foreign investors’ confidence in South Africa. Each indication of further trouble at Marikana makes it more difficult to restore that confidence, and for South Africa’s fragile and mining-reliant economy — Africa’s largest — to generate more growth.
In the latest incident, a female shop steward for the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was gunned down late morning outside her home on the Markiana complex. Another NUM leader was shot dead in front of the union’s office there in in July, two months after an organiser for the newer and more militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) was shot dead in a nearby bar. At least eight union members have lost their lives in the violence since last August 16?s massacre, South Africa’s worst post-apartheid political violence.
