Police officers surround the bodies of miners after opening fire on a crowd at the Lonmin platinum mine in South Africa on Thursday.
MARIKANA, South Africa — The police fired on machete-wielding workers engaged in a wildcat strike at a platinum mine here on Thursday, leaving a field strewn with dead and wounded men and a nation stunned that what began as a fairly routine labor dispute could turn so bloody.
- [h=6]The Lede Blog: Video of Miners Shot by South African Police (August 16, 2012)[/h]
[h=6]European Pressphoto Agency[/h]Striking South African miners, armed with machetes and sticks, chant slogans on Thursday, near the Marikana mine in South Africa.
In a scene replayed endlessly on television that reminded some South Africans of the days when the police of the apartheid government opened fire on protesters, heavily armed police officers shot into the crowd of workers, most of them members of a radical labor union who walked off the job a week ago, demanding that their wages be tripled.
There was no official word on the death toll. At least six bodies were visible after the shooting ended, but the police did not release a figure. SAPA, South Africa’s main news agency, reported that 18 people had been killed. Ten additional people had already died as a result of violence around the strike, which began Friday when thousands of workers stormed off the job, demanding the higher wages.
Workers armed with machetes, sticks and wooden cudgels occupied an outcropping of rock near the mine, chanting and dancing, pledging their readiness to die if their demands were not met.
Lonmin, the London-based company that operates the mine, shut down operations on Tuesday amid the violent strike, which has pit the National Union of Mineworkers, South Africa’s biggest miners union, against a radical upstart, the Association of Mine Workers and Construction Union, which is demanding a sharp increase in wages even though the company’s contract with workers runs until next year.
“N.U.M. has deserted us,” said one of the striking workers, who gave his name as Kelebone, referring to the older union by its ubiquitous acronym. “N.U.M. is working with the white people and getting money. They forgot about the workers.”
Kelebone, who works as a winch operator, said he is paid sbout $500 per month to do difficult, dangerous work.
“We need more money,” he said.
The police action drew quick condemnation.
“Regardless of what police may argue about provocation, there is no possible justification for shooting into a crowd with rifles and handguns,” Frans Cronje of the South African Institute for Race Relations said on Twitter.
