* World’s No. 4 gold mining company affected
* Protest marches in major cities
* Unions sending signal to ruling ANC
By Ed Stoddard
JOHANNESBURG, March 7 (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of
South Africans staged a one-day national strike on Wednesday,
hitting mining production, as the biggest labour group in the
continent’s largest economy flexed its muscles to remind the
ruling ANC of its political clout.
Gold Fields, the world’s No. 4 producer, said its
operations had ground to a halt, with as many as 85 percent of
workers downing tools in response to the call for a strike by
the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
Harmony Gold, another major producer, said all
staff affiliated to the National Union of Mineworkers, South
Africa’s biggest union, had stayed away. Neither company
suffered any impact to their share price.
Coal mining also took a hit, with the local unit of mining
giant Anglo American reporting a “significant” number of
strikers, although the platinum sector was largely unaffected.
The immediate targets of the strike are new road tolls
around Johannesburg, and short-term contract labour agencies
that COSATU says exploit workers and perpetuate the inequalities
of the white-minority apartheid rule that ended in 1994.
Continued…
