* Pay increase encourages other worker wage demands
* Lonmin workers celebrate “death of NUM”
* Death toll from unrest rises to 46
* Zuma “relieved” but still under pressure
By Sherilee Lakmidas
MARIKANA, South Africa, Sept 19 (Reuters) – South African
police fired tear gas and rubber bullets on Wednesday to
disperse protesters near a mine run by the world’s biggest
platinum producer Anglo American Platinum, as unrest
spread after strikers at rival Lonmin won big pay rises.
Within hours of Lonmin agreeing wage
increases of up to 22 percent, workers at nearby mines called
for similar raises, spelling more trouble after six weeks of
industrial action that has claimed more than 40 lives and rocked
Africa’s largest economy.
“We want management to meet us as well now,” an organiser
for the militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction
Union (AMCU) at Impala Platinum, the second biggest
platinum producer, told Reuters.
“We want 9,000 rand ($1,100) a month as a basic wage instead
of the roughly 5,000 rand we are getting,” said the organiser,
who declined to be named fearing recriminations from the firm.
Continued…
