Rustenburg -
South African police on Tuesday fired rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades in clashes with Anglo American Platinum miners, as a deadline passed for 12 000 sacked workers to reclaim their jobs.
Thousands of miners defied an ultimatum to return to work by 0700 am (0500 GMT), fighting running battles with police, blocking roads and apparently setting fire to a power sub-station at the mine in northwestern Rustenburg.
Many others also failed to clock in due to intimidation from colleagues, unions said.
“Police used teargas, stun grenades as well as rubber bullets,” to disperse the strikers, police spokesman Dennis Adriao told AFP.
Hours later water cannons, more tear gas and rubber bullets were being fired to drive away a fresh gathering of the workers in on-and-off clashes that broke out across the vast mine compound.
Adriao said the workers had blocked fire engines from the sub-station which was set alight in a pre-dawn attack.
The Amplats workers were sacked earlier this month for going on an illegal strike.
Last week the main National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and two other like-minded unions secured a deal for the workers to be rehired. They were to return to work on Tuesday morning.
Amplats was unable to give figures for the number of workers who had returned but spokesperson Mpumi Sithole said the firm was “disappointed by these acts of violence and damage to property. We continue to appeal for calm in the area.”
It was clear that a sizable number of workers refused to go back to work until their pay demands are met.
“We are six weeks on strike, we can't go back to work empty-handed,” workers representative Siphamandla Makhanya told AFP.
Police said the Amplats power sub-station was set ablaze around 0200 GMT and hundreds of workers tried to barricade the fire fighters from extinguishing.
“Since then we have been having clashes with this group of people,” said the police spokesman, adding that the strikers were trying to block roads and had hurled rocks at the police around the Nkaneng informal settlement, where many workers live.
One policeman was hit and wounded by a stone thrown by the strikers.
“The cops, they did use the tear gas... and some other rubber bullets. It seems as if it's a war between the employees and the police,” said Lazarus Khosa, a striking worker.
A wildcat strike in August at the nearby Lonmin platinum mine has had a domino effect engulfing nearly the entire mining industry in South Africa, as work stoppages spread to other platinum mines and gold sector as well.
With the mining unrest in its third month in the continent's largest economy, work stoppages have tapered off at most mines except Amplats.
The main union Cosatu blames an obscure group called the Democratic Socialist Movement for fuelling the unrest for unclear political gains.
“Workers that wanted to go to work were blocked, have been intimidated, one shaft was burnt at Anglo platinum,” said NUM spokesman Lesiba Seshoka.
“Those that don't want to go to work have a right to but they must leave those that want to go to work, to go to work.”
The global mining firm gave the strikers until Tuesday to resume work on existing wage agreements but with a R2 000 ($230, 178 euro) one-off allowance if they did so.
But some striking workers were adamant they would not be persuaded to return to the underground until they got at least R2 000 each on their monthly pay.
“If our salaries can be adjusted from R2 000 upwards, they can go back to work,” said Makhanya, suggesting the miners were softening their stance from the hefty R16 000 per month their initially demanded.
More than 50 people have been killed, 35 of them shot by police, during the mining strikes.
The unrest has cost at least 10.1 billion rand ($1.2 billion, 912 million euros) in lost production this year, pushing the country's yearly growth forecast downward to 2.5 percent.
On Tuesday the South African Reserve Bank warned the strikes - and a weaker industrial sector - would likely curb economic growth for the rest of the year.
“Recent volatility in the mining sector and a weaker secondary sector suggest lower output growth for the economy as a whole in the third and likely fourth quarters of 2012,” the bank said in its regular Monetary Policy Review. - Sapa-AFP