Cape Town: Over 3,000 striking South African mine workers have threatened to kill colleagues who continue to work at a platinum mine in the north-west region of the country.
Protesting on the streets of Marikana in the wake of last month`s police massacre, which claimed 34 lives, tensions ran high as the workers, waving sticks, knobkerries and tree branches, and easily outnumbering the police, marched towards the Karee mine and vowed to burn down the Lonnmin mine shaft.
The striking miners gave working colleagues a deadline of 1 pm local time to leave the Karee mine, or face deadly retribution.
“After one we don`t want to see anybody in the shaft. Those who come to work tomorrow we will kill them,” the paper quoted one striker, as saying.
A delegation of seven young strikers was allowed to meet with mine managers, the report said.
According to the paper, both Marikana and Karee, about 80 miles north-west of Johannesburg, have been closed since thousands of rock drillers went on a wildcat strike and protest nearly four weeks ago that led to the August 16 police crackdown.
Marikana accounts for the vast majority of the platinum output of Lonmin, which itself accounts for 12 percent of global supply of the precious metal used in jewellery and vehicle catalytic converters.
ANI
