325,000 Black Miners Skip Work to Mourn Fire Deaths : South African Union’s Biggest Protest Ever

About 325,000 black miners stayed away from work today to mourn 177 workers killed in a gold mine fire, union officials said. It was the largest protest ever among the nation’s nearly 600,000 black miners.

The Chamber of Mines, the industry organization, called for whistles to be blown at noon followed by five minutes of silence in 100 mines nationwide to commemorate those killed in a Sept. 16 underground fire in the General Mining Union Corp.’s Kinross gold mine.

But the National Union of Mineworkers, which claims 250,000 members, called for an all-day strike. The union’s general secretary, Cyril Ramaphosa, said about 325,000 joined in the protest.

Mining companies said nearly 250,000 miners stopped work.

Jay Naidoo, general secretary of the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions, said 275,000 workers in other industries took part in memorial services, many including one-hour stoppages.

‘Unparalleled’ Action

“This worker action is unparalleled in South African labor history and demonstrates the importance of worker safety at the workplace. The whole theme was that this was an accident which could be prevented,” said a mine union spokesman, Marcel Golding.

The high death toll at the Kinross mine was blamed on toxic fumes that investigators suspect may have come from a polyurethane foam used to line the tunnel walls.

President Pieter W. Botha, meanwhile, declared that the concept of separate residential areas for different races will not be removed in his lifetime.

Botha, speaking to the Cape province congress of his National Party in East London, said he would consider limited deviations from the Group Areas Act, which designates where whites, Asians and people of mixed race may live.

Black living areas are controlled under different laws.

If all residential areas were opened to all races, he said, the mixed race “will be the first to suffer. It will be pushed back to being a slum dweller, just as the white worker in South Africa will. I am pleading for the poor when I plead for the retention of community life.”

No Black Vote

Separate residential areas are one aspect of apartheid, a system of laws and custom that segregates the races. The 24 million blacks have no vote in national elections and the 5 million whites control the economy and government. Whites also maintain separate schools and health services.

About 100 black workers and union officials stood with raised fists and sang “Nkosi Sekele,” the unofficial black anthem, at a memorial service in the National Union of Mineworkers’ Johannesburg office for the victims of the mine fire.

Five of the 177 dead workers were white; the rest were black.

“I’m not saying that every accident in the mines or anywhere else is deliberate or could have been prevented, but there was no need for any of these men to die,” Beyers Naude, general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, said at the service.