S. Africa Seizes 78 Leaders, Members of Miners Union

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Seventy-eight officials and members of South Africa’s striking black miners union were arrested Wednesday on charges of plotting to murder strikebreakers and endangering the country’s security.

The National Union of Mineworkers described the arrests as part of a government effort to break the strike, which already has become an important political test of strength for black workers, and it vowed to extend the work stoppage to other mines until the whole industry is paralyzed or it wins a 30% pay increase.

“The strike will continue as strong as it is until the very end,” Cyril Ramaphosa, the union’s general secretary, told newsmen, rejecting the police charges as “a smear campaign” that would be quickly disproved if ever brought to trial. Ramaphosa said the union would seek an immediate court order freeing its members.

Police headquarters in Pretoria said the men were arrested because of alleged threats against non-striking miners and reports that the union leadership had decided that “radical steps had to be taken to prevent the miners from returning to work.”

No further details of the charges will be provided until the men appear in court Monday, a police spokesman said.

The South Africa Chamber of Mines, which represents the six major mining organizations, described the police action as “most regrettable” and likely to hamper management efforts to settle the strike. It also deplored alleged union violence, including the reported murder of a coal miner who defied the strike call and continued working.

“We have believed all along that we can resolve our differences with the union ourselves, and we still believe so,” the chamber said. “This development is not going to help.”

But one mining house, Anglo-Vaal Mining Co., said that it will fire any miners who fail to report for work on their scheduled shifts today at the Loraine mine in the Orange Free State. The union does not have enough members to be recognized, the company said, and management has “been forced to act to protect those employees wishing to continue working.”

Ramaphosa said that 177 union members, mostly local officials, have been detained, many on mine property by mine security forces, since the strike began Sunday evening.

“It’s clear now that the Chamber of Mines is in cahoots with the South African police,” he said, denouncing the arrests, many of which were carried out by mine security officers. “They have planned from the beginning they are going to crush the strike. . . . It is a clear and well-calculated maneuver by the Chamber of Mines and the government to try and crush the strike by arresting its leaders.”

The miners arrested Wednesday were among the more than 300 people rounded up when police raided a meeting at the regional headquarters of the National Union of Mineworkers in Klerksdorp, about 120 miles southwest of Johannesburg.

Ramaphosa and other union officials denied management allegations of violence and “intimidation” by strikers. The Mineworkers Union “does not now, nor has it ever, condoned murder or other violence,” said Marcel Golding, the assistant general secretary.

According to the union, about 340,000 of the country’s 600,000 black miners are now on strike, and that could increase to as many as 450,000 depending on the results of current strike ballots at other mines. As a result, 44 of 46 targeted mines have halted production, according to the union.

The Chamber of Mines acknowledges that 40% of the black miners are on strike, a record in South Africa’s turbulent mining industry, but contends that only 31 of the 99 mines of its members have been affected.

Other mines will be struck, Ramaphosa said, so that the number of workers involved “becomes bigger and bigger” and the whole mining industry--gold, coal, platinum and diamonds--is affected.

One of the new strike targets is the refinery that processes all of South Africa’s gold ore.

Main Issue Is Wages

Wages are the main issue in the negotiations that were broken off last month. The Mineworkers Union is demanding a minimum pay increase of 30% while mine owners have unilaterally implemented increases of 17% to 23%.

According to figures from the Chamber of Mines, the average black miner now earns $285 a month after the increases, plus food, dormitory housing and other benefits; white miners, who are mostly in supervisory or technically skilled positions, earn three to five times as much as the black miners.

The Mineworkers Union is also seeking danger pay and an increase in death benefits in recognition that more than 800 miners, most of them blacks, were killed in accidents here last year. The union also wants 30 days’ annual paid vacation for black miners, about double the present number but still less than the 35 days that whites get.

Both sides recognize that the strike will not only determine bargaining patterns in the mining industry in the future but that it will affect the balance of political and economic power throughout the country.

A ‘Test of Strength’

“The Chamber of Mines sees (the strike) as a test of strength,” Ramaphosa said, “and that is why they have refused to make any moves. We see the strike primarily as a wage strike where our members are clearly showing their disgust with the wage offer the chamber has made.”

Mineworkers leaders have met twice this week with officials of the 712,000-member Congress of South African Trade Unions to seek the federation’s support in the strike, and Ramaphosa predicted that sympathy strikes could follow further arrests or detentions of his union’s officials.

The United Democratic Front, a coalition of 700 anti-apartheid groups with 3 million members, voiced its support for the miners, pledging financial assistance as well as political backing.

Meanwhile, 13 confessed members or supporters of the outlawed African National Congress were sentenced in Cape Town to prison terms after their conviction on charges of terrorism and sabotage for a campaign of bombings and hand-grenade attacks in the area. The regional commander of the ANC’s military wing, Spear of the Nation, was jailed for life, and two others were imprisoned for 25 years; the other 10 received lesser sentences.

“The accused are terrorists, not only as defined in the relevant statute but in the ordinary sense of the word,” said Supreme Court Justice H. C. Nel, explaining the long sentences. “Society should be protected from them, and exemplary sentences should be imposed.”