Guards Fire on S. Africa’s Striking Black Miners; 1 Killed, 20 Wounded

Mine security guards opened fire on striking black miners, killing one and seriously wounding more than 20 others, in a 90-minute battle that company and union officials described Friday as the most serious clash yet in the increasingly bitter strike at South Africa’s gold and coal mines.

A mob of 250 striking miners, armed with clubs and spears, drugged with narcotics and anointed by a tribal witch doctor with a potion to protect them against bullets, were attacking other miners defying an industry-wide strike when the guards opened fire, according to Gold Fields of South Africa Ltd.

But the National Union of Mineworkers said that the mine security force assaulted miners who had joined its strike and refused to go to work Thursday night at the Libanon gold mine, about 40 miles southwest of Johannesburg.

4,000 More Miners Fired

Four thousand miners were fired by the giant Anglo American Corp. at another mine Friday as the mining companies adopted a tougher approach to the strike, now ending its second week. More than 10,000 workers have now been fired, mostly by Anglo American, in what the union called “a desperate attempt by management to break the strike.”

Nearly 19,000 other strikers at six more mines were told by Anglo American, the hardest hit of the mining companies, that they would also be dismissed if they did not resume work on Monday, and 24,000 have been warned by the General Mining Union Corp. that they face “disciplinary actions” if they do not return next week.

A bus carrying about 100 strikers and their relatives home from a mine complex in the Orange Free State crashed into a mountain wall early Friday, killing 24 people and injuring 49. The accident, the latest in a series of recent bus crashes, occurred in a remote area between Queenstown and Fort Beaufort about 400 miles south of Johannesburg.

And a coal miner, one of five who were apparently poisoned last week for continuing to work in defiance of the union’s strike call, died on Friday.

Third Death in Strike

His death was the third in the strike. Another coal miner who had refused to join the strike was found slain in his bed last week. Nearly 350 miners have been injured, according to union officials, and more than 300 have been arrested.

“The strike is really beginning to hurt, and the mine owners are panicking,” Marcel Golding, the union’s assistant general secretary, commented Friday. “By firing 30,000, 40,000 or 50,000 workers, they believe they can intimidate 300,000 others. By shooting some of us, they think they can cow the rest. . . . But their actions are only hardening our resolve to see this fight through.”

According to the union, about 340,000 miners are on strike at 46 gold and coal mines in support of their demand for a 30% across-the-board pay increase as well as improved benefits and better working conditions.

The Chamber of Mines, which represents South Africa’s six major mining companies, says that only 230,000 miners are on strike at 29 mines. The companies unilaterally implemented pay raises ranging from 15% to 23% in July and have since refused to discuss wages, but they say that other issues remain open for negotiation.

Accounts of Clash Differ

Company and union accounts of the clash at Libanon, where until Thursday the strike had had little impact, differed sharply.

Richard Mdange, a union organizer in the area, said that only 10% of the mine’s 8,000-man work force had been participating in the strike when virtually all the others decided to join. He said that Gold Fields managers tried to force the night shift to go to work, provoking the clash. The security forces opened fire with rubber bullets, tear-gas grenades and then live ammunition, he said. He put the number of injured at more than 30.

“They told us we must go to our jobs immediately or they would shoot us,” one miner, Festus Molife, said Friday. “We were sitting in the compound. We had decided to join the strike and we were not going to go to work. When nobody moved, they just started shooting us where we sat.”

But Gold Fields said that an “armed mob of 250,” brandishing war clubs, spears and metal bars fitted with bolts, had returned from a union meeting and stormed the gate of a mine hostel, attempting to prevent the night shift from going to work.

Says Rubber Bullets Used

Mine guards battled the attackers for control of the hostel for more than 40 minutes, according to Michael de Kock, a company spokesman, and the skirmishing continued for another hour before order was fully restored. The mine security force, backed by police, then escorted miners to work for their own protection, De Kock said, describing the situation on Friday as calm with “all the shifts at the mine working as normal.”

De Kock said that the guards had used only rubber bullets and tear gas and could not explain gunshot wounds seen by reporters.

The attackers “were under the influence of narcotics and had been incited by a witch doctor,” De Kock said. Ritual incisions had been made on the miners’ foreheads and chests and smeared with blood to protect them from bullets, he added, recalling a similar incident last year when a group of miners killed two white policemen outside Johannesburg.

Mine workers’ officials dismissed the Gold Fields account as “racist nonsense.”

“Gold Fields of South Africa will go to any lengths to break a legal strike action, including the killing of workers,” Golding commented. “Trigger-happy mine security have taken the law into their own hands. . . . Public relations men are now creating fanciful stories about witch doctors and magic potions to cover up the crimes.”