12,000 More Fired in S. Africa’s 19-Day Gold Miners’ Strike

The nation’s largest gold producer fired 12,000 more strikers today and met with representatives of the black miners union in an effort to end the 19-day-old walkout.

One working miner was stabbed to death and burned, another company reported today, bringing to seven the number of black miners killed in the nation’s longest and costliest strike against its major gold and coal mines.

National Union of Mineworkers officials met in a hotel room this evening with representatives of Anglo American Corp., which now has fired more than 32,000 miners and threatened 19,000 more with dismissal if they don’t return to work. (Earlier dismissals, Page 5.)

Another company, Johannesburg Consolidated Investments, has fired 4,600 strikers.

Union General Secretary Cyril Ramaphosa, President James Motlatsi, Assistant General Secretary Marcel Golding and six other officials met with Anglo’s industrial relations manager, Bobby Godsell, and director of manpower, S. W. Van der Colf.

Talk of Reducing Violence

They would not say what the meeting was about.

The union met last week with Anglo officials to discuss reducing violence during the strike, which has resulted in 350 injuries, seven deaths and 300 arrests.

General Union Mining Corp. said a coal miner on his way to work this morning at the Matla Colliery in Kriel, eastern Transvaal, “was murdered by being repeatedly stabbed before being set alight.”

“He was one of a small number of employees who, despite severe intimidation, did not participate in the strike,” the company said.

Another working miner was set on fire at Anglo’s Vaal Reefs gold mine in western Transvaal, but was rescued, the South African Broadcasting Corp. reported.

Anglo the Worst Hit

The miners union met Tuesday with the Chamber of Mines, representative of the top six mining companies targeted in the strike over higher wages and better benefits. Ramaphosa said that the union has lowered its wage increase demand from 30% to 27% but that the chamber has refused to discuss altering the 15% to 23.4% raises it implemented, effective as of July 1, after negotiations broke off in mid-July.

Anglo, the worst hit by the strike, began dismissing miners last week and said it will continue until the walkout ends.

Anglo has said it is hiring short-term replacements for the fired strikers, but it has declined to release any figures. Anglo, which produced more than 39% of South Africa’s gold last year, employs about 180,000 black miners.

The chamber says that black miners’ monthly pay averaged $250 before the raise and that they now make $285 plus room and board at the men-only hostels where they must live.

The union says miners averaged $170 a month before the unilateral increase. In addition to higher pay, it demanded danger pay, more vacation time, an increase in death benefits from two to five times annual salary, and a paid holiday on June 16, anniversary of the 1976 Soweto riots.