Johannesburg: Police in South Africa on Tuesday fired rubber bullets, teargas and stun grenades in clashes with hundreds of striking Anglo American Platinum mine workers who barricaded roads, police said.
“Police used teargas, stun grenades as well as rubber bullets,” to disperse around 1,000 strikers, said police spokesman Dennis Adriao, adding that they had blocked fire engines in northwestern Rustenburg from an Amplats mine power sub-station that was suspected of being set alight by striking workers in a pre-dawn attack.
Around 12,000 Amplats workers who were dismissed early this month for going on an illegal strike were given an option to return to work Tuesday morning if they want their jobs back.
The deal was brokered in negotiations last week by the main National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in talks with Amplats last week.
But the workers refused to go back to work until their pay demands are met.
“We are six weeks on strike, we can’t go back to work empty handed,” workers representative Siphamandla Makhanya told AFP, confirming clashes between workers and police.
Police told AFP an Amplats power substation was set ablaze around 0200 GMT and “approximately a thousand or so strong people tried to barricade the police and fire brigade from getting there.”
“Since then we have been having clashes with this group of people,” which is trying to block roads and hurling rocks at the police in and around the informal settlement of Nkaneng, where many workers live.
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