THOUSANDS of mine workers have downed tools at South Africa’s Lonmin mine after a union leader was shot dead in the restive platinum belt at the weekend.

“Lonmin operations are suspended this morning due to an illegal work stoppage,” Lonmin spokeswoman Sue Vey told AFP on Tuesday.

Work had stopped at all of the firm’s 13 shafts in the northwestern Rustenburg mining town, the world’s top platinum producing region, she added.

The reasons for the strike remain unclear but it comes at a time of deadly union rivalry.

By early afternoon around 400 miners had gathered near the hill where 34 of their colleagues were killed in clashes with police last August.

They demanded a rival union be ejected from the mine.

Some of the group chanted and carried sticks and branches within sight of a string of white crosses that serve as a memorial to one of the most bloody incidents of police brutality since the end of apartheid.

A small police contingent stood at a distance.

The strike raises the spectre of further violence between rival unions and another body blow to the struggling South African economy.

Lonmin shares plunged over seven per cent around midday on the London Stock Exchange amid the industrial action.

The firm said the reasons for the strike were unclear and officials were locked in talks with worker representatives.

But the strike comes amid deadly tensions between the long-dominant National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and its now larger rival the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU).

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