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.<\/p>\n
“Lonmin operations are suspended this morning due to an illegal work stoppage,” Lonmin spokeswoman Sue Vey told AFP on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The reasons for the strike remain unclear but it comes at a time of deadly union rivalry.<\/p>\n
By early afternoon around 400 miners had gathered near the hill where 34 of their colleagues were killed in clashes with police last August.<\/p>\n
They demanded a rival union be ejected from the mine.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
A small police contingent stood at a distance.<\/p>\n
The strike raises the spectre of further violence between rival unions and another body blow to the struggling South African economy.<\/p>\n
Lonmin shares plunged over seven per cent around midday on the London Stock Exchange amid the industrial action.<\/p>\n
The firm said the reasons for the strike were unclear and officials were locked in talks with worker representatives.<\/p>\n
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).<\/p>\n