South African police crack down on mine protesters
Press TV – September 15, 2012
South African police forces have fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters at the strike-hit Marikana platinum mine after raiding hostels and seizing weapons amid growing unrest.
Hundreds of protesters in the shantytown threw stones at officers and burned tires on Saturday.
About 500 officers took part in an early-morning raids on worker hostels around the platinum mine, west of the capital Pretoria, taking machetes, spears and arresting five people.
The government had threatened to clamp down on unrest which had been spreading in gold and platinum mines.
The long-month mining unrest that hit the northwest town of Rustenburg’s platinum belt over a wage battle has seen hundreds of protesting workers brandishing sticks and machetes march from mine to mine around Marikana and other areas, threatening anyone reporting for work.
The strike has been marked by violent clashes, including the shooting dead of 34 striking miners by police in August. In all, 45 people have died in violence related to the unrest.
The world’s top platinum producer Anglo American Platinum has been forced to close five of its mines over safety fears after intimidation and threats of violence on staff trying to go to work.
South Africa’s mining sector directly employs around 500,000 people and accounts for nearly one-fifth of gross domestic product of the country.
Related articles
- South African police fire tear gas and rubber bullets at striking miners (rt.com)
- South African police shoot four miners (morningstaronline.co.uk)
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Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
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