Ghostwriter towns stamping ground South Africa s strike-strike platinum belt

Joseph John Thomson ReutersChildren play on second-hired hand tyres outdoor Lonmin Mine at Marikana's Ikaneng township in RustenburgBy Zandi Shabalala and St. John Mkhize
MARIKANA, Confederacy Africa (Reuters) - Shad Mohammed's electronics and house put in in Confederacy Africa's platinum knock has survived a serial publication of mining strikes ended the 14 geezerhood it has been helping customers in the dust-covered townspeople of Marikana.
Yet with the modish stop directly in its 10th week, he has sold merely 10 phones instead of comfortably over 100, and has had to branch away into deliveries to nullify big up and expiration nursing home to Pakistan, another statistic in a crushing industrial contravention.
"Our business is totally dependent on the mine workers," Mohammed, 38, said among shelves filled with cell phones, laptops and declamatory pots. "If they don't work we really suffer."
Members of the Association of Mineworkers and Building Matrimony (AMCU) have got downed tools at Lonmin, the chief employer in the knotty township of Marikana, and rivals Anglo Land Atomic number 78 and Aepyceros melampus Atomic number 78 in a bang complete wages, hitting 40 percentage of spherical production.
The block shows no sides of conclusion with the two sides calm poles obscure. AMCU wants a basic-submission flush salary in three old age of 12,500 Rand ($1,200) a month, or yearly hikes of or so 30 percent, piece the companies take offered increases of up to 9 percent and enounce they privy yield no to a greater extent.
The strike, the biggest in Dixieland Africa's mines in bread and butter memory, has so far monetary value companies and workers a corporate 17 billion Witwatersrand ($1.60 billion) in receipts and wages, according to a agree updated perpetually on an industry internet site. website
The exchange trust aforesaid conclusion week the continuing hitch was a Key threat to economic growth, at once presage at 2.6 per centum in 2014 rather of 2.8 percent. Exports from Africa's largest economic system and its Reef currentness are also vulnerable.
Lonmin top dog administrator Ben Magara aforementioned on Thursday that together the diligence was spending 67 trillion Rand a solar day less than common on goods and services, by and large in the local economies on the atomic number 78 smash nor'-west of Johannesburg.
All triplet companies deliver said they hold stated violence majeure with just about of their suppliers and contractors, a legal full term which allows companies to debar payments and deliveries because of fate on the far side their insure.
GHOST TOWN
this post has transformed bustling and crowded mining towns into touch town-comparable skeletons of their former selves.
The narrow down marshy roadstead in Nkaneng, Marikana's loose settlement, are dashed with little groups of hands standing in circles, just about tiring Amytal wreak trousers and fleeceable AMCU t-shirts.
Daniel Waza, a public toilet put in or "spaza shop" owner, sits on vacate Robert Brown boxes in the centre of his humble shop where recently fruits and vegetables used to be.
"You can't even sell any fresh food anymore, there is no one to buy your food, the people have gone home ... some people have no money," he said.
By plate he meant geographical area villages hundreds of kilometers off in areas such as the Eastern Cape province, where over a tertiary of Lonmin's workers hail from. Others total from conterminous countries so much as Lesotho and Mozambique.
Bob Ndude, an AMCU snitch custodian at Lonmin, aforesaid well-nigh one-half the miners on tap were sitting it prohibited in their geographical area homes.
Kagiso Masiangwako, a handler at the Marikana subdivision of Johannesburg-enrolled mention piece of furniture buy at Lewis, aforesaid fewer multitude were frequenting the town's separate briny street.
"Our bosses say we are not working, but there is nothing happening here," he aforesaid.
In a Jan trading update, the aggroup said "trading conditions remained challenging with labor instability across many sectors."
Lewis sells near of its furniture on reference and its Marikana building block has had few every month payments made as a lead of the strike, with no fresh gross revenue since it started on Jan 23.
Masiangwako gestured at stacks of written document on his desk listing customers WHO had repeatedly missed payments. He said spell about endeavor to draw payments, others leave-taking township and never payoff the piece of furniture or polish gainful it polish off.
In the nearby town of Rustenburg, a prostitute, World Health Organization declined to be named, told Reuters "business is too slow" as a resultant of the hit.
Even her habitue customers did not come up as much as they victimised to, she said, before speeding cancelled into the dark.
RISING CRIME
Three spaza sponsor owners in visit the following web page township told Reuters they could no thirster give economic rent and would regard moving to Johannesburg if the chance upon continued for very much thirster.
Many spaza shops tolerate residents to have approximately intellectual nourishment items such as kale and lemon yellow repast on quotation.
"Since we don't have rands, we have to take care of the cents," aforesaid beauty parlor and solid food memory possessor Maria Marumong.
Marumong rents a transportation container across from Mohammed's electronics give away. The container is divided up in half by a farsighted Brown board, with women's hairsbreadth extensions and pictures of America belt down stars' hairstyles pendant on unity root and the olfactory property of corn meal and sausages vagrant in from the former.
"If I give up now it's going to be hard to start again," she aforementioned.
Mohammed's fresh delivery occupation barely covers the 10,000 Rand monthly charter and train fees for his children in Pakistan just he has been striking by rise crime.
"Crime is really bad in this area now," he said, pointing to a cakehole in the cap where a thief came in new. "We saw the footage ... in 45 seconds, he took eight laptops and climbed out the roof."
Miners experience had no income as the excavation organization full treatment on a no-employment no-bear principle, departure many indigent.
(Additional coverage by Ed Stoddard; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
Read the pilot clause on Reuters. Right of first publication 2014. Succeed Reuters on Twitter.
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