Ghost towns haunt S.Africa’s strike-hit platinum belt – by Zandi Shabalala and John Mkhize (Reuters India – April 4, 2014)

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MARIKANA, South Africa, April 4 (Reuters) – Shad Mohammed’s electronics and household store in South Africa’s platinum belt has survived a series of mining strikes over the 14 years it has been serving customers in the dusty town of Marikana.

Yet with the latest stoppage now in its 10th week, he has sold just 10 phones instead of well over 100, and has had to branch out into deliveries to avoid giving up and going home to Pakistan, another statistic in a devastating industrial dispute. “Our business is totally dependent on the mine workers,” Mohammed, 38, said among shelves filled with cell phones, laptops and large pots. “If they don’t work we really suffer.”

Members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) have downed tools at Lonmin, the main employer in the tough town of Marikana, and rivals Anglo American Platinum and Impala Platinum in a strike over wages, hitting 40 percent of global production.

The stoppage shows no sides of ending with the two sides still poles apart. AMCU wants a basic-entry level wage in three years of 12,500 rand ($1,200) a month, or annual hikes of around 30 percent, while the companies have offered increases of up to 9 percent and say they can afford no more.

The strike, the biggest in South Africa’s mines in living memory, has so far cost companies and workers a collective 17 billion rand ($1.60 billion) in revenue and wages, according to a tally updated constantly on an industry website. here

The central bank said last week the continuing stoppage was a key threat to economic growth, now forecast at 2.6 percent in 2014 instead of 2.8 percent. Exports from Africa’s largest economy and its rand currency are also vulnerable.

Lonmin chief executive Ben Magara said on Thursday that collectively the industry was spending 67 million rand a day less than usual on goods and services, mostly in the local economies on the platinum belt northwest of Johannesburg.

All three companies have said they have declared force majeure with some of their suppliers and contractors, a legal term which allows companies to suspend payments and deliveries because of circumstances beyond their control.

GHOST TOWN

This has transformed bustling and crowded mining towns into ghost town-like skeletons of their former selves.

The narrow muddy roads in Nkaneng, Marikana’s informal settlement, are dotted with small groups of men standing in circles, some wearing blue work trousers and green AMCU t-shirts.

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