MARIKANA, South Africa, Oct 24 (Reuters) – Mamsi Ngobeni sat alongside the main road of the South African platinum belt town of Marikana, hunched over a table with a pile of onions, apples, loose cigarettes and tomatoes.
By just after noon she had sold about 20 rand ($1.8245) worth of goods, well down from what she said was her usual 1,000 rand take before a five-month strike against the world’s top platinum producers drained this gritty town of cash.
Although miners here have been back at work since June with higher wages and the strike-hit operations of Anglo American Platinum and Lonmin are back at full production, money is not gushing back into local businesses.
Africa’s most advanced economy is also struggling to shake off the shock of the strike, the longest in its history, and will only manage growth of 1.4 percent this year, down from the 2.7 percent predicted in February. Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene cited “labour market disruptions” as a key reason for the revision.
In Marikana, where 34 striking miners were shot dead by police during a wildcat strike against Lonmin in 2012, the length of this year’s stoppage has left many miners cash-strapped despite wage hikes of up to 20 percent as they have to repay debt that piled up when they didn’t have a pay cheque.
“What were we going to do? We are surviving on loans,” said 55-year-old Lonmin miner Mikasi Mabunda.
He said he was now forced to pay more interest on his loans because he missed payments during the strike and the increase in his monthly wage has had little impact on his life.
“It’s not easy, the money is still not enough,” he said outside his corrugated-iron shack in a shantytown near Lonmin’s Marikana mine, 110 kms (70 miles) north-west of Johannesburg.
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