Two people have died after clashes between police and striking miners in South Africa, including a local councillor who was apparently an innocent bystander.
African National Congress councillor Paulina Masuhlo was shopping on Saturday in the Wonderkop shantytown, where many miners live, when police firing from an armoured car hit several women.
Ms Masuhlo was hit in the abdomen and leg and rushed to hospital, where she died yesterday, the Cosatu union said.
Police said they raided the township to disarm striking workers from the Lonmin platinum mine after the government ordered a crackdown. Meanwhile, police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades to break up a march by thousands of strikers at the Amplats mines near Rustenburg, belonging to Anglo American Platinum, the world's largest platinum producer.
Amplats strike leader Evans Ramokga said a miner was run over by a police armoured car and dragged several yards before it stopped. He said the man died overnight in hospital.
Cosatu has condemned the brutality of police over the violence, which flared up after the shooting on August 16 of 112 striking miners that left 34 dead.
On Tuesday, Lonmin resolved its five-week strike by agreeing to pay rises of up to 22%.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article