In South Africa, around 500 miners have been trapped in the gallery of the Gold One gold mine in the Johannesburg region since Sunday 22 October 2023. The reasons for this action vary depending on who is involved. The mine’s management and the NUM trade union are claiming that the miners have been taken hostage by the AMCU, the mine’s second largest union.
Employing more than 1,200 people working day and night, a group of nearly 500 miners reportedly refused to go back up at the end of their shift on the morning of Monday 23 October 2023 to allow another team to take over. According to Tladi Mokwena, regional secretary of the AMCU, the miners’ refusal was a protest action: “The workers are claiming their membership of the AMCU”, he says. The management of the Gold One gold mine and the NUM, the rival union, say that this action is a hostage-taking of the workers.
On Wednesday 25 October 2023, when around 100 miners had managed to return to the surface exhausted and starving, they revealed that they had been able to escape, but their comrades were still being held back in the galleries by their comrades equipped with bladed weapons who were preventing them from going back up. Confirming the idea of the management and the NUM, the mine management brought down supplies with two nurses and a security officer who were also taken hostage by the AMCU. In an attempt to reach a consensus, the South African police dispatched negotiators to try to sort out this conflict between two rival union organisations.
Tiba Kassamse OUEDRAOGO
#Mines-Actu-Burkina
