JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Diversified mining and marketing company Glencore and Umsimbithi Mining on Thursday laid criminal arson charges following the torching of two trucks and offices at the Wonderfontein coal mine.

The charges, laid at the Belfast police station, follow an increase in violent torching, stoning and intimidation incidents by striking employees in recent weeks.

Glencore said in a release to Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly Online that Wednesday night’s arson took the petrol bomb incidents to ten since the start of the strike three weeks ago.

Glencore and Umsimbithi Mining are currently engaged in a wage dispute with members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) at the coal mine.

Earlier this week, 57 striking workers were reportedly arrested on worker intimidation and property damage charges and later released on bail.

AMCU, which in 2014 led South Africa’s longest-ever wage strike, for five-months, on the platinum belt, earlier this week suspended a planned wage strike at Sibanye Gold and has given notice of its intention to hold a mass meeting at the Masizakhele Stadium at Driefontein on Saturday morning.

Glencore, one of the world’s largest global diversified natural resource companies with more than 150 mining and metallurgical sites, oil production assets and agricultural facilities, is a member of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights and the International Council on Mining and Metals.

In June last year, Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg handed over to South Africa's Department of Education a new R75-million school in the Mpumalanga coalfields, where the company has many coal operations.

The London-, Hong Kong- and Johannesburg-listed Glencore donated the 32-classroom Makause combined preprimary, primary and secondary school – replete with science laboratory, home economics facility, wood and metal workshops, computer centre and 1 200-capacity school hall – as part of its social and labour plan commitment to the Department of Mineral Resources.

The project also embraced a 120-family, R70-million housing development. Glencore also funded a R2.76-million LaunchPad video mentoring facility, which links the teenagers of Phola – where many of its employees reside – to global mentors in North America.