JOHANNESBURG – The biggest union at South African platinum mines will restart a trust fund to support workers living in the Marikana area, where more than 34 people were killed in a single day by police almost four years ago.
Workers continue to live in squalor in the area near Lonmin Plc’s operations, Bishop Jo Seoka, a past president of the South African Council of Churches who was a mediator at the time of the violence and strike, told reporters in Johannesburg Monday. The fund, which was first established in 2014 with R2-million ($149 000) from the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, will now have more trustees and be known as the Marikana Massacre AMCU Trust Fund.
Lonmin, with 13 500 employees in need of formal accommodation, has consistently failed to deliver on its 2006 social and labour plan that vowed to build 5 500 houses for its workers by 2011, Amnesty International said in a report published Monday.