Tens of thousands of South Africans staged a one-day national strike on Wednesday, hitting mining production, as the biggest labour group in the continent's largest economy flexed its muscles to remind the ruling ANC of its political clout. Gold Fields, the world's No 4 producer, said its operations had ground to a halt, with as many as 85 percent of workers downing tools in response to the call for a strike by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
Harmony Gold, another major producer, said all staff affiliated to the National Union of Mineworkers, South Africa's biggest union, had stayed away. Neither company suffered any impact to their share price. Coal mining also took a hit, with the local unit of mining giant Anglo American reporting a "significant" number of strikers, although the platinum sector was largely unaffected.
The immediate targets of the strike are new road tolls around Johannesburg, and short-term contract labour agencies that COSATU says exploit workers and perpetuate the inequalities of the white-minority apartheid rule that ended in 1994.
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