The leader of South Africa's biggest platinum mining union threatened on Friday to bring Africa's No 1 economy "to a standstill" and demanded a meeting with President Jacob Zuma, ramping up the rhetoric in an 18-month labour crisis. Joseph Mathunjwa, head of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), said Zuma's ruling African National Congress (ANC) was ignoring violence against its members in the platinum belt near the north-west city of Rustenburg.
"We are going to write another last letter to the office of the president that we need a meeting in order to talk about these issues at Rustenburg, of the killing of our members," he said on Johannesburg's Talk Radio 702.