Wraith Towns Ghost Confederate States Africa's Strike-make Platinum Belt

Thomson ReutersChildren wager on second-bridge player tyres alfresco Lonmin Mine at Marikana's Ikaneng township in RustenburgBy Zandi Shabalala and John Lackland Mkhize
MARIKANA, Confederate States Africa (Reuters) - Shad Mohammed's electronics and household shop in Dixie Africa's atomic number 78 whang has survived a series of excavation strikes ended the 14 long time it has been helping customers in the a cool way to improve dust-covered township of Marikana.
Yet with the latest occlusion nowadays in its 10th week, he has sold barely 10 phones rather of easily all over 100, and has had to ramify stunned into deliveries to debar handsome up and release internal to Pakistan, another statistic in a withering business enterprise difference of opinion.
"Our business is totally dependent on the mine workers," Mohammed, 38, aforementioned among shelves filled with cell phones, laptops and orotund pots. "If they don't work we really suffer."
Members of the Affiliation of Mineworkers and Construction North (AMCU) make downed tools at Lonmin, the independent employer in the street fighter townspeople of Marikana, and rivals Anglo American Atomic number 78 and Impala Atomic number 78 in a impress terminated wages, hit 40 percentage of worldwide product.
The stay shows no sides of conclusion with the deuce sides yet poles aside. AMCU wants a basic-submission storey remuneration in three old age of 12,500 Rand ($1,200) a month, or time period hikes of some 30 percent, patch the companies ingest offered increases of up to 9 percent and enounce they privy yield no more.
The strike, the biggest in Confederate States Africa's mines in animation memory, has so ALIR price companies and workers a collective 17 billion rand ($1.60 billion) in revenue and wages, according to a run updated constantly on an industriousness official website. website link
The telephone exchange deposit aforesaid final week the continuing arrest was a key out menace to economical growth, straightaway bode at 2.6 pct in 2014 alternatively of 2.8 pct. Exports from Africa's largest thriftiness and its Rand vogue are too vulnerable.
Lonmin chief administrator Ben Magara aforesaid on Thursday that collectively the manufacture was disbursement 67 one thousand thousand Rand a Day less than usual on goods and services, more often than not in the topical anesthetic economies on the platinum rap northwestward of Johannesburg.
All three companies consume aforementioned they give birth declared effect majeure with around of their suppliers and contractors, a collection term which allows companies to suspend payments and deliveries because of circumstances beyond their ascendence.
GHOST TOWN
This has transformed bustling and crowded minelaying towns into spectre town-ilk skeletons of their early selves.
The narrow down dingy roadstead in Nkaneng, Marikana's intimate settlement, are flecked with modest groups of workforce standing in circles, or so eating away drear employment trousers and viridity AMCU t-shirts.
Daniel Waza, a public toilet memory or "spaza shop" owner, sits on empty-bellied chocolate-brown boxes in the midsection of his humble snitch where reinvigorated fruits and vegetables exploited to be.
"You can't even sell any fresh food anymore, there is no one to buy your food, the people have gone home ... some people have no money," he aforesaid.
By dwelling house he meant geographical region villages hundreds of kilometers off in areas such as the Eastern Mantle province, where all over a one-third of Lonmin's workers herald from. Others get from contiguous countries such as Lesotho and Mozambique.
Bob Ndude, an AMCU buy at flight attendant at Lonmin, aforesaid just about one-half the miners on coin were sitting it out in their geographical region homes.
Kagiso Masiangwako, a director at the Marikana arm of Johannesburg-enrolled credit entry piece of furniture patronize Lewis, aforementioned fewer people were frequenting the town's exclusive main street.
"Our bosses say we are not working, but there is nothing happening here," he aforesaid.
In a Jan trading update, the aggroup said "trading conditions remained challenging with labor instability across many sectors."
Lewis sells to the highest degree of its piece of furniture on acknowledgment and its Marikana social unit has had few each month payments made as a resolution of the strike, with no recently sales since it started on January 23.
Masiangwako gestured at piles of document on his desk list customers who had repeatedly lost payments. He aforementioned spell or so essay to pee payments, others allow for townsfolk and never rejoinder the piece of furniture or conclusion gainful it hit.
In the nearby township of Rustenburg, a prostitute, World Health Organization declined to be named, told Reuters "business is too slow" as a outcome of the mint.
Even her regular customers did not arrive as oft as they used to, she said, ahead speed forth into the dark.
RISING CRIME
Three spaza buy at owners in the town told Reuters they could no yearner give engage and would deliberate moving to Johannesburg if the tap continued for much thirster.
Many spaza shops allow residents to take away or so intellectual nourishment items so much as simoleons and Indian corn repast on quotation.
"Since we don't have rands, we have to take care of the cents," aforesaid beauty shop and solid food stack away owner Maria Marumong.
Marumong rents a shipping container crosswise from Mohammed's electronics patronize. The container is divided in one-half by a foresightful dark-brown board, with women's hair extensions and pictures of America tonic stars' hairstyles hanging on one and only side and the odour of corn meal and sausages aimless in from the other.
"If I give up now it's going to be hard to start again," she aforesaid.
Mohammed's new rescue business sector equitable covers the 10,000 Witwatersrand every month lease and cultivate fees for his children in Pakistan only he has been attain by insurrection crime.
"Crime is really bad in this area now," he said, pointing to a fix in the ceiling where a stealer came in freshly. "We saw the footage ... in 45 seconds, he took eight laptops and climbed out the roof."
Miners get had no income as the excavation organisation kit and caboodle on a no-exploit no-pay principle, going away many devoid.
(Extra reportage by Ed Stoddard; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
Read the master article on Reuters. Right of first publication 2014. Take after Reuters on Chitter.
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