The National Union of Mineworkers brought an urgent application in the Rand Supreme Court yesterday to restrain management at the strife-torn Randfontein Estates GoId Mine from deporting union members.
Hundreds of NUM members were yesterday sent back to the "homeland" and neighbouring states after a night of intense fighting between these unionists and workers belonging to the Inkatha backed United Workers' Union of South Africa.
According to the mine owners Johannesburg Consolidated Investments, four people were killed and 67 injured, three of them seriously, when about 400 men "seemingly without provocation, launched an attack on about 150 employees who were in the liquor outlet at the time".
But NUM union officials claim the lighting, which was not only confined to the liquor outlet, started after tribal representatives and Uwusa members attacked NUM unionists who had gone to the security offices to ask about nine shaft stewards arrested earlier that morning.
A Mr Betram at JCI head office said shaft stewards "were taken to a shaft for disciplinary action".
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
