A file photograph from Marikana: Police on Saturday fired rubber bullets at protesters and seized weapons from hostels at platinum giant Lonmin.
Police on Saturday fired rubber bullets at protesters and seized weapons from hostels at platinum giant Lonmin in an operation to quell unrest in the mining sector.
Soldiers were also deployed as back-up in the troubled Rustenburg platinum belt where militant protests have forced several mine closures since police gunned down 34 people last month at Lonmin's Marikana mine.
The troops had been sent in to Marikana at the request of the police, said Brigadier General Xolani Mabanga. But the police were leading the operation, he added.
Forces moved into Marikana less than 24 hours after the government announced a security clampdown. The unrest has forced three leading producers to halt mining operations on the world's richest platinum deposits.
The striking miners said there would be a "peaceful march" on Sunday, heading towards the police headquarters in Rustenburg.
"Everyone will be here. No vandalising, maybe sticks but no iron. It will be a peaceful march, But I can't guarantee there won't be rubber bullets," said one of the strike leaders, who called himself Gadaffi.
Sunday will mark a month since the 34 miners were killed on August 16.
Five hundred police officers, assisted by the army, raided hostels at Lonmin's mine at 2am on Saturday, seizing piles of metal rods, machetes and sticks.
Later that morning, police fired tear gas to disperse gathering protesters. There were clashes as workers regrouped and threw stones at officers amid the shacks opposite the mine.
Plumes of black smoke poured into the sky from burning tyres which workers used as barricades along with large rocks dragged across the dirt roads inside the humble settlement. But the area was calm by the afternoon.
It was the biggest show of force since officers shot dead the 34 miners, the worst police bloodshed since democracy in 1994, which sparked comparisons with the apartheid-era brutality of the white-minority regime.
A mediator in Lonmin's wage talks warned that the crackdown could lead to a "complete revolt across the platinum belt".
"Government must be crazy believing that, what to me resembles an apartheid-era crackdown, can succeed," said Bishop Jo Seoka, president of the South African Council of Churches.
"We must not forget that such crackdowns in the past led to more resistance," he added.
The government could ill afford to be seen as the enemy of the people that had put it in power, he said.
'Illegal gatherings'
Police have sworn to carry out the government's orders to stamp out the illegal gatherings, illegal weapons, incitement and threats of violence that have characterised the protests.
"The police are not going to hesitate to act," said spokesperson Brigadier Thulani Ngubane.
The police confirmed they had used rubber bullets on Saturday and said that in addition to seven arrests of protesters at a mine on Friday, they had detained at least another 12 people.
An Agence France-Presse photographer saw a man bleeding after having been shot in the arm and the side of his body.
"A police nyala drove past us. We were a group of women and others ran away. I just stood there watching and they shot me in my leg," Melita Ramasedi told the South African Press Agency, showing her bleeding leg. Seoka said six women had been shot and one of them had to be hospitalised.
The troubles at Lonmin, the world's third largest platinum producer, over a wage dispute in which 45 people have died, have spread to surrounding mines and to a Gold Fields mine near Johannesburg.
The world's top platinum producer Anglo American Platinum has closed five mines because of safety fears. Leading ferrochrome producer, Xstrata Alloys, and Aquarius Platinum also halted work on Friday due to the mounting protests.
President Jacob Zuma's spokesperson Mac Maharaj said the actions were "very proper, firm, some people would even say, inadequate measures" given the violence and threats of intimidation.
"If we allow the situation to continue, the economy will suffer severely and we will be going down the road of lawlessness," he added.
Mining is the backbone of South Africa's economy. It directly employs aabout 500 000 people and once related activities are included accounts for nearly one-fifth of gross domestic product. – AFP