Striking South African miners reject Lonmin pay offer

Wildcat strikers at Lonmin’s Marikana mine rejected a pay offer on Friday, dashing any hope of ending five weeks of industrial action that has swept through South Africa’s platinum sector and laid bare the power struggle in the ruling ANC.Workers camped on a rocky outcrop at the mine, where police shot dead 34 protesters last month, dismissed the offer as way below the 12,500 rand they have been demanding.“We are not interested,” striker representative Molifi Phele said as hundreds of stick-waving demonstrators chanted and danced around him on the sun-bleached grass in the heart of the ‘platinum belt’, 100km (60 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.“What he is offering cannot buy you anything. All we want is 12,500.”The August 16 “Marikana Massacre” has poisoned industrial relations across the mining sector and turned the spotlight on the alliance between big unions and the African National Congress (ANC) that has formed the basis of power since the end of white minority rule in 1994.This year’s rapid rise of the militant Association of Mining and Construction Workers (AMCU), based on a push for huge wage hikes, has presented an unprecedented threat to a status quo under which established unions ensure industrial stability with more modest wage increases for workers.President Jacob Zuma, who faces an internal ANC leadership election in December, has vowed to crack down on anybody inciting further unrest, but his handling of the troubles has at times appeared flat-footed and wooden.Meanhwile, ANC renegade and silver-tongued populist Julius Malema has seized on the crisis to promote himself as a champion of the millions of black South Africans whose lives have changed little since apartheid ended 18 years ago.