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File photo: A worker returns to work after last year's strike Denis Farrell/AP/Press Association Images
South Africa
Union says leader shot dead at South Africa's Marikana mine
The death comes just days before the anniversary of last year’s violence at the mine, in which 34 strikers were shot dead by police.
A SOUTH AFRICAN union says a local leader was shot dead at Lonmin’s Marikana mine today, almost a year after police shot dead 34 strikers on the restive platinum belt.
“This morning she was fatally shot next to our offices,” National Union of Mineworkers spokesman Lesiba Seshoka said.
A blanket covered the woman’s body where she was shot dead outside her house on the mine’s Western Platinum division this morning, an AFP journalist witnessed.
“This shop steward woman was an important worker in the union,” Seshoka added.
A string of assassinations have marked the rivalry between NUM and its militant rival the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU).
The death comes just days before South Africa marks one year since police opened fire on striking miners in the worst violence seen since the end of apartheid in 1994.
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