JOIN USPolice firing rubber bullets and tear gas sent men, women and children scattering as they herded them into their shacks in a crackdown on striking miners at a platinum mine.
Saturday's show of force follows a South African government vow to halt illegal protests and disarm strikers who have stopped work at one gold and six platinum mines northwest of Johannesburg. The strikes have destabilized South Africa's critical mining sector. It was the first police action since officers killed 34 miners Aug. 16 in state violence that shocked the nation.
About 500 officers raided hostels at Lonmin PLC platinum mine before dawn and confiscated homemade machetes, spears, knives and clubs, said police spokesman Brig. Thulani Ngubane. A half dozen men were arrested for illegal possession of arms and drugs in those raids, he said.
Another six were held Saturday morning. Officers first fired tear gas at hundreds of miners who refused to disarm at the hill of granite boulders that has become the strikers' headquarters. Police then moved into the Wonderkop shantytown where residents set up barricades of burning tires to try to block the officers from their neighborhood.