“We are going to march every week until you listen, or face total shutdown,” EFF Bojanala region chairman Thulani Makhanye said.

About 200 EFF members at Ikemeleng in Kroondal marched on Friday to hand over a memorandum demanding jobs at the mine.

Dressed in EFF red T-shirts and berets, they chanted as they snaked through the streets leading to the mine about 3km away.

They waved posters and a giant banner, proclaiming: “Aquarius here you behave or else fokof.”

Another poster read: “Aquarius have white tendency of undermining blacks”.

“This mine does not hire people from our community, but people from Tlhabane [about 17km from Kroondal] are working here. Our people who are 3km from the mine remain unemployed,” Makhanye said.

The EFF demanded that the mine develop the area and help in skilling locals as part of its labour social plan.

“Today [Friday] we brought only [EFF] members from ward 35 [of the Rustenburg municipality]. We are going to mobilise communities so that if you do not concede to our demands there will be a shutdown at this mine; workers will join the march,” Makhanye said.

Aquarius started mining in the area in 1997, but there had been no socio-economic empowerment.

The EFF also demanded that workers fired in 2009 after going on an unprotected strike be reinstated or paid money.

Apparently the former workers live a tough life in a hostel near Ikemeleng, surviving by eating cats and rats.

Aquarius has said these workers were not employed by the mine, but by Murray and Roberts Cementation. Both Aquarius and Murray and Roberts Cementation have said the workers’ case was finalised at the Labour Court in Johannesburg.

Makhanye said another march would be held next Friday, to Aquarius’s Kwezi mine near Sondela informal settlement, where nine workers were shot dead, allegedly by security guards, in 2012.

“There is no case opened up to today. We are taking the matter up and have opened a case against the security company,” he said.

African News Agency (ANA)