Hopes rose that a crippling strike plaguing South Africa may be close to an end, after the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union on Friday said it had in principle agreed to a deal to end the nearly five-month walkout.
The stoppages have sunk the South African economy into its first contraction since the global crisis erupted five years ago and on Friday led two key credit ratings agencies to issue gloomy assessments of the country’s outlook.
Earlier, union leader Joseph Mathunjwa said that “in principle” his organization had agreed to the latest offer by employers, the SAPA news agency reported.
“There are still issues that we need to consult with the employer,” the agency quoted him as saying.
A local union leader had earlier said that the conditions include the rehiring of a group of workers who were fired in April after striking illegally.
Mathunjwa’s comments came a day after South Africa’s three main platinum producers — Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum and Lonmin — said that they had struck a deal in principle that union leaders would take to members for final approval.
The walkout began in January, when more than 70,000 workers went on strike for higher wages.
The new wage offer for lowest-paid workers includes a 1,000 rand (US$90) raise in monthly salary for two years, then 950 rand a month for the following three years, according to a statement from Impala Platinum.
This would practically double the current minimum wage of 5,500 to 10,500 rand by July 1, 2017, and effectively pre-empt further strikes for the next five years.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema