From Reuters

When a wildcat strike hit Impala Platinum’s Marula mine in South Africa’s Limpopo province this month, union leaders there had no idea it was coming.

“We were taken by surprise. We came to work that morning and everyone was outside saying they were not going to work,” said Solomon Digoro, deputy chairman of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) at Marula, 280 kilometres (170 miles) northeast of Johannesburg.

He has a better idea of what might come next: a takeover by arch rival the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), which looks set to expand after leading a five-month mine strike in the western half of South Africa’s platinum belt that pushed the continent’s most advanced economy into reverse in the first quarter.

The platinum belt, which resembles a pair of half moons separated by 250 km of bush, houses the world’s richest deposits, so the strife is high on investors’ radar screens.

Written by Ed Stoddard/Read more at Reuters