JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The Catholic Bishop of Rustenburg has made an impassioned plea for the protection of vulnerable people and children in the violent platinum belt and asks whether violence and intimidation are part of a strategy to force a settlement.
 
In a letter published on the website of the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference, Rustenburg Catholic Bishop Kevin Dowling asked: “What is the point in just decrying violence and intimidation when nothing is done to protect vulnerable people and children who have nothing to do with the strike?”

While the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) had challenged its detractors to "prove" intimidation, he asked how one could possibly "prove" this.

As one worker had told him, it is well known that "impis are out every day, and they come for us at night”.

Dowling said recent beheadings had gone unreported in the media and a woman living alone in a shack near one of the church’s clinics had to lie terrified one night while miners stripped off the roof of her shack and stole belongings.

"I don't think we will ever know how many people have been murdered," he told Mining Weekly Online, adding that the police were outnumbered, making the situation impossible to control.

“No one is going to take a chance with their life by coming forward as a witness to violence and intimidation. The question has to be asked: is violence and intimidation the strategy being adopted to force through the settlement AMCU wants at all costs, even if more and more people are murdered?

“I am also even hesitant to name the centres I have been talking about in these reflections because of my fear that the miners, if they heard about what I am saying, will identify my care workers and target them.

“Given the terrible violence of the past months, and the fact that some of our carers have already been targeted, I believe I am right to be concerned for their safety,” the relative of the late Archbishop Denis Hurley wrote.

He is in discussion to improve the care afforded those worst affected by the strike.

He told Mining Weekly Online that emaciated miners, too afraid to go to mines for their antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, were arriving at the Catholic clinic hungry.

"It's awful," he added.

The possibility of cooking simple meals for the most vulnerable orphans and putting the meals in plastic containers was being considered, so that the children could put these into their school bags as they left school, because striking miners were even resorting to taking food away from small children.

Concerning helping starving miners, their family members and members of the community who came to the church’s eight ARV clinics, food was being obtained at a very good rate from a supplier and the church was looking at the possibility of offering additional meals to the people looking for help, including miners and family members who did not want to go to the mine clinics, and other starving community members.