SIKONATHI MANTSHANTSHA: Marikana workers reap fruit of bitter sacrifice
Five years after labour tragedy workers say strike was worth it
Hlulakele Zembe's day starts at 1.30am. He fills a dish with warm water, places it on a handmade wooden bench standing against the wall and bathes only his upper body. Thirty minutes later he grabs his lunch box and walks about a kilometre to the taxi rank. But on this day he goes to work without one as the Business Times team ate the extra food he'd prepared the evening before when they unexpectedly arrived at his sparsely furnished RDP house. The taxi ride from Sondela township outside Rustenburg costs Zembe R8 and deposits him at the bus terminal, where company buses take him and his colleagues on their final ride to work. At Impala Platinum's Shaft 10, Zembe descends into the mine to begin his shift at 4am, where he'll drill the rock until 2pm. "We are happy, we work with a free and happy heart and, as you can see, nobody is fighting anymore. Since that long strike we see the benefits," says Zembe, who has been working for Impala since 2008, when he arrived from Ngqeleni in the ...
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