Johannesburg - It was a quiet night at Gold Fields KDC West
Mine as miners returned to their hostels, the company said on Thursday.
"There was a verbal undertaking that the miners return
to the hostels if they disarm," company spokesperson Sven Lunsche said.
He said the few hundred miners that were still on a koppie,
where they had gathered to protest, were notified of this decision late on
Wednesday night. Those miners returned to the hostels.
The rest of the 5 000 miners who lived in hostels at the
mine had already returned, said Lunsche.
The miners, on strike for three weeks, were receiving food
at the hostels.
Lunsche said the company's urgent application on Tuesday to
the High Court in Pretoria for a formal order to evict the miners had not yet
been processed.
"We have no legal eviction rights," he said.
On Wednesday, thousands of protesting miners gathered on a
koppie outside the mine property carrying sticks, pipes, and axes.
Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi told them at the
time that there would be a meeting on Thursday afternoon between gold mine
bosses and unions.
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