Four Africans were shot and killed, and five injured, four of them seriously, when police opened fire on a crowd of striking mineworkers at the Mangula copper mine, about 90 miles north-west of Salisbury. The shooting took place in the early hours of 15 August, on the second day of a strike involving the entire 1,800-strong African labour force of the mine and believed to have been provoked by dissatisfaction over recent pay increases.
Mangula, the largest copper mine in Zimbabwe, is owned by a South African company, Messina (Transvaal) Development Co. Ltd., in which the Anglo-American Corporation has a 12% stake.
A spokesman for the Rhodesian police said that at 3.30 a.m. on 15 August a crowd of about 1,700 strikers had assembled at the mine offices, many armed with knobkerries, iron bars and axes. They were kept away from the offices by a police barricade and in fact made no attempt to enter them. However the strikers "continually harassed and threatened the police." The spokesman continued that by 5.30 a.m. the crowd, which now included many miners' families, had swollen to about 3,000 people and was told to disperse. Tear gas was fired, but the strikers after initially dispersing, reformed and tried to break through the police barricade. Police opened fire after two policemen trying to make arrests were "pulled into the crowd". Six strikers in possession of dangerous weapons were subsequently arrested.
Mine officials said the strike appeared to be rooted in political unrest caused by unemployment in the area. The mine director said that it had been instigated by "outsiders and youngsters" but there was no evidence of nationalist guerillas having been involved. ZAPU (Patriotic Front) is known to be active in the area. In a statement broadcast on Mozambique radio, ZANU (Patriotic Front) said that several former African labourers at Mangula were now members of the national liberation forces. The broadcast described the strike as a "great and necessary step forward" in the liberation struggle, and called on all "employed and unemployed Zimbabweans" to take part in the "chimurenga through acts of economic sabotage."
Similar industrial unrest has been reported in recent months at the Wankie colliery in the extreme north-west, owned by the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa, and the Shabani mining complex in the south of the country. The Shabani asbestos mine is owned by the Rhodesian and General Asbestos Corporation, a subsidiary of the British company Turner and Newall. More than 500 African chrome miners at the Peak Mine in Selukwe, 50 miles north of Shabani and a subsidiary of Union Carbide of the U.S., were sacked at the end of July after going on strike for higher pay. Two weeks later, more than 1,000 women walked out of a food processing factory owned by National Canniers Ltd. in Umtali, again over pay issues.
