With its roughly 300,000 members and through its Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) mother body, the NUM is a pillar in the trade union alliance that helped carry the African National Congress (ANC) to power in 1994 in the continent's largest economy and No. 1 platinum producer. According to MineWeb NUM members are being poached by aggressive upstart unions in often violent turf wars waged from the shantytowns ringing the world's largest platinum mine to smaller gold producing pits.
ANC leaders are aware that elsewhere in southern Africa (notably, Zimbabwe), the strongest challenges to liberation movements turned ruling parties have emerged from urban and mining-based trade unions, MineWeb says.
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