Two-Month Strike Cripples South Africa Platinum-Belt Economy
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Doreen Joubert sits at her Mega Pawn shop and complains that a 10-week wage strike in the world’s biggest platinum-mining industry is crippling business in the South African city of Rustenburg. She’s taken up bead work to pass the time.
“Everyone’s pawning, but nobody is fetching,” Joubert, 43, said in front of a shelf of motorcycle helmets that she’s selling in the shop she co-owns with her husband, Vagely. It’s not only the miners feeling the pinch. “One-man businesses are selling their power tools” because there’s no work, she said.