MARIKANA, South Africa (AP) — Striking miners hungry after five weeks of no pay and enraged by police firing rubber bullets and tear gas threatened to march Monday despite a government crackdown on illegal protests.

Armed soldiers for the first time joined police in armored cars standing at the ready at Lonmin PLC's platinum mine. A truck-mounted water cannon stood by as a helicopter flew overhead. More than 100 miners gathered 50 meters (about 160 feet) from the police line beside Wonderkop shantytown just outside the mine.

Several armored and ordinary police vehicles rumbled along muddy dirt roads between tin shanties that have no running water or electricity.

Church and opposition leaders condemned state heavy handedness, saying it mirrors that used by the white minority apartheid regime. The opposition Congress of the People party demanded the withdrawal of some 1,000 soldiers trucked over the weekend into the "platinum belt" 100 kilometers (60 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.

Union rivalries and demands for better pay have stopped work at one gold and seven platinum mines. Aquarius Platinum said work resumed at its mine Monday, and Anglo American Platinum said it would restart operations Tuesday at its four mines under police security.

It is unclear how many miners are on strike. Mining companies claim it is a minority with tens of thousands of workers not reporting for duty because of violent threats and intimidation. Previous marches by strikers brandishing machetes, spears and clubs have numbered several thousand.

Lonmin said negotiations would continue Monday after strikers last week rejected an offer of 16 to 21 percent pay increases that fell far short of the demands of striking rock drill operators for a minimum monthly take-home pay of R12,500 ($1,560).

The chief economist of the Chamber of Mines, Roger Baxter, on Monday told Talk Radio 702 that the average rock drill operator earns an average monthly total before deductions of 11,689 rands ($1,460) which he said put those workers in the top 20 percent of all earners in South Africa. For comparison, Baxter noted that semi-skilled steel and industry workers earn a monthly total of 4,000 to 5,000 rands ($500 to $625). Deductions often account for half a workers' salary.

On Saturday, police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at a shantytown neighboring Lonmin mine, where officers killed 34 miners on Aug. 16 in attacks that shocked the nation of 48 million. The weekend crackdown was condemned by the head of the South African Council of Churches.

"Government must be crazy believing that what to me resembles an apartheid-era crackdown can succeed," said Anglican Bishop Jo Seoka, the council president. "We must not forget that such crackdowns in the past led to more resistance and government can ill afford to be seen as the enemy of the people that put them in power."

Firebrand politician Julius Malema, who has set out to make mines ungovernable, plans to be at the Lonmin mine Monday.
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AP