SAMWU, the municipal workers' union, has called off the strike. Much like the Verizon work stoppage in the US, this action enjoyed wide popular support. Yet like its American counterpart, the union leadership called off the strike saying it was continuing its negotiations with management.
The workers initially asked for an 18pc increase, but recently dropped it to ten. Predictably, this too was rejected.
Samwu dropped its pay increase demand from 18 percent to 10 percent last week.
“The demand is unrealistic. It can bankrupt our municipalities.”
Mthethwa said the impasse which developed in the negotiations was of concern, saying that the time spent in the bargaining chamber means time away from servicing communities.
http://www.citizen.co.za/citizen/content/en/citizen/local-news?oid=221599&sn=Detail&pid=146826&Mthethwa--Masondo-condemn-violent-municipal-strike
The strike has become violent. South Africa is a seething, and just about any protest is enough to release some of the growing anger toward Jacob Zuma and his despised ANC government. Whether the violence is the work of the strikers or the government's undercover goons is not known, but people have been hurt and property damaged.
Municipal Strike No Longer Fun and Games as Violence Increases
Possible strike related criminal activities took place last night when properties of municipal staff were petrol bombed during the early hours of this morning.
In Seyisi Street KwaZakhele an attempt was made to petrol bomb a house at 02:29 but it was unsuccessful. Unfortunately another employee’s Toyota Conquest was completely destroyed a minute later in Siwa Street, also in KwaZakhele when the bomb ignited.
http://www.myza.co.za/08/municipal-strike-no-longer-fun-and-games-as-violence-increases/
Homes bombed as strike turns ugly
The prolonged strike by municipal workers in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro took an ugly turn after properties of non-striking workers were petrol-bombed at the weekend.
Two incidents of arson attacks were confirmed by municipal spokesperson Kupido Baron who likened these to “criminal acts”.
“Possible strike-related criminal activities took place last Friday when properties of municipal staff were attacked with petrol bombs,” he said.
One incident involved an attack on the house of a worker in Kwazakhele township who had not joined the strike.
http://www.thenewage.co.za/27366-1016-53-Homes_bombed_as_strike_turns_ugly
In an absolutely shocking development, the courts in SA have sided with the state and against the workers, just as they had in the Verizon strike and in every other since the dawn of capitalism.
“Striking workers, however, have been served with a court interdict which says that essential service workers have to return to work.”
The municipality of eThekwini has obtained a court edict to declare the strike illegal. Mbombela local municipality in Mpumalanga has taken similar action.
Acting municipal manager in Mpumalanga Norah Mthembu warned that copies of the ruling had been distributed to police stations. Workers now faced arrest, she said, if they entered any council premises.
These court rulings are a clear attempt to prevent legitimate public protests. The fact that councils have resorted to them indicates the potential for the municipal workers’ dispute to spread more widely.
Their dispute has the potential to widen the struggle and to involve the townships, drawing in the majority of non-unionised workers who make a living in the informal sector.
Last year, public sector workers clashed repeatedly with police. They faced assaults with water cannon, stun grenades and rubber bullets. The press vilified them as “murderers”.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/aug2011/samw-a30.shtml
Not all the workers are happy with the union leadership.
A regular WSWS reader attempted to find out more about the SAMWU dispute and what the union is doing on behalf of its members. Below are his comments:
“Since Monday 15 August 2011, I have attempted to contact SAMWU officials; via telephone and email in order to determine the location of the SAMWU picket lines. The telephone was not answered, despite numerous attempts. The emails were not responded to. The SAMWU web site has provided no information about the picket lines.
“From the media reports it appears that in KwaZulu Natal the picket lines were not successful due to ‘cold weather’.
Cold indeed.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/aug2011/samw-a30.shtml
In addition to the strike another controversy has South Africans in an uproar. The ANC Youth League leader, Julius Malema, is facing a disciplinary hearing wherein he is charged with bring the ruling ANC party into disrepute.
The trouble started when Malema called for regime change in neighboring Botswana. This occurred after that country's large public service union strike was beaten down by President Khama. Malema's remarks were an embarrassment to the ANC's and SA's head, Jacob Zuma, who is personally and politically aligned with Khama.
Zuma followed the widely unpopular Thabo Mbeki, whom he defeated in an ugly election campaign. Zuma ran, much like Barack Obama in the US, on a platform of change. Unfortunately for the people of SA, Zuma, again like Obama, has reneged on just about every promise. Malema, like most of his generation, had been an ardent supporter of the presidential challenger, but has since become quite disillusioned. As Zuma's popularity has plunged, Malema's has risen to the point where the youth leaders is now Zuma's greatest rival. So the stakes are high in this ongoing hearing, for both men, and for SA.
The calls for regime change in Botswana are pretext, at issue is who will rule, and how. Malema's popularity rests on his militancy, and more particularly on his call for nationalizing SA's lucrative mineral wealth.
Malema also refused to budge on his calls for mining nationalisation, a position that has spooked foreign investors and brought warnings of international financial isolation. He said: "Nationalism will never change. Expropriation without compensation will never change. Whether you expel us or don't expel us, these resolutions will never change."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/30/south-africa-police-supporters-julius-malema
So protests, sometimes violent, are going on outside the hearing where SA's future is being decided, just about all of it in support of Malema.
But ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu called the burning of President Zuma's T-shirts, party flags, and posters "totally unacceptable," "wanton acts of criminality," and "hooliganism." The scenes outside the ANC headquarters, he added, were perpetrated by an unruly mob of people claiming to be “ANC Youth League members.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2011/0830/Violence-at-Malema-hearing-shows-divide-within-South-Africa-s-ANC
In this protest, oddly enough, it is the police who have set up the barricades.
Protesters chanting “Zuma must go!” also burned T-shirts and posters bearing the president’s portrait, according to Internet postings by South African news services in Johannesburg. The police erected razor wire barricades while a police helicopter hovered. At least one officer was wounded by a flying brick, a police spokesman said, and a South African news channel said one of its television crews was attacked near the party headquarters, Luthuli House.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/world/africa/31southafrica.html?_r=1
It appears that Zuma is on his last legs. Good riddance.
"Zuma must go!" protesters chanted, setting ablaze party flags and T-shirts bearing Zuma's image. Their actions reflected anger at the disciplining of Malema and general disappointment that the South African leader has failed to fulfill election promises to robustly confront the economic powerhouses' growing inequality and poverty, marked by massive unemployment among young people.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2011-08-30/S-Africa-police-fire-rubber-bullets-at-protesters/50185010/1
