South Africa: Public workers hit the streets

Hundreds of thousands of South African public workers held a 
one-day strike September 16 over the government's rejection of 
their demands for a seven percent wage rise, an across-the-board 
medical aid and housing allowance, and review of a provision 
linking salaries to inflation for the next two years.

Nearly all South Africa's 1.1 million public workers are 
represented by unions affiliated to the three major trade union 
federations — the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions 
(COSATU), the Federation of Unions of South Africa and the 
National Council of Trade Unions.

Over 700,000 reportedly joined the strike, and hundreds of 
thousands marched in some 25 cities around the country. In 
Pretoria, the capital, over 50,000 unionists, led by COSATU 
President Willie Madisha, marched to the government headquarters, 
where they blew whistles and sang songs from the anti-apartheid 
struggle before presenting a memorandum to Public Service and 
Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi. COSATU 
spokesperson Patrick Craven called the demonstration a "show of 
unprecedented solidarity across the board".

Calling the government's offer of a six percent increase 
"unacceptable", COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said the 
proposal amounted to a wage freeze in real terms and failed to 
recognise the increased productivity of public workers. He also 
cited the recent victory by the metalworkers union, which won a 
7.5 percent increase, plus better benefits.

Noting that the South African Communist Party does not involve 
itself directly in details of collective bargaining, and sharing 
the expressed wishes of both sides to have avoided the strike, 
General Secretary Blade Nzimande pointed to "a disturbing 
tendency to headline disruptions to services to learners, 
pensioners and other recipients, while the legitimate concerns of 
public services workers are entirely marginalised".

In a statement on the eve of the strike, Nzimande warned against 
pitting the interests of workers against the rest of the 
population, "as if public service workers and their families were 
not also citizens, learners and pensioners". He called attention 
to an "incessant campaign of denigration of the public sector by 
the privileged" who do not depend on it for education, health 
care or pensions, and said the strike needed to be understood 
against the daily pressures public workers face at "overburdened 
and under-funded" public institutions.

"The SACP calls for a holistic approach in dealing with the 
current dispute", he said. "Much as the SACP would not like to 
see the disruption of public services, we fully support the right 
of workers to strike", he said.