Garbage strewn on the streets after SAMWU (South African Municipal Workers Union) members marched to the Ekurhuleni head offices in Germiston, 27 July 2020. They are demanding that they get salary increases, insisting that the City of Ekurhuleni give them the 6.25% increase that was agreed to in the last bargaining council. They claim the city has the funds, but is plagued by corruption where municipal resources are used for politicking and enriching politically connected individuals.. Picture: Neil McCartney
That is why, in the middle of a crisis which has hurt millions – through lost jobs, reduced salaries and even hunger – SA Municipal Workers’ Union members not only still have employment, they are getting increases from the Tshwane municipality which are three times the current inflation rate. And the union wants the same deal in other municipalities.
In Tshwane, union members caused disruptions and threw trash around to emphasise their point that the increases had been negotiated before the Covid-19 crisis.
Everything happened before the Covid-19 crisis… and the municipal workers – an elite group of people in South Africa because they are employed – are clearly not prepared to share the pain of ordinary people.
Of course, they are not alone in applying the “might is right” principle, which is so effective when dealing with government at all levels. The taxi industry thumbed its nose at government lockdown restrictions right from the beginning, confident the authorities would back down.
Violence, destruction and disruption work so well that most South Africans seldom know any other way in which to communicate.
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