ANC dragged to court as employees insist salaries still outstanding

The ANC has been taken to court over its outstanding salary payments, with its employees vowing not to return to work until their concerns are addressed.

Speaking to the media during his visit to Tokyo Sexwale’s home in Soweto on Thursday, ANC treasurer-general Paul Mashatile insisted that the party had paid salaries to its employees up to the end of January.

“We have paid salaries up to end of January, we don’t owe anybody. If they [staffers] want to go to court, they can, but we have paid,” Mashatile said.

Asked where the money came from, Mashatile said: “We fundraise. We go out there and ask good samaritans to help us.”

But ANC staff committee chair Mvusi Mdala has insisted otherwise.

Mdala said some workers were paid their December and January salaries this week, but not all of them.

“We have comrades in the Free State who are not paid, and they were last paid in September. In the North West, they have not been paid their January salary. When [Mashatile] says ‘all’, I do not know where he gets that from,” Mdala told News24.

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Mdala said the ANC has not paid provident fund contributions since 2018, while Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) contributions are also still outstanding.

“Our struggle continues because they have not paid a cent into the provident fund, and they have not even indicated when they are going to,” he said.

He added that the staff members, who started embarking on a stay-away last month, would not return to work.

“We are not going back to work. We have said that we are not going back to work until every member of the ANC has been paid what is due to them,” he said.

The ANC has been experiencing cash flow problems for months, with workers complaining that they have not been receiving salaries on time since at least July last year.

Mashatile previously blamed the new Political Party Funding Act for the ANC’s financial struggles.

Legal action

Meanwhile, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) has taken the ANC to the Labour Court over the unpaid salaries.

Nehawu filed its papers at the court on Monday, 31 January, demanding that “the service tendered by workers be remunerated immediately”.

“It is the fact that ANC has deliberately failed and elected not to honour its contractual obligations since October 2021 which made workers to go to December festive and Christmas without any salary, but the ANC continued to gear to January 2022 celebrations cutting cakes as if all is well and sorted with their employees.

“Despite the public stance made by its president, Cyril Ramaphosa, that the ANC is prioritising the payment of its workers as he claimed to be working on salaries, and three weeks later nothing has happened, instead these workers are being threatened with retrenchment,” the union said in a statement.

“The matter is at the Labour Court now and as the union and staff, we have tried everything possible to find an amicable solution but to no avail and at worst, these workers were not treated with the dignity they deserve.

“Unfortunately, the straw that broke the camel’s back was when Christmas passed with no salaries paid,” Nehawu continued.

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The union argued that ANC employees were struggling to survive.

“These workers are going through a sad and traumatising period as a direct result of failures of the ANC to honour and fulfil its contractual obligations.”

Nehawu – a member of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which is an alliance partner of the ANC – first signalled its intention to go to court in December 2021.

ANC employees had also threatened to take legal action against the party last year.

The staff accused the ANC’s leadership of making UIF and medical aid deductions from their salaries, but not paying them over to the relevant entities.

The Citizen previously reported that the ANC owes R17 million to the South African Revenue Service (Sars) for unpaid taxes and Pay As You Earn (PAYE) tax.