Angry ANC staff picket outside policy conference over unpaid salaries

The ANC has failed to pay its staff their outstanding salaries for June and July after promising this week to start paying them from Thursday.

Unpaid ANC staff salaries

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu), which represents the ANC staff members, on Friday morning picked outside the Nasrec Expo Centre in Johannesburg, where the ANC is holding its 6th national policy conference.

The ANC’s alliance partners – the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the SA Communist Party (SACP) – joined the protest.

The protest also included some employees of the SA Revenue Service (Sars) who embarked on strike action over wage increases.

Nehawu said it wanted to raise awareness about what it called the unfair treatment of workers by the ANC, over unpaid salaries and contributions to their medical aid and provident fund.

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According to reports, the ANC paid 189 workers their salaries while the salaries for 29 of them were still outstanding. It was unclear whether the salary payments were backdated.

Gungubele booed

ANC national executive committee (NEC) member, Mondli Gungubele, was booed by the protesters on Friday when he tried to address their concerns.

Gungubele, who is also the Minister in the Presidency, said the non-payment of ANC staff salaries was unacceptable, insisting that the party was dealing with the issue.

“The issue of ANC workers is under discussion. There’s a broader NEC and those who are specially employed to deal with this issue. They’re the negotiating team of the ANC.

“But I can assure you that the ANC NEC is not comfortable with the fact that these workers are not paid. There are comrades who are deployed to deal with that,” he told eNCA in an interview.

ANC promises to pay staff

On Wednesday, ANC national spokesperson Pule Mabe told the media the party had raised funds to pay staff their late salaries.

This followed a picket outside the ANC’s gala dinner in Nasrec by disgruntled staff members.

“We are thankful to our donors who have heeded the request by our own treasurer general [Paul Mashatile]. Funds started trickling in today [Wednesday].

“The reason why we could not do payments earlier is that we were waiting for funds to be cleared. Once funds are cleared, we’ll start realising the initial batches tomorrow,” Mabe said at the time.

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