Nehawu seeks legal opinion after march

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) in Limpopo is seeking legal opinion on a stay away following Premier Stan Mathabatha’s absence when the provincial leadership intended handing over a memorandum during a march to his offices on Friday.
Members refused for the second of two memoranda to be handed to anyone other than Mathabatha, it was learnt. The first memorandum directed to Provincial Treasury MEC Rob Tooley was received by him in person. Tooley was joined by Health MEC Phophi Ramathuba, who signed a copy of the document as a witness. Nehawu Provincial Secretary Jacob Adams said they were obtaining advice on the legalities of staging a stay away in response to Mathabatha’s absence as well as the way forward with regards to the actual handing over of the memorandum to Mathabatha. According to Adams they would have to decide whether they would march again to hand over the memorandum to him or stay away and government call them into negotiations.
The march carried the threat of rolling mass action across the entire public service in Limpopo to build up to an indefinite shutdown if matters then raised by the workers were not resolved. With their memoranda of demands, Nehawu’s Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) representing an estimated 30 000 workers in Limpopo served a final warning to government. They granted the provincial government seven days to respond.

In the memoranda they demanded, among others, the scrapping of the Provincial Personnel Management Framework (PPMF) “which has literally put all departments in some form of administration by centralising all powers to appoint in the Treasury’s office” as well as unfair rental fees equivalent to a housing allowance and accumulated arrears, availing necessary budget to resolve all challenges in the Department of Social Development, the implementation of recommendations following investigations at certain hospitals and the Department of Public Works, and then also rejecting the implementation of Treasury instructions put in place as part of austerity measures.
In the absence of ruling party representation at the occasion, alliance partners took to the podium with messages that contained harsh criticism directed at the leadership and government of Mathabatha.
Announcing intended rolling mass action in Limpopo in his address at the start of the march, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) Provincial Secretary Gerald Twala summarised the reason for the gathering as anger towards the provincial government. He suggested the convening of listening campaigns to establish the demands of workers.
“Today is the start of our rolling mass action in Limpopo until the demands of workers are addressed.” They would proceed next week across the province with pickets, mini-marches and marches in demand of the rights of workers, he announced. They would talk politics after workers’ demands were met, Twala continued saying. Before concluding his speech he indicated that they would ask workers to tell them whether the current ANC leadership in the province was fit to lead the party.
Declaring war on corruption, Dan Sematla on behalf of the South African Communist Party (SACP) in Limpopo reminded those present that they had previously defeated a new tendency in the province that was led by erstwhile Premier Cassel Mathale and former African National Congress Youth League (Ancyl) leader Julius Malema. Today another tendency that has just emerged has been analysed and renamed by the SACP in Limpopo and nationally was a parasitic bourgeois – a group of shrewd businesspeople wanting to take the province back, he said before adding that technically Limpopo was under administration. The SACP message he conveyed was directed at Mathabatha to return to the Ukraine where he came from if he was tired of leading the province. At the same time he questioned Tooley’s political credentials.
He called on all workers to support the SACP when saying it was time for the working class to take over, because the ANC also was in trouble and were busy fighting for positions during the local government elections while poor people were suffering. It was time for the workers in the province to unite to take over the ANC leadership in Limpopo, he concluded.

Story and photos: YOLANDE NEL
>>observer.yolande@gmail.com

Featured photo: Nehawu Provincial Secretary Jacob Adams explains the line of march for the delivery of the memoranda of demands at the Office of the Premier and Provincial Treasury.