As we sit on the cusp of two very destructive and possibly violent strikes, I feel the need to revisit strikes in South Africa. I have tackled the issue on no less than three previous occasions.
On June 1, July 6 and August 31, I mentioned the possibility of devastating strikes and what should be done about them. At the risk of repeating myself, it appears that although we have the legislation and the Employment and Labour Minister has the power, very little has been done and very little looks like it is going to be done again.
I’m not going to repeat much of what our readers have seen in the Cape Argus on a daily basis, but it is important for all of us to sit up and take a careful look at the very slippery slope we are in the process of sliding down.
In the past, many strikes have come and gone and most of them haven’t affected us all that much. When we look from afar at a mining strike, we don’t realise how the fallout actually does affect us in that it affects the price of everyday goods in the long term.
We also don’t realise that even a ripple caused elsewhere because of a strike can have enormous ramifications for both you and me. When I go into a supermarket to buy the basic staples to be able to survive I firstly need a currency that has value and I need to ensure that the valued currency in my pocket will be able to obtain the goods I desperately need to sustain my family. There are certain strikes that damage the value of my currency and these same strikes will also make everyday goods (not only consumables) much more expensive.
We all know what a struggle it is for the average family to survive (no longer is it a case of the average family thriving). For those who are in the unemployment queue and there are 11 million of you, things will be even worse.
We are facing two unbelievably explosive strikes. The first one is the Transnet strike. The premier of the Western Cape has said that the Port strike, which is part and parcel of the Transnet strike, is costing the South African economy up to R1 billion a day. That is only the ports, what about the internal disruptions of Transnet getting goods inland? It is all very well to complain about the poor wages for farm labourers when this is set to get far worse because of this strike in that the Western Cape exports 90% of its primary agricultural products via the port of Cape Town.
This is disastrous for the farmers, the labourers and the entire Western Province economy. The fallout for the rest of the country will be even greater.
There is a further even more devastating strike on the horizon. The civil servants, who don’t trust the government in any event, have deadlocked in their wage negotiations and that strike looks set to cripple the civil service. Our readers will recall that the government reneged on an agreement four years ago with the civil servants. Since then it has been downhill.
We have seen the ANC government completely destroy the trust relationship between government and labour. This trust relationship had been built up since the early days of apartheid when the ANC and Cosatu worked hand in glove to bring the apartheid government to its knees. Since then, the ANC went into an alliance with the Communist Party and Cosatu.
This alliance has been abused by both the ANC and the Communist Party to the extent that the politicians view the workers as voting fodder for each election. However, when it comes to honouring agreements between the ANC and Cosatu the ANC has been very duplicitous in the way it breaks all its promises.
Only when election time draws nearer do we find the ANC leadership desperately trying to sing the same trade union songs. At last, many of the workers within the union membership have seen through this relationship and have seen it as abusive.
* Michael Bagraim is a labour lawyer.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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