Archive photo of the 2023 strike in Tshwane. (Photo: Provided)
While the union Samwu is already lighting the bonfires over the possible re-employment of 43 Tshwane workers who were blocked in the road after the three-month violent and illegal strike in the metro in 2023, the union Imatu is not at all impressed.
“These are those people who intimidated our members, who threw stones through bus windows and set buses on fire,” says Lynette Burns-Coetzee, Imatu’s manager in the Tshwane region.
The DA threw the club in the pigeonhole with a media statement on Thursday in which it claims that the council is about to re-appoint these fired workers. The council did not want to confirm this when asked, but it is clear that it is high on the agenda.
Eugene Modise, an ANC member and the deputy mayor, said in a fiery speech during his budget speech earlier this month: “We are going to bring back all of them, including the 43. We will never allow a little Hitler to rule the city anymore,” he added, presumably referring to the DA’s Cilliers Brink, who was the mayor during the strike.
The current mayor, Dr. Nasiphi Moya, for her part, was more cat-footed during the council meeting on 28 May. She represents ActionSA, which was part of the coalition government that Brink led. She pretended not to know what was happening in the city government at the time.
“Was our top management divided to the point where they victimized tradesmen?” she asked. She followed this up with a challenge: “We are not afraid. You can send as many (lawyer letters) as you want. We are going to get behind the head of the ax and as this coalition we are going to solve the issue of the 43 dismissed workers,” she undertook.
At the time, the workers protested against a council decision that the salary increase of 5.4% which was negotiated at national level, would not be introduced in Tshwane.
Brink was very outspoken and argued that the council was far too broke to put up the additional R600 million for it.
The council was later settled in the labor court and released from its obligation to pay the increase.
The withholding of the increase followed a similar decision regarding an increase of 3.5% in the 2021-22 financial year. The council, which has been led by a coalition since September 2024 in which ActionSA, the ANC and EFF are the main partners, later paid it retroactively, after the council failed to exercise all its legal options for exemption.
The DA-led government, then still with Cilliers Brink as mayor, took a strong stance at the time by dismissing staff who were involved in criminality. (Archive photo)
Brink and his party were extremely critical of the council’s failure to fight harder for exemption. Tempers on the issue have been running high throughout and currently insults are being hurled around liberally.
When Maroela Media initially approached Samwu for comment on the DA’s statement, Donald Monakisi, the union’s regional secretary in Tshwane, said Samwu was campaigning for the reappointment. However, he has not yet heard anything official about it from the metro board.
Later, however, the union issued a seething statement and “condemned Cilliers Brink’s reckless attack on workers and welcomed efforts to correct what was wrongly done under the DA administration in Tshwane”.
The union says it noted with anger the reckless, misleading and anti-worker statements made by Brink.
This comes after the DA statement in which the party says it wrote to Johann Mettler, municipal manager, that any instruction to re-employ the dismissed would be illegal. The party has also warned that it will not hesitate to go to court if plans to do so go ahead.
“The DA-led government took a firm stance at the time by dismissing staff who were involved in criminality. We sent a strong message that violence is not a justified form of negotiation and that intimidation and destruction will not be tolerated as a tool to negotiate with the municipalities,” the party said.
Samwu seriously objects to Brink’s “characterization of these workers as criminals”.
(Photo: Like-metro)
“This statement is not only defamatory and dangerous, but it also shows the DA’s deep-rooted hostility towards workers and organized labour. These workers have not been charged, tried or found guilty in any court. Brink has no authority to declare them guilty or, simply because they exercised their rights as workers, expose them to the public as criminals,” the trade union taunts.
However, Burns-Coetzee says Imatu wholeheartedly supports Brink’s position.
She says one of the union’s members was also fired at the time. He was at work but could not sign up due to intimidation. “We had to go to court to get him reinstated and they didn’t even want to give him ‘backpay’.”
According to her, Samwu ran a little blue when he went to court to ask for the reappointments, because his application was brought too long after the events. The court did not want to condone the late application.
Samwu appealed against this decision and the court process has not yet been concluded.
Monakisi confirmed this when asked.
In his letter to Mettler, the DA asks that he:
- confirm whether the mayor’s committee has given him an instruction to re-appoint the workers. If so, that
- he provides the party with a written undertaking that he will not comply with it.
The party gave Mettler until Monday at 16:00 to give this assurance.
