Eastern Cape Premier Raymond Mhlaba sent an uncompromising signal to civil servants throughout the country last weekend, reports Steuart Wright
THE quelling of a police strike in Transkei at the weekend is the first decisive step the government has taken to bring the troubled former homeland to heel.
The siege of Umtata by about 200 striking police was not the first time armed policemen abandoned posts and took to the streets to bring attention to their grievances. But it was the first time such action was met with the might of the army, arrests and the initiation of terrorism proceedings against about 60
The move sent a clear signal to civil servants throughout the country: President Nelson Mandela is serious about his threat to match illegal protests with the full force of his government.
Even Eastern Cape Premier Raymond Mhlaba, whose early months of rule were characterised by apologetic warnings and appeals for patience from a disobedient civil service, stood firm as troops moved in on the protesters last Saturday, saying: “There will be no compromise. I have told the brigadier to remove the blockades physically if necessary”.
It was a new style of leadership for Mhlaba. He was making the remarks on his cellular phone in a Port Elizabeth prison while trying to negotiate the release of a prison warder being held hostage by awaiting-trial
Despite bravado from the striking policemen, who said any attempt to prevent their attempts to paralyse Transkei’s largest city would result in civil war, when it came to the crunch they made a pathetic stand.
A few rounds and a mortar shell aimed at them from South African National Defence Force troops approaching a blockade 15km outside Umtata on the road to Queenstown sent the policemen scurrying from their crude but effective barricades. Officers manning blockades on the N2 on the other side of the town overheard the shots on police radio and sprang into their vehicles and fled.
The policemen were protesting delays in receiving election bonuses and salary increases to match year-old promotions. Ironically, Police Commissioner General George Fivaz says one reason for delays is an investigation into salary increases of up to 159 percent which some police gave themselves, simply by fiddling with computers.
The Transkeians have enjoyed a measure of sympathy from the government. University of the Transkei politics lecturer Harold Tessendorf explains: “There has been a collapse in many ways of the police hierarchy in the former Transkei, and the top leadership is very difficult to track down. If police say they haven’t been paid, then people will have some sympathy for their position.”
But Tessendorf sees the collapse occurring at almost every level as the charade played out by the previous government disintegrates, exposing the police and other civil servants for what they really are — poorly trained and poorly equipped to meet the real demands of their job.
“Corruption, nepotism and that kind of thing were allowed to persist under the previous government,” he says. “It is a mess which is steadily growing and has to be picked up by the new provincial government.”
Mhlaba’s permanent secretary and former Transkei government financial adviser, Sintu Mpambani, says the current wave of chaos is a continuation of efforts to unravel the leftovers of bantustan administration. Many of the pay and promotion grievances can be traced back to the early 1990s, he says, when homeland bureaucracies were involved in the arduous task of balancing homeland civil-servant salaries with those of South Africa. — Ecna
But efforts to balance the scales only emphasised the craziness, Civil Service Associstion official Mthimkhulu Mashiya points out. “It is ludicrous when you consider that some of the directors general and other appointments were a result of nepotism and that the police commissioner of a small force, as in Ciskei, was being paid the same salary as his South African
However, Mashiya says in some respects parity is justified — in the cae of nurses, magistrates and police, who bear the same workload as their South African colleagues and have the support of communities in their ongoing battle for equality. — Ecna