The labour union that has been trying to ”blockade” Cape Town International airport on Friday accused the police of causing traffic jams there.
”The police have started pulling out cars of all our comrades with aims to issue them with tickets,” said South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) Western Cape secretary Nicholus Maziya after a renewed protest on Friday morning.
”At the end no tickets were issued but there was [a] traffic jam at the airport up to the N2, which had been caused by members of the police services.
”The police don’t realise that it is themselves who cause [the] traffic jam at the airport by stopping our cars.”
Satawu had called on ”all our workers of this country” who owned cars to gather at the airport at dawn on Friday for a rolling ”go slow” cavalcade on the ring road at the facility.
Western Cape police spokesperson Superintendent Neville Malila denied that the police, who have been out in force this week to monitor the strikers, were causing traffic jams.
”We just enforce the traffic laws,” he said. ”They [union members] are just feeling the brunt of the law and they don’t like that.”
He said there was no disruption at the airport on Friday morning.
Baggage handlers employed by Equity Aviation have been on strike since early December last year over wages and working conditions.
Also on Friday, the South African Communist Party in the province, which has been supporting the strike, said the dispute needed to be resolved politically, since it had arisen as a direct result of the Transnet decision to sell off part of its functions at the airports.
This had resulted in the ”grossest violation of labour rights”. — Sapa