This week’s strike by public servants revealed a terrain reshaped since the last action in 1999. For one, the level of public sympathy with strikers was notable — people want decent public services because they are making the connection between poor service and poorly paid civil servants.
Gone was the hand-wringing of the past, when ordinary people would ask: how dare a teacher strike? How dare a nurse? Now the public debate reverts to the old adage: if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
A second observation is key — that the annual wage round in the public service centralised bargaining council, which brings together the government and unions, is not a true negotiation, as increases are predetermined in the Budget.
To secure labour’s goodwill, it is essential that workers and their representatives in Parliament have a say in the shaping of the Budget process. Section 77 of the Constitution requires a “money bill” that would institutionalise a system where Parliament co-determines the budget with the Treasury. This would allow unions — in fact, all popular lobby groups — to make representations to MPs on their demands.
A co-determined Budget is a central feature of social market economies like those of Brazil and Scandinavia, from which we have much to learn. In some countries, workers meet the government to make pay proposals that are then taken to Parliament for negotiation.
The fact that there is no trade union buy-in is central to understanding why the public service pay talks are a bunfight every year. If workers feel they play a meaningful role, they are more likely to face up to the sometimes tough choices required in creating a genuinely post-apartheid civil service. It’s common cause that the civil service is still too large; or at least that there are too many civil servants with the wrong skills; and that the concept of Batho Pele (People First) has not fully struck root.
With the annual wage round a boxing match between tough girl Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi and the nine hard men of the union movement, it is difficult to secure the environment in which fundamental reforms can take place.
A final point. The Mail & Guardian believes that the public service wage round can and should be less confrontational. But the current strike has its positive aspects. It shows that the unions, although in most cases African National Congress-aligned, are sufficiently independent to take on the ANC as an employer. What has also been salutary was the joint action between black and white civil servants. Never before have so many grey shoes toyi-toyied with red socks.
A whole new can of worms
“Accountability and transparency are the foundation of any democratic Parliament. These are the values for which so many of us sacrificed, and we challenge any who dare to question our unwavering commitment to them.”
The ringing words are those of National Council of Provinces chairperson Joyce Kgoali, uttered during the parliamentary debate on the travel vouchers scandal. Do her actions match her grand sentiments?
Kgoali was among the MPs fingered by the M&G for failing to make full asset disclosure in terms of Parliament’s code of conduct — specifically, she did not reveal her directorship in Allpay, the lucrative Absa-owned company to which pensions payments have been outsourced in Gauteng. The M&G reported that Kgoali failed to declare a monthly stipend from Allpay.
Readers will recall that it was the manager of Kgoali’s office, Moroka Matutle, who tried to block our exposé of his boss’s undeclared interests by seeking, and failing to get, a High Court interdict. Who authorised this suit, which cost Parliament dearly? Matutle has heaped blame on himself, while admitting that he consulted Parliament’s presiding officers.
Could a mere official really have taken the extraordinary step of trying to interdict a newspaper without clear authority? And how credible is his claim that he could not contact Kgoali — one of Parliament’s presiding officers — because she was in the Canada? The strong impression is that Matutle is the fall guy.
Parliament’s bid to stifle our exposé only served to tickle our curiosity — further inquiries, reported in this edition, opened a new can of worms. Kgoali is a close friend of former Gauteng premier Mathole Motshekga and his wife, Angie, the province’s former social welfare and now education minister.
Mathole Motshekga turns out to be the “director” of the Sediba Sabasadi trust, which has a 6% share in Allpay, a R170-million a year business. And despite Angie Motshekga’s denials, the M&G has seen a letter written by her, while responsible minister, to Allpay recommending the trust to the company as an empowerment partner.
Kgoali, a Sediba Sabasadi trustee, has refused to reveal what the trust has paid her. And deepening suspicion around the trust’s claims to be empowering women is its failure to detail the projects it has funded. Not surprisingly, Absa has said its subsidiary would not have donated the shares if it had known of the Motshekgas’ involvement.
Accountability and transparency are indeed the foundation of democratic rule. Have they been served by these murky manoeuvrings?