Metrorail has called on the South African Police Service (SAPS) to intensify police security on its trains, in response to continuing security strike-linked violence.
As many as 18 people have been killed on Metrorail trains since the strike began, said Metrorail spokesperson Thandi Mlangeni.
But several other strike-related deaths have been reported across the country. A South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) leader was shot dead in his home in Langa, Western Cape, on April 22. Harold Ndimeka, general secretary of the National Security and Unqualified Workers Union, claims 11 members have been killed in KwaZulu-Natal alone.
SAPS officers had been guarding trains more heavily than normal, Mlangeni said, making 400 arrests. Police were stopping and searching trains and their passengers on up to four lines a day. Normally such searches took place on one line a week, she said.
The searches had turned up knives and “homemade guns”, Mlangeni said.
Sixteen people were known to have been killed on trains in strike-related attacks, Mlangeni said, three in the Western Cape and 13 in Gauteng. In most cases, passengers had been thrown off trains, but some had been stabbed.
In addition, two more bodies were discovered next to a Gauteng rail line on Tuesday night. “They seem to fit the pattern,” she said.
Other strike-related violence since industrial action started on March 23 includes:
l The stabbing of a journalist and damage to 100 vehicles and shop windows during the march in Cape Town this week. Police arrested 39, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s Western Cape secretary, Tony Ehrenreich, and Evan Abrahamse, Satawu’s regional secretary, respectively charged with public violence and violating the Regulation of Gatherings Act. A Cape Town city council spokesperson estimated that strike violence had cost the city R100 000.
- The torching of vehicles, assaults on bystanders and vandalism during demonstrations in Johannesburg and the Cape in the strike’s first week.
- An assault on Department of Labour offices in Durban on April 28, resulting in injuries to staffers and the arrest of 500 strikers.
At a media conference on Wednesday, Satawu general secretary Randall Howard apologised for the Cape Town violence, but blamed police for providing insufficient personnel and using “apartheid-style” tactics to break up the march.
Howard also blamed “agents provocateurs” who had infiltrated the union.
Pressed for evidence, Satawu’s Ronnie Mamba said 5 000 had marched in Cape Town, while Satawu did not have that many members in the city.
You ain’t seen nothing yet
Transnet workers, municipal workers, security guards, Cosatu’s anti-poverty strike — but you ain’t seen nothing yet. South Africa’s annual wage round is getting under way, with further strikes on the horizon, writes Tumi Makgetla.
South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union president Ezrom Mabyana said that pay talks in Spoornet and the South African Port Operations had deadlocked.
Other negotiations under way include those in the clothing and textile industries, retail, metals, mining and the cleaning sector. The Public Sector Coordinating Bargaining Council will begin negotiating a three-year agreement on June 1.
South African Institute of Race Relations researcher Marco MacFarlane said this year’s high-profile strikes differed from those in the recent past. “There seems to be a large-scale dissatisfaction among workers who are not striking over issues like pay … The strikes have been protracted and violent, which we’ve not been used to seeing in recent years.”
The two-month security guard strike shows little sign of abating. In addition, Cosatu staged a general strike on Thursday as part of its jobs and poverty campaign.
Transnet’s nine-month dispute only ended this week with a deal on restructuring.
MacFarlane said workers believed they were not benefiting from economic growth as much as the better off. He added that the Gini co-efficient, an indicator of economic inequality, reflected worsening income disparities year by year. “It’s potentially a destabilising factor for industry and the country,” he said.
Last year also saw non-wage strikes, countered Mokgadi Pela, Department of Labour spokesperson, who cited strike action over the strength of the rand and job losses in the clothing and textile industry.
Figures supplied by Jackie Kelly, analyst at Andrew Levy Employment Publications, show an improvement in days lost to strikes since 1994, but also suggest an upward trend. About 3,9-million workdays were lost in 1994, compared with a 1,1-million average in the 2000s. But 2,3-million were lost last year.
Theo Steele, Cosatu’s campaigns coordinator, suggested further wage strikes might occur in June or July, after demands tabled early in the year deadlocked in about May.
Meanwhile, Cosatu’s anti-poverty strike call appeared to receive only scattered support on Thursday. The federation reported that 10 000 Johannesburg workers had turned up for the march by 11am, with large contingents from the teachers’ and clothing and textile unions.
The federation said in its interim report that there had been 22 marches and rallies round the country, involving about 50 000 workers.
Talks overlook the issues
The warring parties in the security strike continue to wrangle over the strike itself, rather than the key issues driving industrial action.
With the strike two months’ old and close to 20 workers dead, employer representatives and 16 unions — including the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s affiliate South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) — agreed to meet for “exploratory talks” at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) last Friday.
Unions and employers remain holed up in separate rooms, linked only by the CCMA’s shuttle diplomacy. Union negotiators insist the deadlock cannot be broken until all the parties meet face to face. Citing the minister’s refusal to accept the April 1 agreement as the basis for his sectoral determination, the employers appear to have shifted from their earlier refusal to go a cent beyond the agreed 8,3% pay rise.
The CCMA is reported to have proposed a compromise on wages to both sides, and asked for response by Friday.
Employer negotiator Steve Friswell said the strike would have to end before they explored those possibilities: “Our position is simple, we are are not prepared to talk about anything but bringing an end to the strike because of the violence, intimidation and terror tactics employed.”
While employers are demanding suspension of the strike, union members continue to demand an end to the lock-out and strikers’ immunity from disciplinary action.
Harold Ndimeka, general secretary of the National Security and Unqualified Workers’ Union, which signed the April 1 agreement, blames Satawu.
“The issue is no longer about wages; it’s about an amnesty for strikers,” he said.
“But Satawu says their members haven’t been involved in violence — so who do they want amnesty for?”
Satawu did not want striking and non-striking unions to meet in the same room, while Satawu blamed employers for the fragmented spacial arrangement.
It has also emerged that a Satawu negotiator threatened to call strikers to besiege the CCMA.
“Jassus! One of the chairs from Gauteng, a negotiator, was jokingly saying, maybe we must bring our members here from library gardens,” said Satawu president, Edwin Mabyana “The other unions were really very, very scared.”
Ndimeka said he had asked police for protection, because his officials no longer felt safe. On Tuesday, a working committee was set up comprising Satawu negotiators Randall Howard and Jackson Simon, and two employer representatives, including Friswell.
Mabyana said that he did not believe that Satawu members would agree to suspend the strike or that the employers would agree to the union’s demands concerning lock-outs and disciplinary action come Friday.