As more security-guard-strike-related train violence flared in different provinces, black security employers agreed to sit down for talks with the unions over the weekend.
Black employers also plan to meet the South African National Security Employers’ Association on Friday to convince it to join the negotiations on Saturday and Sunday under the auspices of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.
These moves take place against the continuing pay deadlock in the sector and ongoing strike-related violence.
On Wednesday, guards allegedly shot and killed a passenger and injured five others on a Port Elizabeth train. Police said a group of armed passengers tried to throw a guard from the train, but he jumped off as the train was nearing a station. Fellow guards assumed he had been pushed and ”randomly fired shots in the direction of the attackers”.
On Monday, two men died and a third was critically injured in separate incidents on trains in Durban.Police report that the injured man had said he was a security guard. They are still investigating whether the other two men were guards.
Seven people have been charged with murder related to train violence in Gauteng, said South African Police Service Superintendent Lungelo Dlamini. The police could only confirm that one of the seven was a security guard.
The president of the South African Black Security Employers’ Association, Stephen Dube, said this week that the brunt of the strike has been borne by black-owned security companies because most worked for parastatals.
Dube said a number of black security associations had met with the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) on Wednesday. ”My opinion is that both the employers and Satawu and the other unions, are looking for the same thing. There is no reason that they should not meet,” he said.