More than 10 000 public-service workers started marching in Pretoria on Friday demanding better pay and working conditions.
Much of the protesters’ anger was aimed at Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi.
Protesters sang songs blaming her for the breakdown in pay talks between the unions and the government.
The demonstrations, they said, were a mere forerunner of a full-blown strike next month by more than one million civil servants, demanding a 12% salary increase.
Salary talks between the state and public-service trade unions deadlocked earlier in the month, with the employer refusing to up its pay offer of 6% to the union’s demand of 12%.
Cape Town
About 8 000 public-service workers started marching shortly before noon on Friday to the provincial legislature and Parliament in Cape Town over demands for better pay and working conditions.
”Today we are sending a resounding message that the time has come for government to take care of the people,” Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) Western Cape provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich told he crowd.
The good-spirited crowd displayed a vast array of posters and banners bearing the legends, among others, ”6% is like toilet paper — to hell with it” and ”My take-home pay doesn’t even take me home.”
A general assistant at Tygerberg Hospital, who was acting as a marshal helping to keep order, said he expected more than 60 000 people but that the march would be ”peaceful”.
He said: ”We will be striking to ask for better living wages”.
Principal of Dr Joubert Primary School, Desmond Robyn, was joined by several of his teachers, most of whom had amassed more than 30 years of teaching.
Robyn said he had been teaching for 32 years and was still not being paid at the maximum wage level.
”How much longer yet?”
Pietermaritzburg
The march by public-sector workers in the KwaZulu-Natal capital of Pietermaritzburg got off to a slow start on Friday morning.
By 11am, about 3 000 public-sector workers had gathered in Pietermaritzburg’s Dale Park Sports grounds.
The march was scheduled to start at 11am. However, numerous buses and taxis were still arriving at the sports grounds at 11.20am.
On the N3 motorway between Durban and Pietermaritzburg, busses and taxis laden with workers wearing their union colours could be seen making their way to the city.
Police and traffic officials were present but keeping a low profile.
The marchers are expected to march through the Pietermaritzburg city centre to the KwaZulu-Natal legislature and hand over a memorandum to Premier Sbu Ndebele.
Those marching included members of Cosatu alliance unions as well as others not aligned with the federation, such as the Health and Other Services Personnel Trade Union. — Sapa