Acts of intimidation and the violent disruption of towns and cities were reported throughout the country during this week’s municipal strike — including the intimidation of patients and nurses at municipal clinics in two cities.
Clinics in Cape Town and Johannesburg closed early on Monday and Tuesday, with some not opening at all in Cape Town later in the week. ‘There is ongoing intimidation — at all our depots” which had a ‘knock-on effect on our health services”, said Ivan Bromfield, the executive director of Cape Town’s City Health. ‘They should know that essentialservice workers can’t strike and not to intimidate them.
Particularly, they should not intimidate the public who are trying to access a service. We find it totally unacceptable.” While some nurses joined the strike voluntarily, others were allegedly intimidated by members of the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) into leaving work early.
Several clinics in Khayelitsha were closed by mid-morning after Samwu members, armed with sjamboks, sticks and knobkerries, reportedly told workers that they must join a union meeting, and forced patients to leave.
Fanelwa Gwashu, a health worker at Khayelitsh’s Site B Clinic, said: ‘[Samwu members] chased — nurses out of their consulting rooms— It was hectic and patients were so afraid. I think that patients won’t come to the clinic because all of them will hear what happened.”
The Treatment Action Campaign said clinic closures had already led to patients not receiving essential medicines. TB services have been especially badly affected and health workers fear that patients defaulting on treatment
could develop drugresistant TB.
A Khayelitsha patient, who asked to remain unnamed, said she had not received her medicine for three days because of the strike. ‘I keep going to the clinic and it’s closed,” she said, adding that she was ‘afraid” of Samwu workers.
Samwu strikers emptied rubbish bins in Johannesburg, Cape Town and other city and town centres, bringing traffic to a standstill. In Bloemfontein about 150 municipal workers marched to the Mangaung local municipality’s head office, carrying refuse, bags which they emptied while picketing at the Bram Fischer Building.
In Plettenberg Bay, Western Cape, and Polokwane, Limpopo, strikers clashed with police, who used pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse them.
Asked about reports of intimidation, Samwu’s deputy general secretary, Walter Theledi, responded: ‘We made it clear that we’re not aware of that. Only the media seems to have that information. We cannot respond to things that we don’t know of. ‘Our members have been informed that we will never intimidate anybody. Our strike is still under the law and anything that’s outside the law can be dealt with.”