What can trade unions, employers and the state do to reduce violent intimidation during strikes — which all observers agree is on the increase? <i>Matuma Letsoalo</i> asked Grahamstown-based advocate John Grogan, and Frans Baleni, the general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, for their practical proposals.
Senior company officials have confirmed that a shortage of skills has been one of the most costly and troublesome issues affecting the management of South African businesses in the past two years. This was a finding of a recent Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) survey, which included a cross-section of 40 businesses recruiting skilled labour in Gauteng.
Forget Freddy Krueger and Norman Bates — here comes Burqa Man. The first serious Pakistani horror flick for a quarter of a century features a psychopath dressed in a blood-soaked version of the traditional garb of Islamic women. Hordes of zombies, including an undead dwarf, add to the gore in the self-financed <i>Zibahkhana (Hell’s Ground)</i>.
More strikes loom in major sectors of the economy, with labour watchers suggesting that the worker militancy surrounding the public-service strike is feeding into other pay disputes. Strikingly, many of the disputes involve black and white unions.
The Northern Cape provincial department of health will remain under the administration of the provincial treasury and the premier’s office “until such a time that our turnaround strategy is complete,” says the department’s acting MEC, Gomolemo Lucas. Instead of operating independently, the day-to-day running of the department will be in the hands of the treasury and the premier.
The health and public service ministers’ lack of response to the urgent court order to reinstate 41 healthcare workers shows their ”total disrespect for the rule of law and is characteristic of how government ministers are treating poor people and the courts”, says Zackie Achmat of the Treatment Action Campaign.
ANC delegates from KwaZulu-Natal will go to the party’s national policy conference at Gallagher Estate on June 27 armed with a clutch of resolutions seeking, among other things, greater state control of the media and the abolition of the position of ANC national chairperson. Other resolutions reflect disenchantment with government deployees and sympathy for ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma.
Ecotourism outfits based in one of South Africa’s most fragile ecosystems are discovering that coal mining and prospecting permits have been granted on their land without their knowledge or participation. Landowners in the Mpumalanga highveld have gone to court to stop the miners. Some have vowed to deny the miners access to their properties.
SACP Gauteng chairperson Nkosiphendule Kolisile has stepped down from his administrative post as assistant organiser, throwing the SACP into a fresh controversy. Kolisile’s resignation came in a week when SACP leaders tried to fend off allegations by its national treasurer, Phillip Dexter, of ”Stalinist” tendencies in the party.
Zimbabwe’s opposition leaders returned to their supporters eager to report some progress after their first direct talks with the ruling Zanu-PF recently, but found fresh evidence of widespread concern that infighting in the ruling party poses a threat to dialogue. The first round of formal talks has been overshadowed by the story of how four travel agents planned a military coup to overthrow President Robert Mugabe.