THE nation celebrate Workers’ Day, aka May Day today. It is the holiday in which we tip our caps to the trade unions and movements which fought and ended decades of oppression imposed by apartheid.
Arguably, the most important historical move effecting this big change was the establishment of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in 1985, which unified contending unions and federations, and was instrumental in the struggle against the then dictatorial regime.
We have certainly seen wage improvements and benefits for workers since then.
But are South Africans not taking it too far by marching out the demands with accompanying violence and looting?
When Wikipedia dubs us the ‘the protest capital of the world’, it would seem so.
Last February, it was reported there were nearly 3 000 protest actions in 90 days – more than 30 a day involving more than a million people.
It got worse – both the number of civic protests and the prevalence of violence reached an all-time high by the end last year, according to a report by the Multilevel Government Initiative.
And almost 80 percent of protests involved violence in 2014.
Most of them were related to service delivery, or rather lack thereof, with informal settlements at the forefront.
So basically, there are not enough jobs to go around (no newsflash here) and after decades of empty promises, millions of poverty-stricken individuals are still in desperate need of basic services.
People are getting increasingly angry. The poor are rebelling and blood is being spilt – a lot of it taken from foreign nationals for ‘stealing jobs’.
So as we celebrate the holiday honouring our unions, let us also hope COSATU and its old ally, the ANC, take serious steps to at least remove the brutality out of SA’s daily demonstrations.
Death or damage by ‘strike’ can no longer be tolerated.
Clearly, our government’s policies are not generating enough support to strengthen the economy necessary to create work opportunities.
To change this, COSATU must pull its friend by the ear.
