NEWS UPDATE: Go-slow action continues

Date: 25 April 2016 By: Andries van Zyl

As SAMWU's go-slow action entered its third week on Monday, residents’ tolerance with the Makhado Municipality and striking union members is wearing thin.

The past week, residents again had to endure continuous power outages and water shortages. Farmers on the Vivo electrical distribution line went without power for two days last week. On the Levubu line the situation is much worse, with some parts of this farming community (specifically the southern and eastern part) having been without electricity since Friday.

“The situation has become unbearable. The action borders on plain criminality,” said Mr Stephen Hoffman, chairperson of the Soutpansberg District Agricultural Union. He said many farmers had already reported crop losses due to cold rooms not being able to function due to prolonged power outages. Especially banana famers have suffered loses running into thousands of rands. Similar reports are coming in from farmers in the Vivo area.

To add insult to injury, Hoffman said that it would seem that striking municipal workers themselves are sabotaging municipal infrastructure to give their cause momentum. This, he said, was the case on the electricity supply line between Louis Trichardt and Elim, as well as the supply line between Louis Trichardt and Vivo in Tshikota. Last week, power line poles in Tshikota were deliberately set alight. On the Elim line, said Hoffman, electrical faults were apparently repaired, only for thugs to return the next day to cut the poles off and setting it alight again. Farmers damanded that the municipality push for criminal charges te be laid against members who sabotage municipal infrastructure. Hoffman said that their modus operandi is similar to that of a couple of years ago during a previous union strike. He said that the municipal management then promised them that charges would be laid, but that this had never happened. “I seriously think that this sabotage is politically motivated with a reluctance of the people in charge to act,” Hoffman said.

Makhado municipal spokesperson Mr Louis Bobodi was asked what the municipality has done since the go-slow started to try and resolve the issues between them and the union. Last week Monday, Bobodi already stated that the go-slow was an unprotected strike action. At that stage, he indicated that Council was to call for a Special Council meeting to file an application to have the strike action declared unprotected, allowing the municipality to institute disciplinary proceedings against striking union members. The municipality has, however, yet to confirm if any such meeting had taken place due to the urgency of the matter.

Services mostly affected by the go-slow action is that of electricity supply, water supply and waste removal – all listed as essential services in accordance to the Labour Relations Act. It is, however, clear that very little attention is paid to the stipulations of this act as to when providers of essential services are allowed to strike. It is, however, rumoured that the municipality called an emergency meeting on Friday, 22 April, to take a decision on whether or not to appoint private contractors, at the expense of the taxpayer amidst an illegal strike action, to deliver essential services. Bobodi had yet to confirm whether such meeting took place. Bobodi was also asked whether they were aware of criminals acts of sabotage and whether the municipality this time round opened crimninal cases at the Makhado SAPS.

Read the full report Thursday’s edition of the Zoutpansberger. 

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Andries van Zyl

Andries joined the Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror in April 1993 as a darkroom assistant. Within a couple of months he moved over to the production side of the newspaper and eventually doubled as a reporter. In 1995 he left the newspaper group and travelled overseas for a couple of months. In 1996, Andries rejoined the Zoutpansberger as a reporter. In August 2002, he was appointed as News Editor of the Zoutpansberger, a position he holds until today.

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