Johannesburg – Another large Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) affiliate has cut millions of rand in electoral support to the ANC in a drastic move to show disappointment in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration and the ruling party.
Angry leaders of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) have resolved not to support the governing party’s eff orts to canvas votes for the forthcoming local polls.
In the 2019 general elections, Nehawu spent over R14-million campaigning for the ANC and “millions on the 2016 local government elections”.
The expenditure was for campaign material such as pamphlets, T-shirts, trucks fitted with sound systems, car hire and accommodation for leaders to campaign.
Nehawu has traditionally been a strong campaigner and backer of the ANC.
The union’s general secretary, Zola Saphetha, said the union – with over 277 000 members in the public sector – was angry that the government reneged on its 2018 wage agreement and the subsequent three years salary increase freeze.
Also read: Bushiri’s lawyer suing the police for R15m over unlawful arrest
“Why would members who have not been given an increase to improve their livelihood, given the devastation brought about by Covid-19 that has made their families suffocate … sacrifice the little they get and take that money and mobilise for the ANC that seems to care less about their conditions?
“As Nehawu, it remains the policy position of the union to support the ANC, but we will not campaign for that, neither use our resources, both human and the material resources for the ANC campaign. We will not deploy our leaders in any area to campaign for the ANC,” he said.
Nehawu became the second Cosatu affiliate to withhold electoral support for the ANC after the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), which had over 300 000 members at the time, did so in the run up to the 2014 general elections.
The government has had a major fallout with public sector unions after going to court to oppose parts of the 2018 wage agreement that could have seen salary increases of 4.4% and 5% from April last year.
In January, the Labour Appeal Court in Joburg ruled that the wage agreement was unlawful and contradicted the constitution because it had become unaffordable to implement since public finances were battered by Covid-19.
The matter is now before the Constitutional Court after an appeal by the unions.
Last week, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said the government would continue with its eff orts to cut the public service wage bill by over R300-billion in the next three years.
Also read: Province bids farewell to top official
Saphetha said the government had set a bad precedent by not honouring the wage agreement.
“Our government has set a bad example and other private sector unions are worried about that and they are starting to observe or get a signal of such a behaviour,” he said.
The union communicated its decision to cut its ANC electoral support at Cosatu’s central executive committee (CEC) meeting last week.
The CEC was deeply divided over support for the ANC, a fierce discussion that had to be deferred to a special sitting at a later stage.
Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla said the reason the federation was going to have a special CEC on the ANC support matter was because affiliates had expressed “different views”.
So disgruntled are the workers with the ANC that a discussion on the SACP contesting elections is back on the table.
ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe had not responded to a request for comment by the time of going to press.
You may also be interested in: AKA set for for lobola indaba
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa. To Subscribe to Sunday World, click here.
Sunday World
