A group of suspended members of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) are taking the union to court in a bid to have their suspensions lifted before the union’s congress on Monday.
About 30 suspended Numsa members from various regions around the country claim that their suspensions are intended to prevent them from participating in the upcoming congress, thereby barring them from exercising their democratic right.
Their court case will be heard in the Labour Court in Braamfontein on Friday.
Speaking on behalf of the group, Kwanda Khanyile, the suspended Numsa chairperson of Meyerton, said the group has instructed its legal representatives to argue that the congress cannot go ahead until their suspensions have been resolved.
Khanyile said: “We will be arguing that the Numsa central committee and other regional structures and leaders have acted beyond their powers in the Numsa constitution.
“That constitution gives them no powers to suspend us and there are now 30 of us suspended from five of Numsa’s nine regions, as well as the second deputy president [Ruth Ntlokose]. Nor does it give them the powers to determine that an entire region of the union will not attend the national congress, as they have done with the Mpumalanga region.”
He said the upcoming congress would be unconstitutional because the union’s central committee has not set up the credentials committee to accredit delegates as required by Numsa’s constitution.
“This has not happened. No such committee exists. Without this committee, there will be no constitutionally accredited delegates at the congress. Without accredited delegates, there will be no congress,” said Khanyile.
He said it is hypocritic of the leadership of the trade union to bar its members from participating in the congress after trying to collapse the South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) a few months ago for the same reasons.
“We find it ironic that this is the same Numsa which was prepared to collapse the Saftu congress if suspended Saftu national office bearers were not allowed to stand for office.”
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.
