Workers from the ANC’s head office, Luthuli House, staged a picket outside the party’s 5th National General Council (NGC) at Birchwood Hotel and OR Tambo Conference Centre on Monday, demanding that their salaries and benefits be paid.
Alliance partner leads protest
The picketing was led by the ANC’s alliance partner, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU).
The employees stood at the main gate with placards pointing out their daily struggles, highlighting that school fees must be paid and that third-party payments such as medical aid had fallen behind.
This latest protest takes place as the ANC faces ongoing financial troubles. Sunday World previously reported that this is the fourth time in one year that ANC head office workers have gone unpaid, raising questions about how the NGC itself is being funded given the party’s tight finances.
NEHAWU deputy secretary at the Luthuli House branch, Dan Semenya, told Sunday World that the union was picketing because of delayed salaries and unpaid provident fund and medical aid contributions.
Nonpayment of wages a recurring issue
“We really don’t want this matter of salaries to be limited to November because it has been a recurring issue. If I would remind you that in 2022, in the policy conference, picketing was on the basis of the same issue. We are here today, three days later, we are still dealing with the same issues,” said Semenya.
He said they had chosen the location because senior ANC leaders were gathered at the NGC, and workers wanted leadership to hear their concerns directly.
Semenya said some employees only discovered that their medical aids were unpaid when they visited a doctor. He said this created serious risks, especially when members needed urgent healthcare.
Need to prioritise internal problems
According to him, pensions were also at risk, and he said the ANC should preserve its character of a caring movement by fixing problems inside its own organisation.
“It cannot be that the leadership is not able to communicate, particularly management, on these small issues that if membership has been suspended, members must be told so that they must not find it when they go to medical institutions or doctors,” said Semenya.
He added that while payments had been promised, and some members had received part of what was due to them, a lot of members are still not paid.
