South African Strike Will Slide Into `Anarchy' If Police Join, ANC Says

story by Bloomberg
written by Nasreen Seria and Antony Sguazzin
photo by Reuters

A strike by 1.3 million South African state workers may descend into “anarchy” if police, traffic and prison officers join the wage dispute tomorrow, the secretary-general of the ruling African National Congress said.

The strike, which began on Aug. 18 after labor unions rejected an offer of a 7 percent pay increase, shut schools, delayed exams and saw patients turned away from state hospitals.

The scheduled action by 145,000 police and prison officers and a planned walkout by 52,000 municipal workers on Aug. 27 are stoking tensions between the ANC and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the labor federation that has backed the ruling party since the end of apartheid.

“We regard that as anarchy,” Gwede Mantashe, the ANC secretary-general, told reporters in Johannesburg today. All parties should “scale down on unhelpful rhetoric.”

Government employees are demanding an 8.6 percent wage increase and a 1,000-rand ($136) monthly housing allowance. South Africa’s annual inflation is currently 3.7 percent.

The South African Municipal Workers Union in Gauteng province will stage a one-day walkout, while 16,000 members in the Eastern Cape province may begin a strike early next week, union spokesman Tahir Sema said today in an interview from Johannesburg. Gauteng includes Johannesburg and Pretoria.

School timetables are being disrupted with examinations being postponed.

Exams Postponed

“The current strike conditions make it difficult to continue with the exams immediately,” the Gauteng provincial education department said in an e-mailed statement today. Preliminary exams for final-year students, which were scheduled to start on Sept. 3, will take place in two weeks, it said.

As the strike worsens, President Jacob Zuma, who is in China on a state visit, should be at home to help revive negotiations that collapsed last week, said Thembeka Gwagwa, general secretary of the Democratic Nursing Organization of South Africa. “Who do you go to” when the unions are unable to make progress with Cabinet ministers? she asked.

The municipal workers’ strike will disrupt services such as garbage collection, vehicle licensing and policing, Sema said.

Cosatu yesterday called on its 2 million members to stage a one-day strike on Sept. 2 to pressure the government to meet state workers’ wage demands. Unions in Cosatu represent workers in industries including mining and carmaking.

South Africa’s rand fell for a sixth consecutive day, trading at 7.3864 to the dollar as of 3:56 p.m. in Johannesburg, from 7.3741 late yesterday.

To contact the reporters on this story: Nasreen Seria in Johannesburg at nseria@bloomberg.net ; Antony Sguazzin in Johannesburg at asguazzin@bloomberg.net .