eThekwini workers have been on strike for almost weeks now. Picture: Khaya Ngwenya / Independent Newspapers
By Professor Bonke Dumisa
South Africa is now such a lawless country, everyone just does whatever he or she pleases wherever they like and at whatever time they like; without ever caring a damn about the negative consequences of their actions.
As a person who regularly drives across the different parts of our country, South Africa, I always ensure I listen to Rob Byrne, the national traffic reporter, when gives his national traffic peak time report for the whole country on radio. I listen to these traffic reports so that I may be able to know well in advance if there will be any traffic problems on the roads I am driving through. One thing I have noticed is that Rob Byrne will, on average, always mention at least one or two road closures or disturbances purportedly due “service delivery protests”.
In most instances, such roads are impassable when such “service delivery protests” are taking place. Many a times this results in many workers arriving very late at work or even totally missing work those days. It is the same thing with many school-going children who either arrive very late at school or even totally missing school that day.
Do you know that we have roughly more than 2,000 “public service protests” which interfere with public roads per year in South Africa. The Minister of Police, Bheki Cele, officially reported that in 2021 we had over 900 “public service protests” between August 2021 and January 2022?
In all these instances I have mentioned here, the people who organise such “public service protests” feel they have a constitutional right to violate other road-users equally important constitutional rights.
This reckless violation of other people’s rights is very pervasive into other sectors of life in South Africa, inclusive of South African public service workers who continuously hold the public “hostage” as their bargaining collateral damage in forcing the state to sometimes make very unreasonable decisions. This is what I want to discuss here, but I had to give a very lengthy background for you to understand the following story about the violation of my and our constitutional rights by Ethekwini municipality workers, who work for the Water and Sanitation Section.
On February 27, the traffic came to a standstill inside the busiest West Street, in Ethekwini, with the striking municipal workers dumping rubbish on that busy street; and they drove the big municipal garbage trucks to completely block the streets. They did this to spite their employer, deliberately pretending as if the Constitutional Right, as contained in Section 23(1)(c ), allows them to do all the wrongs things they did there.
Their blockade of the busy streets inside Ethekwini was a direct violation of the public’s Constitutional right of the freedom of movement, as contained in Section 21 of the Constitution.
Ethekwini municipality quickly issued an official statement labelling what those workers were doing “an illegal strike”. That Ethekwini statement did not make up for all the violations of everyone’s constitutional rights already suffered.
As if those Ethekwini municipality workers had not done enough wrong for the day; all of a sudden most of the Ethekwini ratepayers found that their water had been deliberately cut. A video was circulated on social media platforms where one man was proudly stating they are going to shut down all the dams (meaning water reservoirs) and all related water infrastructure. A woman then added that they are doing this in pursuance of the Ethekwini municipality workers’ demands. They vowed that water will remain cut until all their workers’ demands are fully met. At the time of writing this opinion piece, by this week still without water.
This Ethekwini municipal workers action of cutting the public’s access to water is in violation of many constitutional rights of the general ratepayers. This is in violation of the residents’ right to have access to sufficient food and water, as contained in Section 27(1)(b) of the Constitution, which guarantees such a right to access sufficient water.
These workers’ cutting of the water could have easily resulted in many ratepayers being exposed to environments that are harmful to their health or well-being. We have been forced to go to far away friends places to access water. This means we must continuously carry buckets and other containers of water to the toilets, bathroom, and the kitchen. Is this what makes these Ethekwini municipal workers excited that they are actively violating our constitutional rights?
There were some schools that had to be closed because of these reckless actions by Ethekwini municipal workers. This was in direct violation of those students right to education, as contained in Section 29 of the Constitution.
What is more sad is that those Ethekwini workers have been directly and indirectly intimidating other workers who want to work. This is in direct violation of at least three constitutional rights. Section 18 of the Constitution guarantees “everyone the right to freedom of association”; hence, forcing everyone to be on strike, or else…, is a further violation of two other constitutional rights. Section 16(2)(b) of the Constitution guarantees the general public, including workers, that “no one has the right to engage in incitement of imminent violence; hence these Ethekwini workers violated other workers’ constitutional rights by threatening them should they go to work. This is a further violation of Section 12(1)(c) of the Constitution in that the Constitution that guarantees that “everyone has a right to be free from all forms of violence from either public or private sources.
Is the time not ripe for South Africans to start asserting themselves from bullies who feel they are constitutionally entitled to violate other people’s rights in their own pursuance of their own rights, especially because Section 36 of the Constitution, the Limitation of Rights, is clear that “The Rights in the Bill of Rights may be limited only in of law of general application to the extent that the limitation is reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom taking into account many listed factors.
Having had my constitutional rights violated the way they were by the Ethekwini municipality workers prompted me to alert you, as the general public, that no one has a right to willy nilly violate your constitutional rights as if you don’t matter. I do blame and publicly criticise the African National Congress (ANC) for its political convenient complicity on this matter; they do not want to publicly criticise people and its public service workers when they violate the general public’s constitutional rights. The ANC does this for the fear of alienating their potential elections voting base. But I believe political parties and trade unions can learn a lot from reading the histories of other countries.
The ANC and public service trade unions must give themselves time to read about the Winter of Discontent in the United Kingdom, from November 1978 to February 1979, when the country was still being run by the “worker-friendly” very powerful United Kingdom’s Labour Party. There was a very long public servants strike during which almost all the public sector institutions and structures were completely rendered dysfunctional; and they say there was foul smell throughout the country, and people could not even be buried. The general public, including many members of the Labour Party were very angry when the Labour Party failed to reign in their trade union comrades.
There were national elections in 1979; and it was comfortably won by the capitalist Conservative Party under a very capitalist Margaret Thatcher who became the first female British Prime Minister on May 4,1979. She immediately implemented widespread privatisation processes, removing government from direct control of most crucial economic sector entities. It was because of these actions she became well known as The Iron Lady.
This means the Labour Party became the architect of its own demise from political power; and the British trade unionism has never been that strong ever since. The same can be said about the Labour Party which has only won national elections only once or twice in the past 45 years since 1979.
* Professor Bonke Dumisa is an independent economic analyst
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.