Pretoria - Traffic in the Pretoria CBD came to a standstill during the EFF march staged yesterday to intensify its call for the City of Tshwane to reinstate more than 120 workers sacked for participating in an unprotected strike action.
Party activists and some residents aggrieved after being evicted from land they occupied illegally in Atteridgeville joined hands to demand that the municipality must reverse decisions to fire workers and evict people.
They congregated at Church Square in the morning before they departed to Tshwane House, where they chanted Struggle songs and called for mayor Cilliers Brink to receive their memorandum of demands.
Protesters vowed they would not leave Tshwane House until they had positive feedback from the mayor.
Members of the SAPS and Tshwane Metro Police Department were on standby to main law and order.
EFF’s City of Joburg Public Safety MMC, Mgcini Tshwaku, said the party was in support of the dismissed workers and wanted a decision to fire them to be reversed as a matter of urgency.
“We are in support of the reinstatement of workers because they were actually protesting for a genuine cause. As the EFF, we are on the side of the workers, the working class and the poor. We are on the side of those who are being victimised. We are not going anywhere. We are going to be here until someone comes out to receive our memorandum, preferably the mayor,” he said.
He highlighted that the three-months strike has brought service delivery to its knees.
Regarding the plight of the evictees in Atteridgeville, he said: “As a cardinal pillar of the EFF we are encouraging the people that when they see beautiful land they must occupy it because it is theirs. Remember our land was taken and it has not been returned. So we are encouraging the people to occupy all the beautiful land. Even the land close to town, because our people want to come to work.”
He threatened that the party was still going to intensify its land occupation programme in Tshwane.
According to him, the land which was occupied has been unoccupied for almost three years.
The march, he said, was also about calling for the insourcing of security guards.
“As you know, in Joburg we have been able to insource 3 000+ people, but Tshwane has only done phase one and insourced 1 000 in all. But now there are almost 1 500 that still need to be insourced,” he said.
The march coincided with an ordinary council sitting at Tshwane House council chamber, where ActionSA wanted to table a motion calling for the reinstatement of the dismissed workers.
Since the strike that started in July, the municipality has been struggling to deliver services such as refuse removal, and commuters were left stranded after Tshwane Bus Services operations were suspended due to intimidation.
Striking workers have also been accused of perpetrating violence by torching municipal vehicles, including as a bakkie, a water tanker and trucks.
Inside a council chamber, ANC chief whip Aaron Maluleke said his party has constantly demanded that workers must be reinstated and workers must be paid.
He challenged the utterances by EFF regional leader Obakeng Ramabodu, who told protesters the ANC didn’t care about the workers’ plight.
“We care about the matter of the workers. We are not in the beauty contest of views,” Maluleke said.
The City has steadfastly said it won’t budge in its stance to dismiss workers.
Brink previously said the metro cannot pay contractors to fix leaks, restore electricity and repair sewer lines, and then pay the salaries of employees who sign in and refuse to do these things.
“If we pay those salaries, we will be incurring fruitless and wasteful expenditure,” he said.
Cosatu in Tshwane marched in solidarity with striking workers, demanding wage increases of 3.5% and 5.4% for both the current and previous financial years.
Pretoria News