Pretoria - Cosatu is the latest organisation to launch an attack on City of Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink, calling for his resignation.
The mounting pressure for his head comes at the backdrop of a municipal employees’ strike action that is entering its fourth month.
The capital city has been in a catastrophe, with service delivery taking a huge hit since the strike began in July.
Workers are demanding a pay increase but the metro has refused to budge, saying its coffers were empty.
To make things worse, city management has fired more than 100 workers who participated in the unprotected strike.
Cosatu led a march to Tshwane house on Friday, as part of the International Day of Decent Work, to deliver a memorandum to Brink, demanding that he reinstate the 123 dismissed workers and pay the 5.4% increase.
“Brink if you can’t rule, leave the office, if you cannot govern this municipality resign with immediate effect,” Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi said.
She launched an attack on Brink’s party, the DA, saying its days of governing municipalities in Gauteng were “numbered”.
She said the DA had segregated black people and insulted them by not giving them what was due to them.
This comes as the country gears up for the 2024 national elections.
“We can’t be treated as glorified slaves in a democratic dispensation in our country. We fought for this democracy as workers,” she said.
“The DA has no respect for workers. Workers are voters and when I say his days are numbered, I mean exactly that. We are going to elections in 2024, and a decision must be made.”
Last week Cope’s Ofentse Moalusi, in Tshwane, was the first to call for Brink’s resignation.
He called his term of office as mayor a “disgraceful failure” and accused Brink of “plunging the city into a state of disaster”.
“I have observed him in the past few months moving our city from one disaster to another. His handling of our workers’ plight is indicative of a leader who is not in touch with the reality or the hardships that our workers are subjected to.”
Even though ActionSA, which is part of the Tshwane coalition government, has not outright called for Brink to resign, the party has launched an attack on Brink, taking the strike matter to the coalition management committee, calling for intervention, and for Brink to go back to the negotiating table.
The party is accusing Brink of reneging on the 2021 agreement between the city and the workers that pay increases would be implemented.
The DA has since rejected the resignation calls.
Its chief of staff, Jordan Griffiths, has said Brink had the support of the multi-party coalition.
Pretoria News