SA’s largest public service union, Nehawu, admitted on Tuesday that it did not “go all out” in campaigning for the ANC before last week’s municipal elections.
The union, which has taken the government to the Constitutional Court for reneging on a 2018 wage agreement, attributed the poor support it gave to its ally to budgetary constraints.
The governing party got just 45.6% of voter support nationally, its worst performance since coming to power in 1994.
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) is Cosatu’s biggest affiliate with more than 280,000 members. Cosatu is a key ally of the ANC and has been supporting the party in every election since the dawn of democracy 27 years ago.
In the build-up to the local government elections on November 1, Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi assured ANC leader Cyril Ramaphosa that the labour federation would wage a “relentless campaign” for the ANC.
However, the ANC failed to achieve a clear majority in five of the eight metros and some municipalities, and may well need coalition partners to run them.
In a media briefing on Tuesday, after Nehawu’s national congress held in Johannesburg from November 3-6, newly elected president Mike Shingange said it will be unfair for the union to appear to be shocked by the election results.
Been coming
He said the 2016 municipal elections in which the ANC lost control of the crucial metros of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay to DA-led coalitions indicated that “South Africans are running out of patience and the ANC is running out of time”.
“In 2015 we talked about the need to pay attention to the metros, and in 2016 we lost those metros. It would be unrealistic to say what has happened now is [was unexpected] … it has been coming,” Shingange said.
Asked whether Nehawu had campaigned for the ANC, Shingange said, “Yes, we did. But we did not campaign in a manner that we usually campaign.”
Due to budgetary constraints the union did not print T-shirts and pamphlets, or offer its vehicles and officials for campaigning.
“We did not do so … but we did not stop workers from campaigning. But we were not all out as we would have done [in the past] because we had not the financial capacity to do so.”
Shingange said one way of raising resources for the ANC campaign would have been to increase members’ subscription fees. “But we could not ask workers to increase their subscription fees to fund the campaign of a political party that did not give them increases.”
Angered unions
Nehawu and other public sector unions approached the Constitutional Court on August 24 to challenge last year’s ruling by the Labour Appeal Court that upheld a Treasury decision not to implement the final part of a three-year wage deal due to a lack of money.
The failure to implement the last leg of the wage agreement, which would have cost R38bn, signed at the bargaining council in 2018 that the government now claims is invalid, has angered unions. The apex court has reserved judgment.
In July, the government reached a one-year wage agreement with unions for 2021/2022 that included a 1.5% pay progression increase (an increase linked to years of service) and a monthly cash gratuity on a sliding scale of R1,220 to R1,695.
A clause in the offer states that if no agreement is reached by March 31 2022 on the 2022/2023 salary adjustment, the cash allowance will continue to be paid to all employees. The offer translates into an 11.7% wage increase for the lowest-paid public servants.
Meanwhile, Nehawu called for heads to roll at Eskom over the latest stage 4 load-shedding, which Eskom says is due to generation capacity challenges. The power cuts occur as Grade 12 pupils are writing their final exams.
Shingange said the power outages “are tantamount to destroying their future…. We call for accountability in the Eskom board.”
On Monday, the Black Business Council called for Eskom CEO André de Ruyter and the board to step down over the prolonged blackouts.
The council said the Eskom leadership is “completely overwhelmed, inept and out of its depth”, and should resign as there is no prospect of any improvement.
Update: November 9 2021
This article has been updated with additional information.
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