The City of Tshwane has blamed criminality following a spate of attacks and robberies perpetrated against employees delivering municipal services in Soshanguve, one of the most impoverished areas dogged by service delivery challenges in the metro.
Tshwane metro spokesperson Selby Bokaba said the municipality had appealed to communities to stop the assault, attacks and robberies on its employees. He said city workers were refusing to go to Jukulyn in Soshanguve, which was notorious for the attacks on employees, without a police escort.
Bokaba said the reasons for the attacks varied. “They range from pure criminality and frustration with prolonged power outages ... the attacks are pure criminality as our workers are robbed of their cellphones and money. In the past three months alone we have had 11 attacks on our workers.”
The attacks will have a “debilitating effect” on service delivery as workers will begin to refuse to enter certain areas without police protection, he said. “Most of our workers are committed and hardworking individuals who are passionate about providing services and these sporadic attacks are demoralising them,” he said.
“We call on communities to refrain from attacking our employees, or else they will suffer the consequences as workers will refuse to attend to service interruptions in those areas.”
The City of Tshwane, which has been experiencing power outages in the past weeks, said in a statement on March 20 that its technical teams had managed to restore power to most areas.
In a statement on March 18, executive mayor Randall Williams said the metro faced a series of challenges from “small groups of illegally striking workers” affiliated to SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu).
Samwu is an affiliate of Cosatu, a key ally of the ANC, while Tshwane is among the Gauteng metros that fell under DA-led coalitions following the 2021 local government elections in November.
Williams said the city “cannot be held to ransom by narrow political interests” and apologised to residents “for the service delivery disruptions that they have faced as a result of this illegal strike”.
Samwu Tshwane regional secretary Mpho Tladinyane denied that Samwu members were on strike and lashed out at Williams for “driving a wedge between workers and community members”.
He said as a result of the “lies” that Samwu members were on strike, disgruntled residents of Jukulyn in Soshanguve were assaulting city employees and robbing them of their personal belongings, including cellphones, when attending to service delivery concerns in the area.
Tladinyane said: “Despite our many efforts to engage with the city, the acting city manager and the mayor have on numerous occasions blamed the disruption of services on members of the union, claiming that members of the union have embarked on an illegal strike.
“We place it on record that Samwu has not called for a strike in the City of Tshwane as of yet. The union is not led by amateurs who do not know the procedure to be followed when embarking on a strike action.”
Tladinyane said the union was concerned that the “claims made by the city, that workers have embarked on an illegal strike, have resulted in community members turning against municipal workers”.
“Over the weekend, a municipal worker from the electricity department was brutally assaulted by community members in Soshanguve as these community members believed the lies peddled by the city. This was not the first time that workers have been attacked by community members, especially in Soshanguve. We have on numerous occasions pleaded with the city for the safety of workers following the increase in such attacks,” he said.
Bokaba said the short-term measure was to have members of both the Tshwane Metro Police Department, and the SA Police Service “to escort the teams when they go out to attend to service interruptions”.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.