Unions, meant to protect the working class, have become a curse

Apparently one of the demands of the striking public health workers is an increase in medical aid contributions so they, too, can  partake in the delights of  the private health sector. In other words, they don’t like the taste of their own medicine. The irony of it.

Unions have become a curse on this country, almost a danger to society. To demand a wage increase of 10% or more plus perks, when the state is literally bankrupt, is utter madness. But they always get what they want, however unreasonable it may be. The weaklings at the top buckle eventually. They are comrades, after all. You scratch my back… 

Employers ultimately give in because they often have to negotiate with a gun to their heads. To call it negotiation is a euphemism. Unions do no such thing. Their modus operandi is intimidation and outright thuggery. It’s not me saying that. The South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) this week   excoriated Nehawu members as bullies and thugs after strikers stormed a Sadtu workshop in the Eastern Cape in an attempt to force those attending to join the strike.

“We view this attack as a declaration of war and we will do whatever is in our power to protect our members,” said Sadtu general secretary Mugwena Maluleke. Sadtu “has now accepted that Nehawu is an opponent and not a sister union, and shall be treated as such”.

Suddenly the penny has dropped. All one can say is: “Where have you been all this time?” One suspects that there’s a lot more to this than a few skirmishes at a workshop. Is the camaraderie between comrades about to be a thing of the past?

But as patients ran the gauntlet of violent strikers, the government lay low. The coast was clear for the strikers to trash and burn. Apart from rousing himself to defend Bheki Cele, President Cyril Ramaphosa  never uttered a word of rebuke. Complaining about Ramaphosa’s failures often seems like flogging a dead horse. It’s fruitless.

Perhaps he was still recovering from the heavy lifting which was the reshuffling of his jaded cabinet. That was tough. No walk in the park for the president. It took him all of three months, mulling and head scratching, to present us with this damp squib. The deadwood has been left undisturbed, which probably explains why ministers keep their heads below the parapet at the first sign of trouble.

Cele (he looks more haggard by the day, doesn't he?) was nowhere to be seen as strikers roughed up anybody who dared to come near a health facility.  And by the time Ramaphosa finishes his term next year, Angie Motshekga will have been minister of basic education for 15 long years, inflicting ignorance on our children. During that time, Panyaza Lesufi, her loquacious spokesperson, has been able to talk his way to the premiership of Gauteng. One thing one can say about these people is that they do take care of each other.

Now that Zizi Kodwa is sports minister perhaps it wouldn’t have been a bad idea to create a section of Bosasa alumni in the cabinet, headed by the president himself. Gwede Mantashe, who moonlights as the party chair, would be a valued member. Had Nomvula Mokonyane, and not Maropene Ramokgopa, been roped into the cabinet, that would have helped the alumni on the gender front. Pity the thought seems to have escaped the president.

By the time Ramaphosa finishes his term next year, Angie Motshekga will have been minister of basic education for 15 long years, inflicting ignorance on our children

One wonders though what must have been going through chief justice Raymond Zondo’s head as he was swearing in Kodwa, the man he has condemned as corrupt in his report. Was Ramaphosa having the last laugh on Zondo, or simply humiliating him? And did I hear somebody say Ramaphosa is fighting corruption? It’s like what he’s doing with his cabinet: he conveys his intention to cull it by expanding it. It’s called the long game.

These people are a breed apart. The striking health workers’ yearning for private medical care, turning their backs on the paradise they’ve created for everyone else in the public sector, may seem hypocritical, even hilarious, but it’s how members of the new elite roll.  They preside over the decaying and trashing of public services because the poor state of these facilities won’t affect them. They and their families don’t use them. They have private security and hide behind high walls; so the soaring crime rate becomes a figment of somebody’s imagination.

Would the rail network have been allowed to collapse if the minister or parastatal officials were using public transport? A few years ago, there was some breast-beating among ANC types when the then health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was admitted to Charlotte Maxeke hospital. We do use public facilities, see?

It later turned out she was in a private ward. Even Sadtu members, inclined to strike at the drop of a piece of chalk — the toyi-toyi seems to be part of the syllabus — don’t send their children to the schools where they teach. They can down tools at will or toyi-toyi to their heart’s content,  happy in the knowledge that their children are receiving better,  uninterrupted education at former model C schools or private institutions. Unfortunately it is the poor who suffer. They have no alternative but to contend with soaring crime, hospitals without sheets or medicine, and poor transport, especially as they live far from their places of employment.

Hearing our waBenzi talking about the poor as “our people”, one would swear they’re referring to their private property —  slaves, in other words — or, on a charitable interpretation, that they’re at least straining a sinew to improve their lot. But such a world is foreign to them. And on the strength of the  evidence, they don’t seem to care.