QUOTABLE QUOTES – TRANSFORMATION, NEHAWU STYLE
While the South African government is having a face-off with the country’s national unions over wage increases, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU) is busy conducting a much smaller (but no less radical) protest of its own.
On the day before the debate on Parliament’s budget vote (1 June), NEHAWU members of the Parliamentary staff staged a picket outside Parliament’s gates to protest a wide range of things which, they claimed, were not being addressed – indeed, they were being ignored - by the Secretary to Parliament.
In a statement which was rather conveniently put in every MP’s pigeon hole on 31 May, NEHAWU set out its concerns, of which it had a great many, including things like a lack of proper consultation, unsatisfactory wage increases, restructuring, poor performance management and various other problems.
But amid all of that, one particular gripe stood out as rather ironic. In a statement which lurches from confusing and incoherent to wildly volatile and under a subsection titled “Discrimination of Africans”, was the following extract:
“Unfair employment procedures which are undertaken leading to undesired results which appear as racist to us has been an area of concern [sic]. For example, the Union contested the fact that the appointment of certain staff members should be fair and transparent with a Union member as an observer, with a fear [sic] that without an observer this may lead to nepotism and discriminatory practice. Parliament disregarded our plea, and this resulted in the employment of six Senior [sic] internal people and not a single one is an African. If this is the kind of transformation we are talking about here at Parliament, we are afraid that we may be on a backward movement to apartheid. To our amazement the Secretary of Parliament has approved these appointments despite the fact that the question of demographics was not addressed.”
Thank goodness the ANC has NEHAWU to keep tabs on it - to keep the ruling party on the straight and narrow every time it begins to succumb to the urge to return to apartheid.
What a relief.
That said, the situation at Parliament stands in stark contrast to the situation at Tygerberg Hospital where transformation is in full swing. There the choice for a top medical post was recently rejected by the provincial health department because the hospital choice was white (only white doctors applied).
Patients might die as a result of that decision; but then, if you consider the attitude of the unions toward the nationwide strike (government must take the blame if patients die) that seems to be a justifiable end to political campaigning these days.
If push came to shove, one wonders just how far NEHAWU would be willing to go in this regard.
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| Posted on 11/6/2007
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