Theto Mahlakoana takes an in-depth dive into the events that led to ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa being booed at a Cosatu May Day rally.
JOHANNESBURG - The events in the lead-up to and following the moment when President Cyril Ramaphosa was booed off stage by workers affiliated with Cosatu have exposed the depths of the weaknesses within the country’s largest and once influential labour federation and the labour movement at large.
It was also public servants who are, in the main, affiliated with the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union and others belonging to the police union, Popcru.Sources said that Cosatu leaders had been warned but chose the bliss of playing ignorant with the hope that they would be redeemed of having no hand in the action should the disruption go ahead.
Some in Cosatu have suggested that she had to choose her words correctly considering the federation’s September elective congress, albeit that this played no role in the events on Sunday.The government’s decision not to hike the salaries of public servants in the third year of the 2018 wage agreement, an action that has largely been described as an attack on collective bargaining.
As industry leaders such as Sibanye-Stillwater refuse to budge, strikes drag on for months due to the short-sightedness of unions that play their strike hand too early, with the difference margins between demands and offers too wide, then the gaze turns to the government. At the fear of losing favour with members, union leaders deferred the responsibility to see the strike to its eventual end without securing the R1,000 increases being demanded to Ramaphosa. And that is how the president found himself at the receiving end of insults and jeers on Sunday.
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