On Wednesday, South Africa’s labour unions and federations united to send strong statements to the government against corruption, gender-based violence, job losses and unemployment, bemoaning the state of the economy. Most protesters at the march were not wearing masks but donned a common stance.

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United Stance

A year ago, students were hailed as heroes when they fought for free education. With spirit, focus and a determination to pull together in a common cause, they won an important battle on the slopes of the Union Buildings to freeze university fee increases for 2016.
Fast forward 365 days and that victory is a fleeting memory overshadowed by 831 arrests  that represent a temporary truce that has been broken. This year, students radicalized. Violence escalated on campuses and out onto the streets. In Braamfontein, Johannesburg, students from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) switched from revolutionaries to petty criminals. In the name of free education, buses were set alight and shops were looted.
In Cape Town, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s budget speech was delivered to the thud of stun grenades outside Parliament. Students also began throwing petrol bombs and smashing police vehicles and library windows.
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It followed a police crackdown where students were placed under curfew, had their dorms raided and leaders arrested. It led to 831 arrests and 411 criminal cases, says South Africa’s Acting National Police Commissioner, Lieutenant-General Charles Phahlane.
“There are those who have bombarded us with calls to withdraw police officials from university campuses. We reiterate that it is the violence and criminal acts being committed on those campuses that have invited the presence of the SAPS,” says Phahlane
Former Wits SRC leader, Shaeera Kalla, was hit nine times in the back with rubber bullets while she stood with her hands raised while protesting on campus. Police maintain the crowd had, prior to this, interrupted a test and torn up papers.
Former Wits student leader, Mcebo Dlamini, was detained and held in prison for three weeks before successfully appealing and being released on R2,000 bail.
In light of the extreme nature of this year’s protests, public sympathy has waned. Phahlane maintains the police have reacted with minimal force even when “attacked and pelted with stones”.
Still, the cries of the students involved in the #FeesMustFall movement remain unchanged – free education for all.
“Conversations that were once relegated strictly to the humanities are spilling over into other departments, faculties and disciplines in ways that will hopefully consolidate them in the future, as repositioning and reconstructive efforts begin to take root,” says Brian Kamanzi, a writer and electrical engineering master’s student at the University of Cape Town.
“Currently, a Bachelor of Science program at the University of Cape Town could cost as much as R50,000 ($3,700), a steep price for education in a country where the average annual income is R88,000 ($6,600).”
“Over the years, enrolment in the country’s 26 higher education institutions has steadily grown and in 2017 it is expected to reach 1,053,420. While the intake of students considerably increased, the government’s contribution to universities’ income decreased by 18.4 percent, with the total state budget for public higher education accounting for only 0.74 percent of the gross domestic product.”
Kamanzi argues an overwhelming number of students need loans for education and are forced into debt cycles.
Concerns have also been raised that the students lack unity.
“This has been particularly disconcerting, as the discourse on inclusion of black radical feminism and representation of women and queer activists in leadership structures and media encounters has visibly given way to popular male figures and increasingly centralized leadership,” he says.
Kamanzi also defends the violent acts of students, saying that they were in retaliation.
“What followed was mass arrests, internal expulsions and court interdicts, including denial of bail in some cases; more than 830 protesters have been arrested since February. At the same time the media has not properly reported on the violence against student protesters, which has escalated to incidences of sexual assault by private security and the police.”
Amid all this, universities struggled to keep their doors open and complete the academic year. The country is also facing a $400-million graduate brain drain.
“Progress in negotiations across the campuses is difficult as many protesters are in jail, suspended or expelled. The success of the movement shall be determined, I believe, by its ability to move beyond the campuses and involve broader society,” says Kamanzi.
The question now is not how these protests will end, but if they will end.

The Valiant Cause Losing Its Way

It had been a long hot Friday afternoon. As I drove home, towards the shacks of Zandspruit in Johannesburg, I could see black smoke. The voice on the radio warned of a service delivery protest as I drove into it. Women and men chanted and blocked the road. Words flew; then rocks, then bricks. A rock smashed into the face of one of the police officers, blood poured.
This is one of the many faces of discontent across Africa. Poor and rich alike feel short-changed in these tough economic times. The poor fight with rocks; the middle class with their bank accounts. People no longer want to pay. Their hard-earned cash, they complain, is wasted by politicians.
A tax revolt is rising. It may be in its infancy, but in South Africa, the threat is being taken seriously enough for Judge Dennis Davis to issue a warning.
In many ways, Davis is Mr Tax. He is head of the Davis Tax Committee, appointed by the Finance Minister to examine how revenue generated by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) can be used to improve the economy. He was a Technical Advisor to the Constitutional Assembly where the negotiations for South Africa’s interim and final constitutions were formulated and concluded.
“It’s a question of where government spends the money. People want to see results with their taxes. If they are not satisfied, they may choose to just stop paying. The greater the level of corruption, the less we will have tax integrity and the greater the possibility of a tax revolt,” says Davis.
Expenditure is through the roof in South Africa. According to Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu in his report for the 2014/2015 financial year, irregular expenditure amounted to R5.68 billion ($355 million). The report says 45% of this was spent by the Education, Health and Public Works departments. Irregular expenditure more than doubled from the previous year in Mpumalanga, a province in eastern South Africa, bordering Swaziland and Mozambique.
“Of the R936 million ($58.5 million) in fruitless and wasteful expenditure incurred in the year under review, R32 million ($2 million) was incurred to prevent further fruitless and irregular expenditure or losses. This normally relates to the cost of cancelling irregular contracts or contracts of non-performers,” says Makwetu in the report.
Due to overspending the budget, unauthorised expenditure amounted to R1.64 billion ($100 million). This is money emptied from the already lean pockets of people in a country where 12 million live in extreme poverty and top earners pay up to 41% in tax. On top of that, over the past decade, residents have been burdened with increases in property, electricity, toll and vehicle licencing fees; yet, potholes and power cuts persist. This is laced with accusations of corruption, an issue which has drawn the ire of veteran champion of the people Wayne Duvenage. He made his name standing up against Gauteng’s infamous e-toll tariffs. He is chairman of the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA), which says its aim is to challenge unfit taxation or the squandering of money.
“The public have become justifiably angry over the squandering and waste of their taxes. [A tax revolt is likely] but is however not a situation I would want or wish for our country and we should do everything possible to prevent such a situation from developing. This is why the Minister of Finance is calling for a positive and participative approach to resolving our problems. The issue, however, is that while a corrupt leadership remains prevalent and connected to the head of state, and other key positions within government and its state owned entities, very little can be done to mobilize a positive approach to addressing the key issues of corruption, cronyism and service delivery. This is what is driving the negative sentiment,” he says.
It appears many other people have also had enough. A survey by  NGO, AfriForum, says  none of the respondents say they are getting their tax money’s worth; 24% say they only pay tax because they are compelled to and 42% question why they should pay tax at all. AfriForum runs a viral #whatarewepayingfor campaign to hold government responsible for the misappropriation of money.
Monique Taute, National Campaign Coordinator at AfriForum, says the government promised to improve education, yet the national pass rate for Grade 12 students declined from 75.8% in 2014 to 70.7% in 2015. It promised to improve security, public order and safety, yet the crime rate increased by 0.09% from 2014 to 2015. It promised to decrease unemployment, yet the International Labour Organisation (ILO) announced in January 2015 that South Africa has the 8th highest unemployment rate in the world. The unemployment rate stood at 25.5% in the third quarter of 2015, an increase of 1.2% from 2014.
“It is clear that the government failed in all three objectives. Taxpayers should have the right to know what they are paying for. From what we see, in the consolidated general report on national and provincial audit outcomes as well as from 2015 statistics, it is clear that government once again failed to fulfil its responsibilities in the 2015/2016 fiscal year. Government is abusing taxpayers’ money. Even though taxes are increased, government does not fulfil its primary responsibilities,” says Taute.
CEO of the SA Institute of Tax Professionals, Keith Engel says people are at a breaking point.
“It is more about expenditure than anything else. People are saying, ‘yes we are paying tax but what are we getting for it?’” he says.
According to Engel, if entrepreneurs reach breaking point, they could play hide and seek with the revenue services.
“[You] won’t do that with the attorneys or accountants, because you will [lie] to your accountants and give them a different set of books to work from. So people can keep two sets of books. In small businesses, the employer might make a deal with you were he says ‘I am going to give you R300,000 but I will give you another R200,000 that we will not tell the revenue services about,” he says.
Alex Poole* (not his real name) who runs a tax revolt Facebook page, followed by 21,000 people, says: “Most people can sense that they’re being [robbed]… I believe all forms of mandatory income taxation are theft. The things its being spent on is so obviously not in the best interest of the country’s needs, people feel more and more ripped off. It now feels like the theft that it is. And the people are rightfully angry about it.”
Engel, however, commended Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan for his 2016 budget.
“The budget was more about expenditure than it was tax. You can see very clearly they didn’t want to break the backs of the taxpayer. He spoke about cutting wages and a lot of government expense which made people a bit at ease,” he says.
SARS doesn’t think a tax revolt is likely. It says its compliance model is designed to foster voluntary compliance and says there is high tax integrity in the country.
“SARS has found the vast majority of taxpayers are fully tax compliant. This is testament to the patriotic and compliant culture of South Africans. In the very odd cases of intentional non-compliance, SARS recoups the taxes, as per the provisions of tax and customs legislation,” says an employee at SARS who asked to remain anonymous.
If Gordhan’s budget cuts don’t show in the numbers, South Africans may think the best form of defence is no tax.

Nothing For Nothing

It had been peaceful as thousands of students from the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) marched down the streets of Johannesburg to shut down UJ. Peaceful, at least, until a rock smashed into someone’s face.
This was the eighth day of the nationwide campaign to scrap university fees. It was gathering pace, as students ran in the spring sunshine you could feel the simmering anger.
Upon their arrival, most of the Wits students retreated and headed to a larger gathering at the African National Congress (ANC) headquarters, Luthuli House, after being refused entrance to UJ. The rest made for the gate – undaunted.
About 20 gigantic security guards, with the bodies of bouncers, stood behind concrete fencing and chained gates.
First words flew; then rocks, then bricks. The students tried to break the chains on the gate. A rock smashed into the face of one of the guards drawing a torrent of blood. The battle raged for 20 minutes, until the chains broke.
The students moved in hesitantly with their hands in the air; the rattled guards, bloodied with bricks in hand, stood by. Their last hope of stopping the students: the small road, over the freeway, that leads to the university.
The guards dashed for the bridge. They blocked hundreds of charging students. Two students fainted in the stampede but the guards stood firm. There was no backing down. Not even pepper spray deterred the determined students.
“They’re throwing stones, they’re hitting us, they’re spraying things on our face. What must we do? Must we look at them and smile?” asks one of the students with tears running down her cheeks.
Eventually, university staff allowed students through; UJ was shut down.
A few kilometers away in downtown Johannesburg, students lay siege to Luthuli House, the offices of the ANC. The ruling party was prepared. It set up a stage and microphone for the protesters; not too surprising for a liberation movement born of protest. But the 103-year-old party, the oldest in Africa, wasn’t prepared for the young fury of 2015.
On this day, even one of the most powerful men in the land couldn’t hold sway. ANC Secretary General, Gwede Mantashe, and the President of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Sidumo Dlamini, were told to come down from the stage and talk to the students on the streets. Students then told them to sit down on the road, they refused. Mantashe was also refused an opportunity to address the crowd.
“ANC must fall,” were the chants that met the sunset from the mouths of the children and grandchildren of the struggle that put the party in power.

Must We Look At Them And Smile?

‘They Keep On Expecting To Get Things  For Free’’

It was like re-living a moment in South African history, going back 58 years with Sophia Williams-De Bruyn, to the place where it all began.
We are outside the Union Buildings in the South African capital Pretoria, and De Bruyn is wearing a dark coat and shades on a cold winter morning.
She was hardly 18 when as one of four women leaders, she marched 20,000 other women to the Union Buildings on August 9, 1956.
Today, she is an elegant, demure grandmother, and the last living member of the famous four who led the protest, the others being Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph and Rahima Moosa.
It has not been an easy journey, and this particular moment stokes many memories of that historic day.
“I had no fear,” she said, as we made our way to Pretoria.
The women had decided that they did not need, or want, passbooks (special identification booklets that limited their freedom of movement) as black or colored women. And as she delivered their angst in a letter to the Prime Minister JG Strijdom, a major supporter of the apartheid government, on that chilly August day, De Bruyn and her comrades set the precedent for Women’s Day in South Africa.
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<div id="attachment_6391" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6391" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-6391" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Sophia-de-Bruyn_Womans-March-300x217.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="217" />The 50th anniversary of the march in 2006.</div>
The 1950s were a tumultuous time in South Africa. Mass meetings were often met with violence by authorities. And political organizations, designed to fight the system, were separated by race. The rule of law, which accorded non-white South Africans the status of second class citizens in their own country, was at its worst.
This was why the Women’s March was the ultimate act of defiance.
It was unheard of in those days for any woman, let alone colored women, to stroll around the Union Buildings, the seat of South African government. For De Bruyn, the buildings housed more than the men responsible for deciding their fate. To her, they were the “Holy Grail”.
And after surviving the travails of getting the women to Pretoria, she was unafraid of any consequences.
The women had journeyed far and raised a fortune to make the march. De Bruyn’s group arrived from the Eastern Cape in two coaches. They sold tea and scones at political meetings for a profit of three pence, and a shilling was earned from serving chicken stew and rice. These little enterprises raised enough to make the long trip north.
Originally, the women had intended to camp outside the Union Buildings for an entire week. But the logistics of that plan were too difficult to follow through. Instead, they organized within their splinter groups and made their way, separately, towards Pretoria. When she saw the women that day, De Bruyn says she was gratified.
“The glory of how they looked, and their dignity and grace, and that determination in lifting their feet in a place where no other African person had done before,” she says.
The women came in droves and that surprised De Bruyn. There were women of every race at the march and she remembers the splendor of that scene.
“It was a splendid day, [there were] women in all sorts of dress – Indian women wore saris, the African National Congress [ANC] women in their green, black and gold and others in their everyday wear.”
She didn’t realize how many they were until she “sat and looked back at them, in their thousands”.
After the march, De Bruyn committed herself further to the freedom struggle. As the 1960s ended, she joined her late husband, Henry De Bruyn, who was exiled in Zambia. While in Lusaka, she took evening classes and studied for her O level certificate exams. Three years later, she moved to Nairobi and earned a diploma in education. The De Bruyns did not return to South Africa until the early 1990s to a short-lived return. Soon after the ANC came to power in 1994, she moved with her husband to Jordan as the first South African diplomats there.
Even when in exile, De Bruyn concerned herself with the freedom of the South African women she left behind. She spearheaded the ANC’s Women’s League in Lusaka and, with the help of then ANC president, O.R. Tambo, forged a place for women in the party. But her concerns have shifted, over the years, to the freedom of younger African women.
“I think our young women have got it in them. Today, the things that are there for them weren’t there for us. What gives me a sense of gratitude is to see our young women and what they can do.”
When speaking about the 1956 march, De Bruyn is humble about her role in the protest. She insists that it was an “event of women” in South Africa’s history and not her own. Yet the memory and the triumph of that August day still drive her.
“It lives on in my psyche,” she says, taking a long, hard look at the Union Buildings.

LOOKING BACK At A Landmark Day

By mid-June, as FORBES AFRICA went to press, there was no sign of an end to the longest mining strike in South African history. For five months, Lonim, Implats and Angloplats – which produces 40% of the world’s platinum – lay idle at a cost of more than $2 billion to the economy.
New mining minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi tried to heal the rift in his first few days in office, but fresh talks fizzled out inside two weeks.
May proved a month of tragedy, farce and scorn in the platinum belt of South Africa. Tragedy as 4,000 hungry women and children of miners turned up for 500 food parcels; farce because of Lonmin’s clumsy attempt to end the strike and scorn from most of the miners.
Lonmin issued an ultimatum for miners to report for duty on May 14 and offered to charter buses. Instead, more than 4,000 Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) members gathered at the nearby Wonderkop Stadium, carrying traditional weapons.
Lonmin claims a few slipped past the strikers to work, but police say there were none.
Regardless, Amcu president Joseph Mathunjwa gave assurances to the traditional weapon wielding miners that their jobs were safe in the protracted strike. He accused Lonmin management of undermining the union by talking directly to employees.
“We have the law on our side. The employers have breached the recognition agreement signed between them and Amcu, the majority union in the platinum sector… Don’t allow them to instigate you to the point you do unlawful things,” Mathunjwa warned.
He rubbished allegations his members were responsible for the attacks on the non-striking miners around Rustenburg. Four people died, several others suffered stab wounds.
Mathunjwa further warned that the police deployment to the platinum belt could lead to another Marikana massacre. In August 2012, at least 34 Amcu protesters were shot dead by police in Marikana.
“If the strike is protected and lawful, why is the government deploying police. To do what?” asks Mathunjwa.
“We are so close to Canaan, there’s no way we are returning to Egypt,” says Jimmy Gama, the union’s national treasurer.
A few kilometers from the stadium, where Mathunjwa left in a fleet of luxury vehicles, the central business district of Marikana painted a gloomy and desperate picture. Many businesses have closed since the miners downed tools on January 23.
On May 19, Lonmin management called journalists to their headquarters in Melrose Arch, Johannesburg, they looked and sounded desperate.
“We are asking who is benefitting from the strike. Are the rising incidents of violence not making the strike dysfunctional?” says Lonmin CEO, Ben Magara.
On May 20, platinum bosses and the union met again at the Labor Court in Johannesburg, stripped to the waist and ready to fight each other over whether employers should directly communicate with their employees or not.
Despite the presiding judge, Hilary Rabkin-Naicker, managing to get the two parties back to the negotiating table, no agreement was reached after a week.
“Reaching an affordable and sustainable agreement with Amcu would be in all of our interests, and that remains our preference. We remain committed to on-going dialogue with Amcu and other stakeholders to find a way to end the strike. The companies welcome the intervention of the Labor Court,” says a statement from Lonmin management before the wage impasse.

Sad Days Of Tragedy, Farce  And Scorn

Strikes have hit Africa’s biggest economy with a vengeance and the losses are high.
Hundreds of thousands of South African employees went on strike, crippling the gold mines, car factories, petrol forecourts, and the national airline South African Airways (SAA) in August and September.
Towards the beginning of September, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) ended a three-week strike of around 30,000 workers in the motor manufacturing industry, after accepting a revised wage offer from  Volkswagen, Nissan, Ford and Toyota.
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However, as car manufacturers returned to work, thousands of petrol station attendants, affiliated to Numsa, downed tools after serving a 48-hour notice of strike action.
Their demands included a R30 ($3) per hour increase and that maternity leave be paid in full.
The SAA employees, affiliated to the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu), ended a 15-day strike a day later.
By far the most expensive strike was the one organized by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in the gold mining industry, which was reported to have cost R32 million ($3.2 million) per day. In 2012, similar strikes cost companies R349 million ($35 million) a day and employees lost a total of R100 million ($10 million) in salaries each day.
The strike was effectively ended when NUM, the United Association of South Africa (Uasa) and Solidarity accepted an 8% wage hike, backing off from its initial demand of 15%.
In addition to the wage increase, the monthly living allowance of miners was raised from R1,640 ($164) to R2,000 ($200).
The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), however, refused to accept the pay deal. The mining companies were taking a hard-line stance and refusing to give in to the demands while the union was threatening a second strike.
The morning after the strike began, when FORBES AFRICA visited the mining area in Carletonville, Johannesburg, a handful of NUM members gathered outside the union’s office at Sibanye Gold mine in Driefontein, as rival union members reported for work.
“An estimated 14,000 miners had downed tools in the area of Carletonville on Tuesday evening. Our members have not clocked in for the night shift at several mines. The strike is on,” says Mbuyiseli Hibana, NUM regional secretary.
Amcu spokesperson, Jimmy Gama, tells FORBES AFRICA the union had not been given a mandate and was considering strike action.
“We remain unchanged to our wage increase demands. We rejected the offered 6.5%. Amcu demands a living wage of R12,500 ($1,250) and R11,500 ($1,150) for underground and surface employees respectively,” says Gama.
All labor unions in the gold mining sector, besides Amcu, have accepted the revised offer and operations at the mines are back to normal.
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The Chamber of Mines had confirmed that it would continue to talk with Amcu in an attempt to get everyone back to work.
“This tentative agreement is encouraging because it signals a number of important developments for an industry battered by labor instability, fast rising costs, declining market conditions, and continued regulatory uncertainty,” says mining analyst and Eunomix managing director, Claude Baissac.
“Unions have been forced to change their strategy from one of expecting large increases to one that is more achievable. If initial demands were completely unrealistic, these demands were largely part of the posturing unions are doing in relation to one another, notably NUM, and Amcu, the disruptive newcomer. They needed to show their members and each other that they will fight on for the best deal.”
That fight is far from over.

Tag: Protest

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

United Stance

The Valiant Cause Losing Its Way

Nothing For Nothing

Must We Look At Them And Smile?

‘They Keep On Expecting To Get Things For Free’’

LOOKING BACK At A Landmark Day

Sad Days Of Tragedy, Farce And Scorn

Strikes Strafe Africa’s Biggest Economy