Johannesburg - Amid heightened fears around political violence, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) said yesterday it had not reported death threats to authorities against its leaders since they began two years ago - instead trusting its own internal intelligence and security.
This approach backfired on Monday, when Gauteng Satawu secretary Chris Nkosi was gunned down in what appeared to be a hit, in a week of heightened tensions in the workplace.
The home of the union’s national president, June Dube, was petrol-bombed on the same evening.
Allegations of violence amid striking workers also erupted at the Medupi power station in Limpopo yesterday and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) begins its Conference for Socialism today.
Yesterday Nicholus Maziya said he could not give detailed reports into what Satawu’s own internal intelligence had picked up but that the police had now been informed, following Nkosi’s death.
“We have given the police anything possible that we have. The plot (to kill) has started for some time. That the life of the late comrade Chris was in fact taken because of a plot, is correct,” he said.
He said there were emails and a Facebook page that suggested Nkosi would be killed.
Yesterday Satawu released an email from a respondent in a labour court case between itself and union members who faced disciplinary action from the union for violence during a march to Satawu House in Johannesburg.
The sender of the email, Lucky Zondo, said in the email, sent two weeks ago, that “no thugs carrying guns” would be allowed into any shop stewards meetings.
Contacted for comment yesterday, Zondo said that the reference in his email to the gloves being off in was in response to another email in which Nkosi himself had told suspended members the same thing.
“Chris (Nkosi) said the gloves are off, I was quoting him,” Zondo said.
Maziya said there was a plot to assassinate Dube, as well as a plot to kill himself and Satawu general secretary Zenzo Mahlangu.
The union plans to hold an urgent central executive committee meeting – its highest decision-making body between congresses – as soon as a date can be finalised.
Labour Bureau