WORKERS at the South African Post Office have been on strike for 10 weeks, a protracted, sometimes vicious industrial action that has been notable for one salient fact – the government’s apparent unwillingness to sit down and thrash out a settlement.
We revealed both the malaise that grips the massive state-owned enterprise and the factors at the heart of the labour dispute several weeks ago.
There has still been no movement.
Cynics would argue that that’s because the post office is antediluvian, a Jurassic throwback in a digital age of instant communication and privatised courier services.
The reality though is less sanguine. The majority of our citizens, particularly those outside both the urban areas and the empowered middle class, rely on the post office for everything from the payment of grants to distance learning materials, their savings and, yes, parcels and letters.
For the rest of us, the fact that our Aarto fines aren’t reaching us – or the loathed TV licence reminders for services that we might long have discarded in favour of commercial entertainment – might be an unexpected bonus, but it does not allow us to evade our responsibilities as concerned taxpayers.
The post office is vital to our country. What should be concerning all of us, whether we depend upon it or not, is why it is being run so inefficiently and – according to our reports – ineptly and why we are not forcing the government to do something about it. Whether it works or not, it costs money – and in all likelihood will need a taxpayer-sponsored bailout to put it back on its feet.
Why is the government, with all its talk of service delivery and good corporate governance, not holding Minister Siyabonga Cwele to account? Why is the minister, who as our erstwhile intelligence minister was unaware of his drug-smuggling wife’s activities, unaware of or unconcerned about this latest calamity on his watch?
It’s unconscionable that an institution of this magnitude can be allowed to drift rudderless for so long.
We deserve answers.