THE Solidarity Movement has vowed to use the courts to fight the Green Paper for social security and reform which is being proposed by the minister of social development Lindiwe Zulu.
In a statement, the movement said if Zulu continues with the legislation, this will lead to court action.
This comes after Zulu published a Green Paper on comprehensive social security and retirement reform for public comment on Wednesday.
In the paper, the government proposes a mandatory pension and insurance system that will see employers and employees paying up to 12% of their earnings into a state-run national social security fund (NSSF).
The paper said about 6.2 million formal sector workers, primarily low-income earners, informal workers and informal sector workers would be excluded from such arrangements.
“Such an arrangement must be mandatory, should provide adequate but affordable benefits, and should pool risk across the workforce. It should be designed to interact with non-contributory social assistance as well as contributory arrangements, both statutory and voluntary,” the green paper said.
According to Solidarity, South African employees are already overtaxed and tired of paying more taxes for fewer and fewer services.
Solidarity chief executive Dirk Hermann said: “Workers in South Africa are tired of seeing their hard-earned money being wasted by the state. At best, the state is just inefficient and clumsy, but more often funds like this and the NHI are simply an excuse for looting and corruption.
“Apart from the new tax proposals, the tax rate is already high, and ordinary people have to incur expenses for which they are already taxed. On top of that, tax money is still looted at a large scale,” he said.
The movement said its executive council will meet next Friday (August 27) to discuss proposals for comprehensive plans for legal tax protest.
“It is time for taxpayers to realise their power and to stand up against a government that does less and less, but which wants to take more and more. We refuse to see our workers become slaves of the state. We are not working for the government; the government works for us,” Hermann said.
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