Pretoria – The Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) on Thursday warned of traffic disruptions in the city centre as thousands of workers affiliated to trade union federation Cosatu are expected to join the nationwide strike.
Spokesperson for the JMPD, Wayne Minnaar, said the first memorandum would be handed over at the office of Gauteng Premier David Makhura.
“Traffic will be disrupted in the Johannesburg CBD today by a Cosatu protest, which will start at the Mary Fitzgerald Square in Newtown. The protesters will hand over the first memorandum at the office of the premier (Makhura), then move along Henry Nxumalo Street, and turn left into Marshall Street, up to the where a second memorandum will be delivered,” said Minnaar.
“They will then return to Newtown along Pixley ka (Isaka) Seme Street and Rahima Moosa Street. Motorists should avoid these streets between 10am and 3pm this afternoon as officers will divert traffic along the routes.”
The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) said it supports Cosatu’s socio-economic national strike “which will be taking place under strict Covid-19 restrictions”.
Popcru encouraged its members who are off-duty to join in the strike actions in their provinces.
“With more than 200 million jobs lost to the pandemic globally, and another 100 million still at risk and large numbers of the unemployed, the vast majority being women, this upcoming Cosatu National Day of Action provides an opportune moment for workers and the general public to voice out their dissatisfactions on various issues, including the reversal of budget cuts that led to an unacceptable wage freeze in the public service,” said Popcru’s spokesperson Richard Mamabolo.
“Our criminal justice cluster has also suffered under the circumstances, and we share the sentiments that if there is no change in the country’s economic policy direction, the already deteriorating standards of living of working people will be worsened, and with this steep decline, the work of reducing and fighting crime will likely bear no fruit.”
Cosatu and its affiliate unions will be pushing for their bid to force the government and private sectors to stop the freezing of wages, retrenchments and the sale of state-owned companies.
Various union members will march to government departments and businesses to demand that they fix the economy and open job opportunities to hundreds of people to address growing unemployment in the country.
Union leaders have been deployed to all nine provinces, and most of them will approach the provincial offices of the Department of Employment and Labour under Minister Thulas Nxesi. In all provinces, Nxesi’s offices are expected to be served a copy of a memorandum detailing the tough economic circumstances facing people living in those provinces.
Cosatu this week announced that it fully supported the unity shown by unions in the mining sector, including the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), Solidarity and Uasa, who were co-operating in negotiating a wage increase with Sibanye-Stillwater in Rustenburg.
On Wednesday, NUM also announced that it was throwing its weight behind the Thursday strike.
NUM acting general secretary William Mabapa said they were issuing a call to all their members in mining, energy, construction and metal to join the strike.
“They can either join the planned activities across the country or withdraw their labour by staying at home on the day.
“The strike is legally protected and is focused on pushing both government and the private sector to act to fix the economic mess that the country finds itself in, and take seriously the issues that are affecting workers and South Africans in general,” Mabapa said.
IOL