A COURIER company wants the Labour Court to uphold its decision to fire an employee for referring to its owners abelungu, a Nguni term that translates to white people.
In its internal disciplinary hearing, Globeflight Worldwide Express found Namhla Ngcwenga guilty of using a racial language and axed her.
Said in isiXhosa, Ngcwenga’s utterances directly translated to “abelungu (white people) do not want to pay us and want to fire us”.
As heard in a voice clip Globeflight obtained, Ngcwenga further stated: “We are nicely being dismissed. This is a company of white people and you know white people do whatever they want to do in their company.”
Ngcwenga, who was employed as proof of delivery supervisor at Globeflight, took the matter to review at the National Bargaining Council for the Road Freight and Logistics Industry and triumphed.
She denied that labelling white people as abelungu was racist or derogatory. Bargaining council commissioner Gail McEwan ruled in her favour.
“Having done some research with my Xhosa-speaking colleagues I established that the word is not necessarily always derogatory,” McEwan said in her ruling.
Globeflight has now approached the Labour Court in a bid to have McEwan’s award set aside. The group cited McEwan as a second respondent in its application, but largely as a formality.
The application, which Ngcwenga and her union the National Transport Movement opposed, was heard at the Cape Town Labour Court last week. The parties now await judgment.
The Star obtained papers deposed before the court. Globeflight argued that McEwan’s finding was “unlawful, irrational and unreasonable and stands to be reviewed and set aside”.
In Globeflight’s heads of argument, Joburg-based advocate Smanga Sethene said McEwan “failed to properly consider the context of the remarks that Ngcwenga made”.
This context was that the remarks were said in anger to a union official, Sethene said.
He maintained that McEwan would have found the remarks racist if she “properly” considered the context.
“The Second Respondent failed to consider the racist connotation and untruthfulness of the impugned remarks,” said Sethene in the court papers.
“Further, the Second Respondent failed to consider that Ngcwenga was a shop-steward who plays a crucial role as a link between the employee and employer.
“The Second Respondent also failed to consider that the impugned racist remarks were not uttered in jest but in anger directed at the managers of the employer or employer itself.”
Sethene drew parallels between this case and that of Meyer Bester, whose “swart man” (black man) utterance was declared racist and derogatory by the Constitutional Court.
Enraged over a parking spot at Rustenburg Platinum Mines in 2013, Bester uttered the words “verwyder daardie swart man se voertuig”. These translated to “remove that black man’s vehicle”.
Sethene said the apex court’s 2018 judgment in the Bester matter was clear that even a “seemingly neutral language may be offensive and constitute racism depending on the context and the intention of the speaker”.
“In sum, the context matters most and the Second Respondent has disregarded even the guidelines that the apex court articulated in Bester judgment.”
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