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Major strike hits public sector in South-Africa
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Major strike hits public sector in South-Africa
Tens of thousands of public sector workers in South Africa have been heeding calls for a nationwide strike since the weekend for better pay and conditions.
Central Johannesburg was brought to a standstill as around 10,000 striking workers marched through the city. Yesterday, the police even fired rubber bullets to disperse a crowd of nurses taking part in the ongoing strike, wounding several, state radio reported. Police also arrested 20 nurses in an incident at a hospital in the city of Durban, the radio said.
Along with healthcare workers, teachers, police and airport workers were also among those affected by the strike supported by a total of 17 unions representing more than a million public service workers.
The ministry of Public Services Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi warned that workers in essential services who striked were liable to be disciplined. Essential services workers are banned from striking under the Labour Relations Act.
The unions are looking for a 12-percent wage increase and improved benefits. The government is offering 6 per cent although the annual inflation rate is 6.3 per cent.
Eight months of negotiations have failed to deliver a breakthrough. Union representatives have said an increase of between 9 and 10 per cent would be acceptable. At Helen Joseph public hospital in Johannesburg only patients deemed emergency cases were being admitted for treatment. Elective surgery and outpatient visits had been cancelled. Large numbers of nurses had stayed away from work, two intensive care doctors who refused to be named said. The situation in the wards was “shocking” with only one or two nurses for every 30 patients, they said.
The government claims that it cannot afford the unions’ demands, which it estimates would add 200 billion rand (28 billion dollars) to its wage bill.
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PAY BACK TIME
Liberia’s Taylor boycotts war crimes trial</B>
■ Liberia’s former President Charles Taylor boycotted the opening of his trial in The Hague for war crimes in Sierra Leone yesterday, saying he had lost faith in the UN-backed court. “I cannot participate in a charade that does no justice to the people of Liberia and Sierra Leone,” the Liberian warlord said in a letter read by a defence lawyer, who said Taylor now wanted to represent himself. “I choose not to be a figleaf of legitimacy for this court,” Taylor said in the letter. Taylor, 59, faces charges of instigating murder, rape, mutilation and the recruitment of child soldiers in the 1991-2002 civil war that left 50,000 dead. He has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity in a case that prosecutors and human rights campaigners hope will send a signal that nobody can escape punishment for atrocities, including heads of state. Even among Africa’s horrific wars, the fighting in Sierra Leone stood out for its exceptional brutality – casual murder, mass rapes, the hacking of limbs from civilians and the press ganging of child soldiers as young as eight.
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ANTI-G8 SUMMIT
<B>Africa’s destiny in its own hands</B>
■ About a thousand anti-globalisation and anti-poverty campaigners convened in Mali yesterday for a forum to counter the G8 summit of rich states due in Germany this week. The five-day summit in Sikasso, a Malian town south of the capital Bamako, will tackle debt, food security and immigration, as well as the creation of an alternative to the World Bank. Participants were expected from Benin, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Europe, said Barry Aminata Toure, head of Mali’s African Coalition for Debt and Development, which groups about 60 NGOs. Toure blasted the G8 for reneging on aid pledges it made at the 2005 summit in Gleneagles.
“The rich countries did not keep their word, (and) this is why it’s up to the African countries, countries of the south, to take charge of themselves,” said Toure. “The ‘all for show’ of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, controlled by the capitalists, no longer works. We must take charge of our destiny,” she said. The G8 gathering in Scotland two years ago vowed to increase aid to developing nations by $50bn a year by 2010, of which half would be earmarked for Africa, but nothing really concrete was done.
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