Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - June 11, 2007
If the labour action is not headed off in the negotiating chamber over the next 48 hours, this country will see the biggest confrontation between workers and the state since the mass stay-aways that helped end apartheid.
It is, of course, ludicrous to compare those protests with the current war over public-service wages.
These protests are perfectly normal expressions of power in a perfectly legal wage-bargaining process.
There is, perhaps, a political agenda of sorts. The unions have made it plain that they do not respect the current government and President Thabo Mbeki, whom they blame for a conservative economic agenda and a generally pro-business orientation.
But the strike has not been about bringing the government to its knees - it has been about the widely held belief that workers are not sharing in the enormous economic advances made under Mbeki's rule.
There is a belief that the elite - Mbeki has just been awarded an increase of more than 50 percent on his salary - are feathering their nests at the expense of the poor.
The fact that Mbeki's increase was decided on by an independent judge is not sufficient to placate these increasingly restless workers.
From where they are sitting, it looks like one member of the elite handing a giant cheque over to a fellow elitist.
The merits of government's argument against the inflationary effects of a large wage increase for public servants are not being considered because of the emotion generated over increases for "fat cats".
The truth is that the government perpetually underestimates the importance of symbolic actions. How much would have been achieved by the President publicly taking an HIV test? It would be of little significance in and of itself, but it would send a giant signal to the people that the cranky Aids theories are finally out the window.
Mbeki probably deserves a big increase, but does he really need it?
If he were to state that he would take the same increase as public servants, you can be sure the strike would lose its impetus.
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