South African CP on East TImor

rc-am rcollins at netlink.com.au
Fri Sep 10 09:35:06 PDT 1999


chris wrote:


> What is your recipe for blocking capital flight from South Africa
while the socialist struggle takes place?<

i think this is the ANC's recipe, below.

Angela _________

Please note, in particular, the end of the following article. In fact, the South African police opened fire yesterday against students members of the Congress of South African Students (allied to the ANC) marching in Johannesburg downtown. Minister of Education, Kader Asmal, recommended the police to act "mercilessly" against "disruptors", while ANC spokesperson, Smuts Ngonyana, said that the shooting will hopefully teach the students that any time they want to demonstrate they must consult the government first. Maybe this is an example of that "revolutionary discipline" whose lack was blamed on the trade unions by ANC Chair, "Terror" Lekota at the congress of COSATU last week...

Franco

------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Independent Online http://www.star.co.za/

Cosatu threatens further mass action

August 25 1999 at 10:08AM

Own Correspondents and Sapa

Disgruntled public servants turned out in their thousands in major centres throughout the country on Tuesday in an unprecedented joint labour action to back their pay increase demands.

Union officials warned that further mass action could follow if their conditions were not met by Government.

While the Government has promised it will talk with union leaders, there is no indication that the Cabinet intends meeting the unions' pay demands.

Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi told protesting workers outside Parliament in Cape Town that the Government would meet their leaders in the Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council "within days".

Union officials threatened continued mass action if the Government did not resume pay talks.

"If it takes months and months of confrontation, we are prepared," the secretary-general of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Zwelinzima Vavi, told about 40 000 protesters at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, the scene of the largest march in the country.

Cosatu president Willie Madisha said: "If we come back, it will be in another form, and it will be too ghastly to contemplate."

Representatives of the 12 unions are scheduled to meet in Pretoria again on Friday to plan their next move.

In a statement later on Tuesday, Fraser-Moleketi confirmed the Government had implemented its 6,3 percent final pay rise offer, amounting to R3,28-billion.

She offered little indication that her department would entertain further pay talks with the unions, which are demanding an average 7,3 percent increase.

Cosatu estimated that 570 000 workers took part in the protests, but police and media estimates were much lower.

Durban's courts and schools seemed to bear the brunt of Tuesday's 10 000-strong march by public servant unions to the city centre.

Although the city centre was clogged by the marchers, health and police services had few, if any, disruptions.

At the end of the march, South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu) provincial secretary-general Ndaba Gcwabaza handed over a memorandum at the City Hall containing their grievances to provincial minister of agriculture Narend Singh.

Singh pledged to deliver it to KwaZulu-Natal Premier Lionel Mtshali.

Schooling for thousands of KwaZulu-Natal pupils came to an abrupt halt on Tuesday.

The hardest-hit schools were in former Indian and African areas, particularly in the Durban area.

Strike action appeared to have had little or no impact at formerly white schools, where schooling continued uninterrupted.

The chairperson of Sadtu in KwaZulu-Natal, Daniel Mabuyakhulu, said it would be back to normal at schools from Wednesday.

Many cases were not heard at the Durban Regional and District courts on Tuesday due to strike action by interpreters and correctional services members.

Senior public prosecutor of the regional court, Amy Kistnasamy, said of the 16 courts, only two were functioning normally on Tuesday.

The strike had a violent spin-off in Braamfontein, Johannesburg on Tuesday, when police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades during a Congress of South African Students (Cosas) march, when some of the marchers went on the rampage and damaged shops and cars.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list