Thanks, Peter van Heusden
----- Forwarded message from Richard Pithouse <pithouse at pixie.udw.ac.za> -----
Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 15:25:04 +0200 From: Richard Pithouse <pithouse at pixie.udw.ac.za> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win95; I) To: debate at sunsite.wits.ac.za, Azania at sn.apc.org Subject: DEBATE: NEW REPRESSION IN DURBAN - PLEASE READ AND CIRCULATE
IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING THE ENGEN STRIKE AND CONSEQUENT REPRESSION OF WORKERS AND ACTIVISTS.
"What stank in the past is the present's perfume"
- Lesego Ramplokeng
The reporting of the events unfolding at the ENGEN refinery in Durban has been exceptionally, and viciously, reactionary. The articles are full of talk of 'enraged mobs' etc and no journalists are putting the real anger that does exist in to any context. Moreover the vicious repression being faced by workers and their supporters at the hands of ENGEN and the police, who are quite openly working together against the workers, is not being reported, let alone questioned.
In Durban resistence to market fundamentalism is growing exponentially. Organic connections are forming between communities facing evicitions and water and electricity disconnections in Chatsworth, Wentworth, Isipingo and Mpumalanga. And connections are being formed between these communities and students and environmentalists and people working for affordable access to treatment for HIV and AIDS. A new web of resistence is emerging.
But the backlash is growing just as quickly. Legitimate political actions are increasingly being represented as criminal in the media and treated as criminal by the police. Activists are being threatened, arrested and shot at.
Please circulate this message from Saranel, from the Workers' College, as widely as possible. ENGEN are hosting a press conference in a couple of hours at the Durban Club (until recently a no women, Blacks or Jews 'club'). It is imperative that ENGEN spin doctors should not be allowed to dominate public perceptions of the events of the last 2 days.
richard
From: saranel benjamin <saranelb at workerscollege.org.za> (031 3040260 - 0837775286 )
Dear Friends,
I have enclosed in this message a press statement that was released by workers at the ENGEN refinery in Durban. These workers have been hired by labour brokers. The company has subjected these casual workers to degrading working conditions, altering their wage rate and working hours . The company have now absolved themselves by saying that they are not the employer of these workers - it is the responsibility of the labour broker. These workers generally work under no protection from the law and are therefore subject to terrible working conditions. ENGEN is a huge transnational company. We have been able to see the weight they can throw around, even so much as to have the police on their side. Several of our activists who are assisting these workers are now being persecuted (similar to apartheid style) for assisting the workers. We realise that fighting TNCs is an incredibly difficult struggle and that ordinary workers generally don't win these fights. It is a clear cut case of how the state protects and safeguards the interest of TNCs like ENGEN at the expense of its own citizens.
Please, we need your urgent support to try to publicise this issue as much as possible and to gather support. Please use your networks or access to the press to get this out. If you have any questions you can mail me. Thank you all...
PRESS STATEMENT BY THE ENGEN WORKERS' CRISIS COMMITTEE
DURBAN , KWA-ZULU / NATAL 24 May 2001
Last night at approximately 21h00, the Wentworth SAPS opened fire on an unarmed crowd of people who assembled at the police-station after a community meeting resolved to do so. The reason for the peaceful assembly was in order to request that Engen-access badges confiscated by the police on Tuesday, 22 March 2001 be restored to workers working on the shut-down. Latest reports are that four people have been wounded by police gun fire. In response to the heavy-handed behaviour of the police, a SAPS vehicle was damaged and certain windows were broken but at no stage did this justify the firing of live ammunition on citizens. The violence on the part of the crowd was provoked by sniping from the Wentworth police-building, presumably, by officers on duty there.
The Wentworth incident brings into sharp focus community resentment at the one-sided role played by the SAPS in the on-going labour dispute between workers employed by various labour brokers and the Engen oil-refinery. Blame for the violence is to be laid firmly at the door of Engen. The dispute in the township which was discussed at the packed community
meeting relates in the first instance to Engen's unilateral reduction in wage rates. However, a much more powerful reason for community anger relates to Engen's subversion of the labour laws of this country by using the device of labour-broking to shield it from the responsibilities of employing the contingent of shut-down workers that it uses for about 4 weeks a year. It
is despicable in this day and age that Engen treats labourers and artisans as if apartheid was alive and well. Other areas of dispute between the Wentworth community and the giant multinational relate to the continual high level of pollution pumped out
into the air of the Durban South Industrial Basin, by Engen and their hiring of gangster-foremen.
The meeting was attended by respected anti-apartheid leader and biographer of Nelson Mandela, Fatima Meer who appealed for calm after the police-shootings, narrowly escaping being shot herself. Reverend Deacon Frankson of the Roman Catholic Church, councillor Preggie Naidoo of Isipingo and Enviromentalist Bobby Peeke addressed the meeting calling upon Engen to be a "moral employer" and to cease their exploitation of workers.
The community demand that the SAPS desist from siding with big companies. Capt HR Naidoo and Capt Oliver must immediately be suspended for their corrupt and one-sided handling of this dispute in Wentworth. During the course of the latest saga, their racism and lack of respect has been plain to see. The badges which the SAPS confiscated from workers invoking the unconstitutional National Key Points Act have now been handed to Engen, in clear violation of the Criminal Procedure Act.
The days of Engen's belligerence are now at an end. Despite numerous appeals for negotiation and mediation by neutral arbitrators, these offers, in a late night communique, were rejected by lawyers acting for Engen. Engen lawyers also threatened to interdict two persons associated with the dispute. This latest rejection of mediation comes in the wake of the failure of representatives of Engen as well as Barry Rawlins of Fluor ( a key labour broker) to pitch up for a scheduled mediation session on Saturday, 19 May 2001 on the basis that Rawlins wished to watch a Super 12 rugby game.
We continue to call for independent arbitration of the dispute. We condemn the shooting by the violence on unarmed and peaceful citizens and call upon all socially conscious citizens to boycott Engen until the crisis has been resolved.
UPDATE :
There are two incidents that indicate the grossly unfair way in which the police have handled the istuation. On the 22nd May 2001 while workers were meeting at Ogle Road grounds, a gun-wielding ex-policeman waded into the crowd. This was in full view of the police. He proceeded to beat up one of the workers, pointed his firearm at him and threatened to shoot him. The
gunman, who is well known to the local police, was taken into custody and immediately released. The worker who was assaulted was then arrested when he came to lay a charge.
The second is the deliberate withholding of bail to the persons arrested last night. Allegations have surfaced that the arrested workers have been badly beaten.
We call on an immediate investigation into the Wentworth police station. It is a call that the community made over a year ago.
We call on the press to scrutinize the documents that show our willingness to negotiate. These have all been rebuffed by Engen which claims they have no interest in the matter but rest assured they will be conducting press statements and bringing court action, This scurrilous labour practice must stop.
We call on the press corps not to treat this as a crime story but as an issue of fundamental worker rights. We do not have the money to advertise in the media or call you to the Durban Club but we plead with you to hear our voices and the exploitation and degradation we have endured.
We say again, we are prepared for the sake of our families and our country, that we want mediation or even arbitration.
Contact * tel. 461-2263.
_______________________________________________________________________
From: Heinrich Bomke <che at law.co.za>
For those following the recent political clampdown in Durban, I enclose below an article from yesterdays Daily News, which was the headline story. The homophobe and neo-liberal mayor, Obed Mlaba's, threats have, it appears, been realised.
Pictures: Krisendra Bisetty
Caption:1: ((Neg 3a)) Orlean Naidoo, chairwoman of the Westcliff Flat Residents Association
Caption:2: ((Neg 8a)) Widow Muniamma Pillay (left) and divorcee Tholsie Singh, whose electricity supplies were disconnected last week, listen intently to the plan of action being formulated yesterday
Caption:3: (Neg 12a/13a)) Angry Chatsworth flat tenants demonstrate outside the home of local councillor Rocky Naidoo yesterday
Caption:4: ((Neg 14a)) Officials of the Westcliff Flat Residents Association hold back angry Chatsworth flat tenants who wanted to storm the home of local councillor Rocky Naidoo, who was not present
By Krisendra Bisetty
IN A FRENZYstirred up by alleged broken promises and insensitivity by the Unicity Council, enraged flat tenants of two communities in Chatsworth yesterday declared war on city authorities.
More than 300 tenants of council-owned flats in Westcliff and Bayview vowed at a meeting yesterday to resist moves by the council to disconnect water and electricity supplies because of unpaid bills and to occupy the homes of local councillors.
Significantly, they have the support of residents in three other Durban suburbs - Wentworth, Isipingo and Mpumalanga where similar problems are being experienced. Unicity Mayor Obed Mlaba, who was not aware of the looming trouble, last night expressed surprise that the situation "has reached that level where people are going to take the law into the own hands".
Mlaba warned residents to expect the law to take its course if things got out of hand.
In a day of high drama, the tenants were bussed after the meeting to the Chatsworth home of local Democratic Alliance councillor Mr Rocky Naidoo, who was, however, not there. It was just as well, because some of angry tenants, who stormed the building and banged on the windows, threatened to lynch him. They took out their frustration on a neighbour, hurling abuse on the startled man who had apparently criticised them.
The tenants, led by Professor Fatima Meer and Dr Ashwin Desai of the Concerned Citizen's Group and Mrs Orlean Naidoo of the Westcliff Flat Residents Association, earlier resolved to:
* Occupy the homes of Naidoo and Minority Front councillor Mr Visvin Reddy
who is an executive member of the Unicity Council. They vowed to remain
there until their grievance is resolved.
* Occupy the office of the council's director of housing, Mr Sbu Gumede who
has allegedly not found time to listen to their grievance; and
* Form a band of mobile "defenders of communities" who would race to houses
where the electricity supply was being disconnected. They plan to confront
and "chase away" the city technicians.
The organisers, who launched their intensified campaign in a church hall, want their action to be in the form of passive, militant resistance. In a fiery speech, Desai attacked the council, alleging it consisted of "fat cats who are only looking after themselves".
"Not one more person's water or lights will be cut," he said, adding: "We will break the law openly."
Residents have already been flouting the law, illegally reconnecting electricity supplies. Meer said a memorandum was sent to Gumede last month and that he had allegedly agreed to a moratorium on further disconnections.She had been trying to arrange another meeting with him without success. The disconnections, she said, started last week and was expected to continue this week.
Orlean Naidoo said the tenants' struggle was going on for three years. "When you live in poor communities, there is a lot of disregard shown at you". Some residents who were employed as cleaners by the council paid R14 a day on bus fares and earned R22 a day. "They can't afford to put food on the table," she said.
Mr Derick McBride, representing the Wentworth community, said: "We believe that to deprive us of the right to water is an act of violence." In Mpumalanga, people were being deprived of basic rights, local community leader Mr Sbu Zamisa said, adding that to fight "unjust moves" by the council was to be met with a police and military force. "That says to us that the council has already declared war on poor people. They are treating us as they don't know the socio-economic conditions which we are living under," Zamisa said.
Mlaba said that to get 6 000 litres of free water a month, consumers had to sign an acknowledgement of debt for a special cut-off mechanism to be installed.
"If people do not acknowledge that procedure and policies, we have no choice in some cases but to take drastic action."
Mlaba, however, questioned the role of pressure groups, saying that apart from highlighting issues, they did not solve problems.
Rocky Naidoo, meanwhile, said he would only meet with people "with an open agenda. You don't just rock up at a person's house with a mob."
Naidoo said the power box at his house was tampered with.
---------------------------------
Naidoo is right. The people did disconnect his electricity was disconnected. But of course, when he orders disconnections and sends in men with guns to effect them, he demands that his actions to be seen as technical rather than political - let alone criminal.
----- End forwarded message -----
-- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844 k*256^2+2083 OpenPGP: 1024D/0517502B : DE5B 6EAA 28AC 57F7 58EF 9295 6A26 6A92 0517 502B