2 February 2021

The South African Communist Party (SACP) in the Western Cape welcomes the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) award delivered on Tuesday, 2 February 2021 ordering the ANC in the Provincial Legislature to reinstate nine dismissed workers, affiliated to Nehawu. The nine Nehawu affiliated workers were unfairly dismissed on 8 October 2019.

The CCMA award ordered the respondent, the ANC, to reinstate the nine workers with retrospective effect to 1 January 2020 and back-pay them. The award or order can be described as a landmark order that will serve as a lesson to many ANC deployees who, when deployed, contemplate firing the existing workforce for the benefit of their cronies and factionalist interests.

The SACP applauds Nehawu and the federation, Cosatu, for the effective and successful representation of the workers who were victims of poor, arrogant leadership and endemic factionalism within the ANC. In a number of Provincial Alliance Secretariat meetings, we warned the ANC against the destructive route it was taking for dismissing workers who are its members and activists. This decision is an indictment to the caucus leadership and a clear demonstration of their failure to grasp the basics of what the national democratic revolution is about, to which workers are the primary motive force.

Hence, the SACP in the Western Cape has always characterised the dismissal of these workers as nothing but a complete act of sabotage, an antithesis of the ideals of the Freedom Charter. It is unthinkable that an ANC led caucus in a province where everyone is needed would decide to act in a manner that portrays it as insensitive to the rate of unemployment.

Against this background, the SACP in the Western Cape calls on the ANC in the province to act against all those who were involved in the irresponsible and counter-revolutionary practices of subjugating and condemning the workers into poverty and unemployment. Further, the monies spent to pay lawyers for this case must be taken from all those who presided over the dismissal of the workers. The SACP also reiterates its call for the overhaul of the political leadership of the ANC in the legislature.

Issued by SACP Western Cape
Benson Ngqentsu
Provincial Secretary
Mobile: 0827966400