Pikitup strikers walk back empty-handed

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So the Pikitup strike has finally come to an end after five weeks of smelly rubbish piling up on our streets.

Sad is the state of affairs which is focused on the cleanliness and health status of the City of Johannesburg and its multi-million residents, but equally sad is the fact that the striking employees walked back to their stations in our streets empty-handed.

They were taken through a garden path of false adventure by their union, the South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu), which failed to achieve anything in all its grievances tabled for the strike.

Managing director of Pikitup, Amanda Nair has not fallen, and a decent pay rise has not been announced by the City under a mediation process of the CCMA. The City has only deferred the demands, claiming there were processes being followed and the City would be informed by the outcome of those processes as to their course of action.

As the workers walked back empty-handed, one wonders whether they were not failed by their union which should have only resorted to strike action as the last option after the breakdown of negotiations.

But all said and done, the big guns of the City are eating pretty while the very people who fought on the ground are left hungry to fend for themselves. What is difficult in paying decent wages to low-end workers, most of whom are still black, in the so-called new South Africa?

I am talking here about the foot soldiers, people that bore the brunt of the apartheid regime. I am not talking about people who sat in posh hotels and lavish apartments and air-conditioned office towers in London and New York, sipping tea and downing vodka as we took the apartheid bullets in the streets of Alex and Soweto and other places.

The sad thing is that black leaders, whether in business or political office, are nothing but a replica of their former white masters. We have just replaced the white master with a black-skinned master and our deeds are no different to those of the former white masters.

When are we going to chart a totally new course and order for South Africa? To take this country away from the injustices of apartheid which we’re still perpetuating.

I mean a new clean and fair order for all, not the one of corruption and greed which has become the order of the day in our country today. The ill-treatment of labour during the apartheid years was one of the paramount reasons why people took up arms. It wasn’t just a fight for replacing them in the Union Buildings and to maintain the status quo.