M&G: Three horsemen visit Durban

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-10-16-three-horsemen-visit-durban

Three horsemen visit Durban
NIREN TOLSI | DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA – Oct 16 2008 06:00

In the past weeks the streets of eThekwini appear to have been preparing for the horsemen of the apocalypse.

For three weeks a wildcat bus driver strike has left miserable commuters huddled in lashing rain waiting for taxis or simply forced to walk to their destinations.

The thunder of electric storms sounds like the hooves of Pestilence’s horse drumming in anticipation as the rubbish piles up in the rain because garbage collectors have also been on strike. Nineteen municipal buses and five trucks from the city’s Durban solid waste (DSW) department have been torched — the flames resembling War’s red horse.

The beachfront was a wreck too. From Umgeni River mouth to Addington Beach near the harbour, the Golden Mile was strewn with broken glass and the carnage of a debauched end-of-term celebration by schoolkids, cleaned only a weekend later by scab labour.The chaos has been exacerbated by the malfunctioning traffic lights that have become as ubiquitous to Durban as bunny chow.

This week opposition parties lambasted the municipality for lack of leadership during what the DA called “the biggest crisis the city has encountered in a very long time”.

DA caucus leader John Steenhuisen said he found it “incomprehensible” that the council’s executive committee had not been called out of recess: “The city is being devastated and yet the mayor [Obed Mlaba] feels there is no need to call a meeting. This is really pedestrian leadership. These issues aren’t even on the agenda for next week’s exco meeting,” said Steenhuisen on Wednesday.

Municipal manager Mike Sutcliffe, meanwhile, feels there is a “deeper political issue” behind the strikes, which he said are part of a common thread linked to “criminally motivated xenophobia” earlier this year. Sutcliffe refused to expand on this third force hypothesis.

A more obvious explanation is that the crisis is the result of government policies gone awry.

The bus drivers’ strike was triggered when the city bought back its bus fleet from Remant Alton at the end of August for R405-million after selling the service for R70-million in 2003 in a black economic empowerment deal. Despite the buy-back, Remant Alton will continue running the service and disaffected drivers are demanding to be re-employed by the municipality. The municipality has refused, claiming it is not allowed to function as both regulator and operator.

The garbage build-up came after the city outsourced parts of its clean-up operation to independent agencies, causing 200 temporary workers to go on strike, demanding permanent employment by DSW.

Alfred Dludlu is spokesperson for the South African Agent Labour Brokers Workers Movement, a body created to deal with the demands of both bus drivers and cleaners.

He said that what should have been an opportunity for small enterprises to tender for contracts, with employees also benefiting, has been hijacked by a “corrupt politically connected” cabal.

“We want permanent employment, not the slavery of agency work. There is a lot of corruption involved in who gets the cleaning tenders and these people pay us as little asR1 200 a month,” said Dludlu.

While the DA’s Steenhuisen has called for a code of practice to ensure outsourcing of municipal functions does not lead to economic opportunism, Sutcliffe refuted the notion that the current situation turned a blind eye to workers and was anti-poor.

He called the rubbish collectors’ demands “absolutely outrageous” and tantamount to “kidnapping”. Sutcliffe said the municipality would hire more permanent cleaners in the next two years but there would be “no jumping to the front of the queue”. Sutcliffe also dismissed the notion that greater vigilance by the municipality when handing out tenders and contracts might have averted the two strikes.

This is despite repeated criticism levelled at Remant Alton since 2003 for its unreliable service, constantly breaking fleet and poor working conditions. In 2006 the provincial transport department took 63 unsafe Remant Alton buses off the road, with then director general Kwazi Mbanjwa describing them as “mobile graves”.

“When we worked for the municipality we were earning R7 000 upwards and when we started at Remant Alton we earned R4 000 a month without benefits. In 2008 we are still nowhere near the R7 000 we were earning in 2003,” said one bus driver, Famine hovering above.

Remant Alton has several politically connected businessmen, including Diliza Mji and Rajan Naidoo, on its board. Its executive officer, Paul Rush, said an agreement, which included the rehiring of more than 900 drivers fired two weeks ago, was reached with the various unions last Friday, but it was rejected by drivers. Remant Alton announced this week it would close “indefinitely”.

Bus driver Bongani Ndlovu said his co-workers had formed a committee to deal with their demands rather than turn to the unions “who are doing nothing for us”. “Everything at Remant Alton is upside down,” said Ndlovu, claiming drivers had “not seen” the benefits of a 30% stake they were promised in 2003 and that provident fund money had been deducted but not deposited into accounts.

With trucks burning, allegations of striker intimidation and a city march planned for Friday, eThekwini still awaits the final horseman: Death.