According to a report in the Daily Maverick today the South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) is in ‘crisis as ordinary members rebel against national office bearers they accuse of gross financial mismanagement and undermining their constitution. The officials have struck back with a purge of members who’ve asked difficult questions. The case heads to court on Monday’.
Go to ‘Authoritarianism for Beginners’: The crisis of leadership in Samwu and the union movement by Dale T. McKinley first published today in the Daily Maverick.
Brief extracts
All of this has been playing itself out right in front of our eyes for some time within much of the union movement. Tragically though, the propaganda model employed has, to a large extent, succeeded in obscuring and deflecting the concomitant realities in a self-serving shroud of political and organisational mysticism. However, the ongoing and escalating crisis within Samwu has now more fully exposed the hidden cancer that is eating away at the union body politic.
The sparks that set off the present fire in Samwu are as simple as they are telling. The source, in each case, has been the union’s NOBs riding roughshod over the mandates and decisions of constitutional structures.
This is a report that appeared today 23 September 2014 on SA Labour News
War of words between Samwu and splinter group SOS rages on
The New Age reports that according to Moses Miya, deputy general secretary of the SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu), the internal conflict rocking the union was not affecting the general membership, but this has been denied by Mohau Mokgatla, who was fired as the provincial secretary and is now one of the leaders of a group calling itself Save Our Samwu (SOS).
“Members are highly affected by a lack of services. The national office bearers have hired bodyguards who are preventing general members from accessing the headquarters in central Johannesburg. Those members are not being serviced,” Mokgatla claimed. SOS leaders claim that about R136m from the union’s coffers are unaccounted for, an allegation Samwu’s national leaders have vehemently denied.
SOS members took the national office bearers to the South Gauteng High Court last week in a bid to have their suspensions and expulsion from the Cosatu union reversed, claiming it was unconstitutional. Judgment was reserved on the matter. Miya was defiant yesterday saying: “The members are not affected at all (by the internal strife). Our members are not buying into this SOS propaganda, they don’t care about that.”
• Based on a report by Luyolo Mkentane at The New Age
Samwu national office bearers ordered by high court to reinstate 10 “removed” leaders
This report appeared on the website of SA Labour News today.
Read this report by Shanti Aboobaker in full on page 4 of The Star of 1 October 2014