Not booing, but doing

South Africans are in trouble if ‘booing’ is praised. Those who should really not be booing are workers and the unemployed because it is they who bear the brunt of our challenges as a country. They have the most to lose but also the most to gain through engagement.

Yet engagement must be treated with caution. It could lead to a pacification or co-option of union leaders, developing into a situation where the interests of management or government are perceived to be trumping those of workers. Breakaway unions or wild-cat strikes occur precisely because unions are not able to maintain their legitimacy with the workers.

A stark illustration of this loss in faith in the unions by workers happened before the Marikana tragedy. Mine workers, and drillers in particular, felt that their interests were being subverted to please the ruling class. The perception was that the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) were protecting the interests of the government and business more than the workers.

So much did these union leaders, government and business work hand in glove that Senzeni Zokwana, the president of NUM and a known protagonist in the Marikana massacre, later became a among other demands. Since then management has offered 6 percent, R30 increase in transport allowance and R100 increase on the housing allowance.

This is nowhere near the inflation rate which is currently sitting on 6 percent and 1112 percent for food.

With estimates of between 70 and 80 percent of unemployment in some parts of Makana, it is suggested that every wage earner in Grahamstown supports approximately 44 other people in this city. Workers, in particular, have to care for family, extended family and even neighbours.

Compounding all of this is the structural inequality that exists in salary scales at Rhodes.

Mimicking apartheid-era wage scales, the top three administrators at our university earn on average of R2 million per year, whereas the average among support staff is at R200 000 per year

In others words, the top three are earning 10 times the amount of lower earning workers. The salaries of these three administrators being in the same region as a provincial premier or national deputy minister and in a university that is in financial ruin. Ramaphosa, who visited Rhodes last weekend, would therefore have felt at

Photo: Sue Maclennan Members of Rhodes University employee union branches of Nehawu and NTEU picket outside the University's main administration building on 25 April.