Numsa supports singing of song rejoicing in killing and hurting the ‘boers’

THE country’s biggest union, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), has defended the singing of an allegedly racist struggle song at a Johannesburg company which led to the dismissal of some of its members.

The eight employees of Duncanmec sang a Zulu Struggle song that included the lyrics “mother gets happy when we kill/ hurt/ hit the boer” and “my father gets happy when we beat the boers, climb on top of the house and kill them”.

The company, which specialises in designing and manufacturing of truckmounted or towed equipment, wants the singing of Struggle songs banned in the workplace as they apparently cause fear among white employees.

The company fired the employees in April 2013, but they were later reinstated by the Metal and Engineering Industries Bargaining Council (MEIBC).

Numsa, which has 34 0000 members, maintains that even in egregious cases of racism in the workplace, the notion that dismissal is the only appropriate sanction is inconsistent with fairness.

“It is therefore submitted that the applicant’s (Duncanmec’s) contention that a racist act of misconduct axiomatically requires dismissal cannot be sustained,” reads the union’s written submissions.

The company claims that while it is true that “so-called Struggle songs” had been used as the basis for political protest during apartheid, this justification has dissipated with the advent of the new democracy and the constitution – espe- cially in the workplace.

In its heads of arguments, Duncanmec said political protest was permitted in public areas and need not be in effect concealed within the conducting of workplace disputes.

“Political protest has migrated out of the workplace. The so-called Struggle songs such as the song in this case… should equally have migrated out of the workplace,” said Duncanmec.

The company said there couldn’t be any justification to sing a song at the workplace during an employment dispute, or direct the song at the employer, in which it is propagated that the employer’s management be hurt or hit, simply because management is white.

Numsa has argued that the song was an old Struggle song sung to signal defiance of authority in the form of the apartheid regime and racialised domination.

According to Numsa, the company should have pursued the statutory remedies available to it if it believed its employees had committed hate speech.

But the company insists that once an employee has been found to have committed an act of racism, dismissal is the only appropriate sanction regardless of the context or surrounding circumstances.

Numsa has told the Constitutional Court that it (the apex court) had previously made it clear that regardless of the nature of the misconduct, an enquiry must always be held to determine whether dismissal is a fair sanction.

The union believes that the MEIBC was not required to determine whether the song was hate speech as this would have exceeded its powers.

“The lengthy discourse on hate speech contained in the applicant’s heads of argument is completely irrelevant to the issue before the arbitrator (MEIBC), and therefore before this court,” said Numsa.

Duncanmec wants the decision by the MEIBC to reinstate eight Numsa members overturned by the Constitutional Court after it failed to do so in the Labour and Labour Appeal Courts.

The matter will be heard later this month.