PARLIAMENT MEETINGS DISRUPTED
Strikers grab MPs’ documents
IMPORTANT committee sittings had to be postponed after striking workers snatched documents from MPs desks in parliament yesterday.
The meetings of the standing committees on small business development, justice, correctional services and the police were rescheduled.
This led to clashes between the police and the workers as the officers struggled to remove them from parliament ’ s offices and precinct so they could protest outside the gates.
Scenes similar to those witnessed during the fees-must-fall protest played themselves out again in parliament as riot police used stun grenades to disperse the workers as the unprotected strike by the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) entered its fourth day.
Sonwabile Ngxiza, a researcher in the office of the deputy speaker, was detained by police after being dragged away from the National Council of Provinces (NCOP).
He was later released and has a swollen purple bruise on his head.
He said he had been handcuffed and had sustained some scratches.
A group of riot police also dragged one man wearing a red Nehawu T-shirt down the steps and to the ground while crowds of onlookers standing behind a police line screamed “no, no, no ”.
One woman implored the police holding the line to let them go to where their colleagues were standing on the NCOP steps, saying: “If they are going to shoot, they must shoot us all.” But the police would not budge. Medics later also wheeled a woman away in a wheelchair. She said her foot had been injured.
In the police committee, Nehawu ’ s branch chairperson for parliament, Sthembiso Tembe, told MPs to leave the room and said “no parliament committee is going to sit until our demands are met ”.
After leaving the room, MPs could not continue because the workers had taken their documents.
They also disrupted the justice and international relations com-
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mittees before heading to the NCOP where they sang on the steps.
Police, however, used at least six stun grenades, with red, green and yellow smoke billowing over the precinct in a bid to disperse them.
UDM MP Nqabayomzi Kwankwa, EFF chief whip Floyd Shivambu, ANC deputy chief whip Doris Dlakude and DA leader Mmusi Maimane tried to reason with the striking workers and the police.
“Two wrongs cannot make a right. So afford us an opportunity to handle the situation the best way we know. Please comrades,” Dlakude pleaded with workers.