Residents in the north of the City have decided to dump refuse along Roadhouse Crescent due to the eThekwini Municipality waste workers’ strike. Picture: Tumi Pakkies / Independent Newspapers
Durban — Pressure is mounting on eThekwini Municipality Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda and City Manager Musa Mbhele to step down as violent wage protests by angry workers intensify.
Workers affiliated with the SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) and Municipal Allied and Trade Union of SA downed tools last week demanding salary adjustments and permanent employment of workers under the Expanded Public Works Programme.
Both unions have vowed to continue with the strike until their demands are met.
With apparently no solution in sight to end the strike, opposition parties have renewed calls for Kaunda and Mbhele to resign.
The opposition unanimously agreed that the problem in the City was the lack of leadership. Kaunda as the political head and Mbhele as the administration head had lost control of the City, they said, therefore it was high time they stepped down.
Leading the charge as the official opposition, the DA’s Thabani Mthethwa said all the mess currently taking place in the City was vindicating the DA’s long-held position that Kaunda and Mbhele lacked leadership and therefore should be removed from their positions.
Mthethwa said his party did not see any solution to the City’s persisting challenges because they were as a result of a lack of leadership.
“We have been asking about the city manager’s whereabouts since the strike broke out last week. The man has not said a word about the strike yet he is responsible for the administration in the municipality.
“We also haven’t heard a tangible solution from Kaunda besides telling us that the City has obtained a court interdict. The question is what has happened after the interdict,” said Mthethwa.
The party was surprised that Kaunda did not see the need to even call an urgent Executive Council (Exco) meeting until the DA wrote him a letter, he said. The meeting was scheduled to take place on Tuesday evening where the mayor would brief the Exco members.
Mthethwa said the DA meant business when calling for the dissolution of the City to give residents a new opportunity to elect new leadership.
The IFP’s Mdu Nkosi blamed the City leaderships’ deafening silence while the City was burning.
Nkosi too raised the issue of a meeting on a WhatsApp group, saying he wondered why Kaunda was not seeing the need for a meeting.
“The problem in eThekwini is leadership. We were supposed to have been briefed on a discussion in the bargaining council where labour matters are discussed but no one from the City’s leadership felt the need to do so,” said Nkosi.
He turned to small parties which he said must take the blame alongside Kaunda because they protected the mayor during the motion to oust him last month.
The EFF’s Themba Mvubu also blamed Kaunda and Mbhele for the mess, saying when the EFF called for Mbhele to recuse himself from the meeting earlier this year they were attacked by metro police and were threatened with arrest.
He said the only solution to the problems in the City would be to fire Kaunda and Mbhele.
Mvubu himself was ousted by the ANCled eThekwini leadership after voting with the opposition to remove Kaunda in a failed motion last month.
Mvubu accused the City’s management of being scared to act against Samwu because it feared they would not vote for the ANC in the coming elections since the union was part of the alliance. He asked why there had not been an arrest, since the strike was illegal and the City was in possession of the court interdict.
Adding his voice was ActionSA leader Zwakele Mncwango, who also blamed the lack of leadership in eThekwini.
He called for the resignation of the entire Exco, saying it was responsible for the day to day business of the City but its councillors were complaining together with the residents. The strike has been joined by residents who have been affected by the lack of services because of the ongoing wage strike.
Schools were forced to close on Tuesday after locals blockaded roads, demanding water and electricity which they said were cut off since the beginning of the strike.
Circulating video clips shared on social media showed some angry residents, allegedly from Verulam, who were said to have taken part in the protest on Tuesday, where refuse was thrown around the town.
Verulam has experienced water supply challenges for more than three months.
The City did not respond to the calls by opposition parties but instead referred this publication to the joint statement issued by the mayor and premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube, who condemned the violent strike by workers.
The premier announced various interventions by government departments, including disciplinary actions, which she said were being fast-tracked by Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs.
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