The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) will join the national shutdown movement with its own protest soon to amplify the groans felt by a country drowning in high food and petrol prices.
When is SAFTU’s national shutdown?
As reported by Business Tech, SAFTU is South Africa’s second-largest labour union, with more than 800 000 active members. The union concluded its two-day national executive committee meeting on Wednesday, and the general consensus was that the country’s working class faces doom with swelling costs of living.
Since June 2021, the cost of the food basket has risen by 14.29%, electricity prices swelled by 16.53%, and in the same observed period, fuel rates increased by a staggering 52%.
Added to that is the rampant loadshedding South Africans have endured for 15 years.
“We are taking the battle not only to demand the immediate resignation of the Eskom CEO, Andre de Ruyter and the Board, but we are calling on the entire government of the ANC to step aside,” the union said.
SAFTU has set out plans to mobilise its member base for a single-day national shutdown tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, 24 August 2022.
“This crisis cannot be addressed, as it always is, by half-baked, ill-conceived measures. It cannot be tackled through expression of anger, by xenophobia or by rushing ahead of other sections of the working class. We need action that will be appropriately match the scale of the crisis we face,” the union wrote.
Already, parts of Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) have been impacted by shutdown protests police claim is orchestrated by regional taxi associations.
On Thursday, road closures were enforced in Mbombela and Nelspruit, in Mpumalanga, where more than 15 protesters were arrested for public violence, and in Richards Bay, KZN.
“Taxi drivers are the ones behind the shutdown, but they used trucks to get their point across. Truck drivers were forced to park on the side of the road. What they [the suspects] would do is knock on the side of the truck and instruct the truck driver to park on the road,” police spokesperson Brigadier Selvy Mohlala said in a statement.
No national shutdown activity was reported at the time this article was published.