Transnet strike – heed the example of bloody history

KEVIN MAYHEW THE CALL for a mediator to try to break the deadlock in talks around the issues that are gradually pushing more and more key elements of the national logistics chain into industrial action must succeed to bring the Transnet dispute with its unions to an end game or history provides us with a tragic reminder of the possible results of any further escalation. It now seems inevitable that the strike threat will not be tempered by any action or reaction by the parastatal management or government – apart from a complete submission to the union demands. SA Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) general-secretary, Randall Howard, has told FTW: “On March 6 we will bring commuter transport, freight export lines, business units and subsidiaries – including SAA – to a complete standstill for 24 hours.” Mediation and even arbitration is now a must or FTW must challenge its readers to remember the recent past. The names are different but the emotions are the same as the country’s most deadly strike a generation ago in the matter between South African Transport Services (today Transnet by another name) and the South African Railways and Harbour Workers’ Union (Sarhwu), which is also involved in the present action, turned ugly. Allow me to percolate some of the facts of the action that spun out of control and was finally resolved by mediator Charles Nupen almost 16 years ago to the month. I was in day-to-day contact with it as I covered it for SATV and SABC-Radio. Many of the 1989 issues are fuzzy today as the items we broadcast are buried in the deep archives of the Auckland Park monolith, but it gradually absorbed more and more areas of the country – not dissimilar to what has happened with this action – with the nerve centre in Johannesburg. There were marches and memorandums (ditto today). The scabs became targets for ignoring the call to action. The police were called in and so were the mortuary vans as emotions ran blisteringly high. The death toll mounted – in this case on both sides – as a management spokesperson was made to pay in life when they torched his home and either one or both his children were killed. Then a bloody day at Germiston Station when strikers and non-strikers clashed in an orgy of hate that left, if I remember, 16 dead on the platforms of the station. These two incidents seemed to galvanise both sides into action. They called in the highly experienced Charles Nupen and within days it was resolved. Today the 38 dead and countless wounded are not remembered. I think we owe it to them to use every means possible to resolve this before we prove that we learnt nothing from that tragic summer.