It’s undeniable. South Africans have perfected the art of the strike. Don’t know what I mean? Let me share with you a story…
Last week my coworker Greg and I had made a plan to head to the post office. We both had nearly a dozen postcards to mail to friends and supporters, and I had a birthday card I wanted to send to my brother. Much to our chagrin, we got to the post office only to find out that the postal workers were on strike and the post office was closed. The Communication Workers Union (i.e. postal workers) had been on strike for several days, yet neither of us had read about it in any of the local South African newspapers.
Upon coming home, I went online to check out the Mail & Guardian, a South African newspaper I have come to enjoy reading. I expected to find an article on the homepage of their website, so I could read about the strike and figure out when it was speculated to end. The homepage hosted several articles about strikes…but none of them were about the post office. Of the ten articles represented on their homepage, four articles were directly related to some type of protest or strike. Yes four. And no, none about the post office.
On the M&G homepage I read: two articles about the military strike in Pretoria (yeah…the police actually resorted to using water cannons, rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse approximately 1000 members of the South African National Defense Force [SANDF] who were protesting low salaries), an article about 20,000 miners striking at the Impala Platinum Mine in Rustenberg, and an article on a potential strike by taxi drivers as the government introduces a new bus system.
Furthermore, since moving to South Africa in March the following organizations have either gone on strike or threatened to go on strike (or hold some sort of protest):
- Taxi Drivers (twice)
- Construction workers building stadiums for the 2010 World Cup
- JMPD (Johannesburg Metro Police Department)
- EMTs
- South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (rail workers)
- National Union of Mineworkers (several times…)
- Municipal Workers (which included Sanitary workers!)
- South African Revenue Service
- Telkom workers
- Massmart Holdings workers (including those at Makro and Game)
- SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation) workers
- Doctors (in KwaZulu Natal and Free State)
And I’m sure there’s more that I missed… Needless to say, going on strike seems to be the norm here. And when you chat with South Africans about one organization or another going on strike, they never seem to be surprised. Afterall, how many countries do you know that have their own official protest/strike dance? Here it’s called the toyi-toyi.
But in all seriousness, I think it’s deeper than simply a desire to strike. During the apartheid era, strikes, along with other types of non-violent demonstrations, served as popular forms of protest. Despite my inclination to be annoyed, I have to admit it’s neat to see democracy in full swing here in South Africa : ) As I ponder more on the relationship between present day strikes and apartheid era protests…I’ll let you know.
