AfriForum roped in to help restore calm amid city-wide strike action
“Today’s events have once again proved how effective it can be when law enforcement and community safety structures work together to secure communities and property.”
AfriForum’s community safety department helped the Tshwane metro restore calm amid a city-wide strike action by some metro employees on Wednesday afternoon.
AfriForum campaigns manager Jacques Broodryk said they were called in to assist by Tshwane MMC for Community Safety Grandi Theunissen.
Broodryk said Theunissen requested that the organisation’s air-wing deploy its drones to provide time-sensitive information to the Tshwane metro police regarding the location of the protesters and their activities.
The organisation’s neighbourhood watch members, CPFs and law enforcers also observed the situation on the ground and provided the joint operations centre with the necessary information.
“We have several neighbourhoods and farm-watch teams across the country who regularly join forces with law enforcement authorities.
“Today’s events have once again proved how effective it can be when law enforcement and community safety structures work together to secure communities and property,” he said.
By Wednesday morning, the Tshwane metro said service delivery, in parts of the city, was hampered as a result of the strike action that started earlier this week over a wage dispute.
The strike action began on Tuesday in all seven regions.
According to Broodryk, the striking metro employees caused disruption at the Highlands shopping centre and also tried to make their way to the Lyttelton police station, but were quickly intercepted and the situation was defused.
Tshwane metro spokesperson Lindela Mashigo said the striking employees were blocking non-striking employees from performing their duties and were intimidating those who wished to carry on with their work.
“This caused prolonged delays to the metro’s ability to respond to some of the outages affecting parts of the city,” he said.
He added that an internal memorandum had since been issued by the acting city manager instructing employees to refrain from participating in the strike and to return to work immediately as their continued participation in the strike was illegal.
“The ongoing unlawful strike action is being driven by members claiming to be affiliated to the SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu).”
However, Samwu regional secretary in Tshwane Mpho Tladinyane denied claims that they were involved in the strike.
“We just want to indicate that our members are not on strike,” Samwu regional secretary Mpho Tladinyane said.
“Anything that happens in the city is attributed to Samwu. Any person who is seen wearing a red T-shirt while marching or being involved in a particular action then are assumed to be Samwu members.”
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