COSATU not supporting Solidarity Strike 17- 07 - 06

COSATU not supporting Solidarity

The Congress of South African Trade unions is not supporting the call by Solidarity for workers to go on a one-day strike over farm killings.
COSATU condemns unreservedly the murder of diamond mine worker and Solidarity member Frans Pieterse and demands that his killers should be brought to justice.

COSATU cannot however back a call for strike action from an organisation which has remained silent over the numerous attacks, up to and including murder, by farm employers against workers.
COSATU’s Jobs and Poverty Campaign has identified the farming sector as one of its top priorities. Farm workers are ruthlessly exploited, paid poverty wages, forced to work long hours of unpaid overtime, including on public holidays, thrown out of their homes when they are retrenched, and frequently assaulted and even killed by farmers.

The latest atrocity is the shooting of a young boy, which the farmer has tried to justify with the pathetic excuse that he mistook him for a dog.

For too many farmers, the lives of their workers and their families are cheap. Their farms are outposts of the old South Africa within the new. COSATU will be intensifying its campaign. Yet Solidarity is only provoked into taking action when one white smallholder is murdered.