shops 10.5

The Editor

I have been campaigning for the past 20 years for the Government to ban all personal data collecting businesses, especially Blacklisting Bureaus.
Who gave these people permission to run a business, make a profit by collecting and selling your private information?

This clearly is a breach of your privacy rights. They even have the cheek to charge you R35 for your own information, which you did not give then permission to collect or sell in the first place.
This Blacklisting information is also on the Internet. Millions of companies have closed up in S.A. About 20 million employees who were then retrenched through no fault of their own lose everything when the unreasonable banks repossess their houses, cars and close their banking accounts and then blacklist them for about ten years.

The spiteful banks re-submit the same blacklisting information every two years to make sure they keep you blacklisted.
Millions of highly talented desperately needed people are denied their constitutional right to earn a living when blacklisting information is sold to Employment Agencies.

These same unemployed people cannot start their own business as the banks will not open a banking account and in many cases not even a savings account.
Banks and Blacklisting Bureaus are strangling our country.

Look at the extremely high banking charges. We do not want a code of conduct for Blacklisting Bureaus as this merely legitimises them.
We want them BANNED.

I am calling on the public to write to the Business Practices Committee, Department of Trade and Industry, Private Bag X84, Pretoria, 0001, supporting my call for this banning.
Best Regards
Snowy Smith
Senior Complaints Investigator
Fair Civil Law
Tel: 031-2018877, Cell: 082-964-8877.
P.O. Box 3022, Durban, 4000.

I am a shop steward in the Witbank unit of Emalahleni municipal local council. I am expected to lead the SAMWU delegation on all matters including the restructuring issues, which became the matter of a caucus with the ANC and councillors in our area.

But I realised that it is problematic to have different approaches while all we are within the COSATU-ANC-SACP alliance.
I know the position of all alliance partners but I don't know the alliance position except to say that the National Framework Agreement must be adhered to when dealing with restructuring of public assets.

The question is, what is the Alliance position and why must we contest positions between ourselves and not implement that alliance position, if any?
This contestation creates an informalisation as far as employment is concerned, because it is the survival of the fittest, and the councillors and government parliamentarians stand a good chance as the ones with the prerogative power to decide.

Then those affected workers lose their lose their formal and permanent status, as they will be regarded as contractual after they are privatised, and because they are controlled by profit they are at risk of not working if their companies lose tenders.

What is the correct way to deal with the conflicts within the alliance in terms of restructuring?
It seems as if the leadership is afraid to voice out because they all want to be deployed in government structures. Or are we as COSATU marginalised within the alliance or not? When will the workers enjoy the benefits of the alliance victory?

Comrade Chris Hani in his interview with SABC in 1993 before his death said if the government or those people in government will forget the mandate of the masses and start buying one Mercedes Benz car after another, the people must do what they have done to the apartheid government.

Comrade N R Mandela in his address to COSATU's Special Congress in 1993 said if COSATU relaxes its vigilance then workers will be betrayed by victory (won the election but suffer the consequences created by that victory) and SAMWU will continue losing members and quality jobs to private companies which are also giving part of their jobs to other smaller companies who end up employing only casual workers.

I only mentioned SAMWU but this affects all COSATU and non-COSATU affiliates, as privatisation is taking place everywhere. I believe it is time to assess our selves in terms of what Cdes Hani and Mandela said in 1993.
Yours
Morwamagosha N Rapolane