CWP worker Ewart Sithebe led the crowd.
Hundreds of workers affiliated with the Maanda-Ashu Workers Union of South Africa (MAWUSA) marched to the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure in Pretoria on Monday, demanding permanent employment and better pay.
The workers are temporarily employed through the government’s Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) and the Community Work Programme (CWP), doing work such as road maintenance and street sweeping.
They gathered at the old Putco bus depot in Marabastad in the morning, before marching to the department’s offices. Members of political movement Afrika Mayibuye also participated in the march.
CWP worker Ewart Sithebe from Alexandra, north of Johannesburg, said he is a supervisor but earns just over R1,900 a month.
“I feel frustrated at the end of every month when I receive my monthly pay,” said the single father of two. “The money is very little and I cannot buy enough food and pay monthly bills.”
Another worker, Zakhele Khumalo, described his monthly wage as “peanuts”, saying he cannot consistently pay his funeral cover.
“My children feel happy whenever they see me going to work,” said Khumalo. “But I feel frustrated at the end of the month because I can’t buy nice things for them.”
The march proceeded peacefully, with workers singing and dancing. Music blared from a bakkie leading the crowd, and bystanders waved and cheered. Tensions rose when the marchers arrived at the department’s headquarters on Madiba Street. Some workers shouted at officials standing under police guard outside the building.
A memorandum containing six demands was handed to the department by MAWUSA president Robert Mwendo, who told the crowd the union would not ignore members’ struggles.
“We are not going to allow anyone to abuse our mothers and fathers in our presence,” said Mwendo. “We are here to demand permanent jobs. We cannot continue to live on empty promises.”
The workers’ demands included
- full-time employment for all CWP and EPWP workers;
- payment of gratuities for CWP workers whose contracts were terminated after more than ten to 15 years of service without benefits;
- payment of all outstanding wages due to system errors;
- immediate delivery of personal protective equipment and tools of trade, not supplied for three to four years; and
- equal minimum wages with other sectors.
The memo was accepted by Adam Mthonbeni, deputy director-general for inter-relations at the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure, who told workers the department would give them feedback in due course.
© 2025 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.
The South African Council of Churches has been vocal in advocating for social justice and human rights.
Venuslion
Van der Merwe is approached by SANRAL one day who want to build a new highway through his donkey farm. Van is really concerned with how his donkeys can get from one side of the farm to the other without having to cross the highway and risk being injured or killed. He is promised that they will build bridges the highway so that his donkeys can cross under the highway. Van agrees and gives them the go-ahead.
The highway is built and a year later the same rep goes to the farm to go see how Van and his donkeys are. He eventually finds Van under one of these bridges chipping away at the roof of the tunnel with a hammer and chisel.
\”Mnr Van de Merwe, what are you doing damaging the highway bridge?\”
Desert Haze
Fun South African Fact: Despite the country’s status as a democratic republic, the Province of KwaZulu-Natal has a monarchy, specially provided for by the Constitution. Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu is the King of the Zulu Nation, has 27 kids and 6 wives and lives, literally, like a King!