Employees of Nelson Mandela University marched on Wednesday, demanding an 8% salary increase.
About 200 employees of Nelson Mandela University (NMU) protested outside the university on Wednesday, demanding a salary increase.
The singing workers marched from Kings Beach, led by National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU)’s Thabo Moshoeshoe region.
They demanded an 8% salary increase, better housing allowances, medical scheme benefits and equality between black and white staff members.
The protest was supported by COSATU, the South African National Civics Organisation, the South African Students Congress and the South African Communist Party. Protesters, who included cleaners, caterers, clerks and supervisors, said they wanted answers within 30 days.
The marchers blew whistles and vuvuzelas. They carried placards that read: “Housing allowance must increase from 1100 to 1500” and “Fill all vacant vacancies”.
NEHAWU shop steward Vuyokazi Nkevu-Langbooi led protesters in songs including “Oliver Tambo thuma mina, kulomasela Oliver Tambo” (Oliver Tambo send me to the thieves, Oliver Tambo) and “Iyo iyo iyo kuyatsha” (Iyo iyo iyo it’s burning) and “Asinavalo sisebenza kanzima (we are not scared, we work hard).
NEHAWU regional secretary Samkelo Msila said black employees were paid the minimum and employees of other races the maximum for the job.
Police monitored the protest which ended in the early afternoon.
The protesters dispersed after their memorandum was accepted by Lesiba Ramoroka, director of employee relations at the university, who promised to give it to the relevant people.
© 2024 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.
Brick Mooch
Van der Merwe goes to Paris to watch the Boks take on the Brits at the world cup.
Whilst in Paris, he walks around, gaping and staring at everything – so much so that he walks smack bang into a fire hydrant which hits him so hard on the family jewels that he has to be rushed to hospital where the doctors tell him they have to remove his testicles.
Van goes berserk, he bites and snarls at every one and he won\’t let anybody within 10 metres of him. Eventually they find a South African doctor in the hospital and get him to talk to Van.
He walks up to Van and tells him \”Hey Van, die ouens moet jou knaters uithaal.\”
Van replies \”O, okay, ek dog die bliksems wil my test tickets vat.\”
Austin Shamrock
Bliksem – to hit. This is a derogative term meaning to hit or punch someone.Example: “I’ll bliksem you!”