By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The African National Congress (ANC) employees vows not to return to work until their concerns are addressed and took the party to court over unpaid salaries.
Speaking to the media during his visit to Tokyo Sexwale’s home in Soweto on Thursday, ANC treasurer-general Paul Mashatile insisted that the party had paid salaries to its employees up to the end of January.
“We have paid salaries up to end of January, we don’t owe anybody. If they [staffers] want to go to court, they can, but we have paid,” Mashatile said.
Asked where the money came from, Mashatile said: “We fundraise. We go out there and ask good samaritans to help us.”
But ANC staff committee chair Mvusi Mdala has insisted that not all of them.
Mdala said some workers were paid their December and January salaries this week, but not all of them.
“We have comrades in the Free State who are not paid, and they were last paid in September. In the North West, they have not been paid their January salary. When [Mashatile] says ‘all’, I do not know where he gets that from,” Mdala said.
Mdala said the ANC has not paid provident fund contributions since 2018, while Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) contributions are also still outstanding.
“Our struggle continues because they have not paid a cent into the provident fund, and they have not even indicated when they are going to,” he said.
He added that the staff members, who started embarking on a stay-away last month, would not return to work.
Meanwhile, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) has taken the ANC to the Labour Court over the unpaid salaries.
Nehawu filed its papers at the court on Monday, 31 January, demanding that “the service tendered by workers be remunerated immediately”.
“It is the fact that ANC has deliberately failed and elected not to honour its contractual obligations since October 2021 which made workers to go to December festive and Christmas without any salary, but the ANC continued to gear to January 2022 celebrations cutting cakes as if all is well and sorted with their employees.”
The ANC staff went on a first go-slow shortly before the local government elections, which resulted in the party failing to register its council list to the Electoral Commission of South Africa.
ANC employs 387 staff nationally, has operational costs of R6-million and a salary bill of between R20-million and R21-million.