How quickly we forget

Last month I used the title, “Counting the costs.” Misplaced – I think so. No sooner are we still heady over the wonderful Soccer World Cup, where the entire nations pulled together to present a country in unity. Where everyone sang the same song and strived for the same objective. The nation ran like a well oiled machine.How can we as the same nation forget so quickly and how can we – the same nation be expected to either be forgiving or to turn a blind eye. I refer of course to the recent, and there have been a number, of national strikes.

It all started with Eskom employees, demanding an increase immediately off the back of a hard fought tariff increase all consumers will for many, many years struggle to come to terms, least of all easily afford.

Then for a spell all was quiet. A truce one could almost sense. Can we honestly hold out that Cosatu actually declared a period of peace? Perhaps it’s more true as a colleague ventured, they were like the rest of us just too busy enjoying the spectacle and forgot themselves?

Visitors were no sooner off our shores when the automotive industry was plunged into wage negotiations where the inevitable strike took place. Again, demands excessively above inflation and not too long out of the most severest economic challenge of our lifetimes.

Commentators were asking what were they thinking whilst at home, unemployed and factories closed because there was no work.

The mother of all strikes however, will, at the time of reading this letter, be over. The cost and the gains cannot be related. There is never a good time when civil society represented by government   employees can simply withdraw their labour, and think, there will be no consequences worth regretting or worse to be ashamed of.

Perhaps the most serious, although all situations were serious, were the education and health repercussions. I cannot imagine a situation where I as an employee participate and support a strike, knowing that my children, my families and those around me will not write exams – or worse, not get essential health care, because I choose to strike. Worse, I also demand those colleagues around me must strike too – or there will be consequences! Those consequences being damage to property, threat to life and limb and an absolute tragedy in what the image to the rest of society endures.

What happened to the old days (and I remember them well) when negotiations did no take place whilst workers were out on strike. Who surrendered  the notion of good faith bargaining and negotiations. Instead we have a situation where if I don’t get what I demand, I will break and damage property, sometimes the very place I work, and hurt people, sometimes my own colleagues, until I do?

We all thought that life would get better after 1994…  so what happened?

Can we so quickly go from a winning formula al la world cup 2010, to a formula of distrust, greed, ignorance and mostly misrepresentation.  It seems the answer is yes.

I cannot help feel sorry for the 000’s of good people lucky enough to be working as a civil servant – that regret this situation. For the teachers and nurses that believed their calling and that wanted to work regardless of what their compatriots knowingly and deliberately did to harm and damage the fabric of our society. An injury to one – an injury to all…  seriously!

It used to be funny saying “only in South Africa,” do people dance in the streets  when they are angry, and only in South Africa when we are unhappy with the dismal performance of our education do we burn and trash our schools.
Well…  NO MORE, and its time society stood together and said this clearly, loudly and in unison, because if we do not, there will be another, and another and another time.

Business has said so but it needs everyone to do so.

Warm regards,

Les Holbrook