Two-day national strike begins

Thousands of workers gathered at a rally in Johannesburg on Wednesday as part of a nationwide strike organised by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) against government privatisation plans. “This protest is not just against privatisation but against conservative policies,” National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) general-secretary Gwede Mantashe told workers who had gathered in the Johannesburg city centre.

A spokeswoman for the South African Chamber of Business told IRIN that in Gauteng - the country’s economic heartland - their members had reported an absentee rate of about 70 percent. “The retail sector was most affected,” she added. SABC radio reported at lunchtime that bus and train services seemed to be running on schedule. The government and most employers had said that they would implement a “no work no pay” rule if anyone participated in the strike. COSATU estimated that four million workers downed tools on Wednesday in the first of two days of planned industrial action that economists forecast could result in production losses of more than US $119 million.

COSATU has argued that the government’s privatisation plans would increase unemployment which currently stands at about 30 percent. COSATU claims 200,000 public sector jobs have already been lost since 1994 due to restructuring and privatisation.

Meanwhile, Statistics SA announced on Tuesday that the South African economy grew by 2.3 percent in the second quarter of 2001. This means that the economy has posted a positive growth rate for nearly three successive years, but has failed to keep up with population growth and generate sufficient new jobs.