Workers Must Oust Napwu Leadership

‘NAPWU defies own constitution’, reads the latest headline of a news report on the troubled union for public servants.

There were others like ‘Workers lose confidence in Napwu’ in earlier reports.
Yet, the leaders of the Namibia Public Workers’ Union (Napwu) seem not to realise that they are messing up and that change is needed.
Napwu members need to get rid of people who have long lost the passion to fight for their interests. Many of the leaders only use the offices they occupy as stepping stones to Parliament or other political appointments.
Also, others have demonstrated that their only interest is to ensure that they use the Napwu ticket to make money as directors of organisations, exploit the union to muscle themselves through to higher Swapo structures and use the office telephone to make calls that will line their briefcase companies up for lucrative deals.
Therefore, it is up to the members to now stand up for their rights and demand that the union hold its long-awaited congress to elect new leadership.
Napwu vice president Moses Ikanga was this week quoted as saying that they cannot hold the congress this year due to “logistical difficulties”. But Ikanga knows of other reasons, I am sure.
He is a unionist who has shown he will take no prisoners when it comes to standing up for membership.
That was why he supported a demonstration of workers who demanded action over the Government Institutions’ Pension Fund issue and were shouting “down Nevonga, down” in reference to Napwu general secretary Petrus Nevonga who sits on the GIPF board.
Before the demonstration Ikanga had also held a media briefing where he asked Napwu leadership who they were protecting in the GIPF saga.
Fellow leaders and Napwu employees reportedly did not like that and tried to initiate a disciplinary action against him but Ikanga hit back by stating that the terms of office of those who wanted to discipline him had long expired and therefore he was unfazed by the vote of no confidence in him.
He had also questioned the constitutionality of the regional meeting which was planned to discuss his position and so it all collapsed.
He is not the right person to speak on behalf of the union even though he is the vice president.
I am sure that he is among those who want the congress as in yesterday already because of differences he has with some of them.
What his case showed was the lack of respect which some of the Napwu leaders have for their constitution.
Those who deliberately delay the Napwu congress until next year fear that holding it at such a crucial moment, when members are not happy about issues such as the GIPF, will cost them their positions.
These same people have protection from seniors in the ruling Swapo Party because they are the ‘right campaigners and voting cattle’ at the party’s elective congresses. Therefore, the seniors will conveniently ignore the workers’ calls for change at Napwu for the time being.
I can thus safely say that the Napwu congress will only take place after the Swapo congress when the work has been done at that meeting.
That will be so unless the workers stand up and demand a congress now as is stipulated in the Napwu constitution.
Workers should not condone mediocre service from their elected leaders nor should they allow their employees like the general secretaries to pull them around by their noses.
It is within their right to demand the resignation of those who want to delay the congress. They should stand up and be counted and the time is now.

Can workers really celebrate May Day?

TOMORROW is Workers’ Day (May Day) – an opportunity for the masses to reflect on their contribution towards nation-building but also, I hope, time for some union leaders to take off the blinkers and, for once, to come up with strategies that will promote the interest of the workers.

Many of our workers, especially those who contribute monthly towards the salaries of some union leaders, have developed a sense of exceptional tolerance while they hardly get much out of their affiliation to such unions.
A case in point is the recent attempt to strike by customs officials, which almost everyone blasted as ‘irresponsible’ and an attempt to sabotage the country’s economy.
My take on that one is slightly different and I blame the Namibia Public Workers’ Union for the mess that played itself out.
Two years ago I wrote a story about similar threats by customs and excise officials who wanted to march to demonstrate their unhappiness about a delay in their re-grading.
Then already the officials were claiming that they had been calling unsuccessfully for a re-grading of their jobs since 2002.
The planned demonstration was not supported by the Namibia Public Workers’ Union (Napwu), which called on staff to be patient since Government was ‘working on their concerns’.
If customs and excise officials strike, Government stands to lose many millions of dollars – such is the importance of their jobs.
The bone of contention here is that the entry-level qualification for a customs and excise officer, according to the public service rules, is Grade 12.
However, the Ministry of Finance has reportedly changed the entry-level qualification to a three-year diploma or degree at a salary notch of N$46 503 to N$59 214 a year.
The staff have proposed a salary scale of N$100 818 to N$119 376 a year for the entry level because of the required academic qualification.
The workers claim the salaries have reduced them to “mere dimwit goons, dullards, no-brainers and helpless pariahs not only in the eyes of the public but also among fellow graduates and workers of other institutions”.
I am not propagating illegal strikes, but there needs to be an understanding that workers cannot take refuge in a fuzzy feel-good patriotism while they and their children go hungry.
For once union leaders such as those of Napwu need to be taken to task for the worrying and deeply authoritarian belief that has taken root amongst them that only they know what is best for workers.
Full-time Napwu unionists need to realise that they are servants of workers and not their ‘bosses’!
Some have become engulfed in ‘tenderpreneurial’ wealth as they conflate unionism with their business interests and now want to run the unions as it pleases them.
As a result some union offices have descended into being arenas of energy-sapping but useless fights instead of concentrating on workers’ interest and rights.
When last did people hear, for instance, about the plight of around 38 000 domestic workers in the country?
In 1999, the Commission of Inquiry into Labour-Related Matters Affecting Farm and Domestic Workers issued several recommendations aimed at transforming the working conditions of both farm and domestic workers.
One of the main issues was the introduction of a minimum wage for domestic and farmworkers alike.
The cattle herders and other farmworkers got their minimum wage but unions turned a blind eye to the domestic workers and they continue to be exploited with around 32 per cent of them earning wages of between N$100 and N$300 a month, according to a recent study by the Labour Resource and Research Institute.
Again, I am not calling for scenes of protest by young and old fed-up with the meagre crumbs falling from the freedom table.
But imagine how the rich, including some unionists and former unionists, will celebrate May Day tomorrow with their good fortune and all the opulence and sumptuousness the new Namibia has brought them while the needy workforce continues to suffer in silence.
Some of these rich people are known as unproductive yet wealthy black crony capitalists who only happened to have good links with certain offices.
Let the planned customs and excise strike threat be a lesson for us all. There is no malign political motive behind what those people want to do – they simply want what is due to them.

* This column first appeared in The Namibian