The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has given President Cyril Ramaphosa five days to make sure that he convenes a meeting with the federation following what they say was his unavailability to meet with them today.

First Deputy President, Mike Shingange says the meeting has to take place at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, where they staged a sit-in – demanding answers for their grievances which they had submitted to the president in October.

Cosatu says it appeared that there has not been any response, not only in the Presidency but across all eight provinces led by African National Congress in the country.

Shingange says that they are also expecting Finance Minister Tito Mboweni and Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan to be present.

“We are done with meetings, with the process. We want a meeting with resolutions. We have asked that each and every minister that is responsible for every demand that we have put in the memorandum must accompany him in that meeting. If it’s a matter of gender-based violence, we expect that the Minister of Police and the Minister of Justice to be at that meeting. If it’s an issue of retrenchments at the SABC, SAA, and Eskom, we expect respective ministers including the most powerful ministers in this country, Pravin Gordhan and Tito Mboweni.”

Cosatu says the government’s culture of not responding to memorandums shows that it is a government that does not care: 

The South African Communist Party (SACP) says it is unacceptable for the government led by President Ramaphosa not to respond to grievances handed over during a nationwide protest.

The SACP’s Solly Mapaila says out of the nine provinces in the country, only the Western Cape has responded to the demands.

He says this shows that all ANC led provinces completely disregard the rights of the working class.

Mapaila was also part of a sit-in at the Union Buildings went to demand answers from the president.

“Workers compromise, accept lower increases, those lower increases are then met uproar by government. This is unacceptable. I’m speaking on behalf of the SACP an ally within the ANC, Cosatu, and Sanco that is leading government through the ANC. This matter wasn’t brought to us in terms of reemergence. We said go and honour the agreement we’ve made with the workers.”

Cosatu, SACP members stage a sit-in at the Union Buildings: