Nigeria Content Online

It has been a
winter of strikes in South Africa in 2010. The World Cup opened under
the darkening clouds of strike threats from Eskom’s workers. Eskom is
South Africa’s equivalent of NEPA. I appreciate that many Nigerians
will comment that NEPA workers have no need to go on strike since,
judging by the daily interruptions in the supply of Nigerian
electricity, they seem to be on perpetual strike.

Those cumulus
clouds dissipated so that the world’s soccer fans could enjoy a
memorable African world cup. But, they returned in a darker form, laced
with thunder and lightning, culminating in the storm of a three week
public worker strike. Black and white teachers of government-owned
schools, nurses of government-owned hospitals and sundry other
officials united to down their tools in support of an 8.6% increase in
their wages and a 1,000 Rands (N21,069 ) monthly housing allowance.

Consumer price
inflation in South Africa is less than 4% and is expected to remain
below 6% until 2012. Mr. Zwelinzima Vavi, secretary general of the
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), justified those
demands by contrasting the huge gap between the wages of his union
members and the heads of South Africa’s government departments,
parliamentarians, and ministers. My impression is that a public school
teacher earns at least 120,000 Rands (N2.53 million ) per annum while
the director-general in the Ministry of Education earns close to 1
million Rands.

The strike has been suspended because the government has offered a wage increase of 7.5% and an 800 Rand housing allowance.

Violence and a
display of indifference to human suffering has marked this strike. Some
teachers who wanted to assist their students acquire their daily dose
of education were beaten. Babies died. They were simply “collateral
damage” in the quest of 1.3 million workers for decent wages in one
African country.

I was far from
impressed by this whole episode. Yet, I have to assume that the
unionized workers could do with the pay increase. Still, we in Africa
have to ask ourselves some questions? Can workers strike their way to
prosperity?

The South African
government or any other African government granting real wage increases
has to pay for those wage increases. Perpetual real wage increases,
therefore, lead to higher taxes or less investment by the government in
infrastructure necessary for South Africa’s future or cuts in social
grants for the unemployed and the poor. No doubt, many yearning for the
fabled communal equality of poor African villages, as well as Marxists
and communists, will hail the prospect of higher taxes on Africa’s
minute class of privileged souls. The smaller the number of Africans
able to afford brandy, books, and Benzs, the happier we shall be! Keep
on dreaming!! Government workers in rich countries are comfortable
because their tax payers are employed by successful businesses, big and
small, which themselves pay lots of company tax. Taxes rise in a
sustainable manner if, and only if, the tax-collector’s herd of
tax-payers gets fatter. Vampires do not like corpses. So, ironically
and unwittingly, Cosatu’s quest for decent wages is a search to
increase the size and profitability of Africa’s capitalists.

Trust South
Africa’s Chinese textile factory owners to expose this irony. The town
of Newcastle in Kwa-Zulu Natal, burdened with a 60% unemployment rate,
mines coal and has a Chinese Chamber of Commerce comprising small
garment factory owners. They pay their workers anywhere between 250
Rands (N5,267 ) per week and 500 Rands (N10,534 ) per week to produce
clothes that compete against imports of Chinese made clothes. The
garment workers unions demanded that all workers be paid the legal
minimum weekly wage of 324 Rands and sought to close 85 factories
employing 9000 workers that did not comply with the law.

The South African
Chinese capitalists pointed out that they could not earn a profit if
they applied the legal minimum wage in their factories because of the
low prices offered by the communist China capitalists. The workers
insisted on their legal rights and the Newcastle Chinese capitalists
went on strike. They closed all their factories at once. Talks have
resumed now that the workers understand that the capitalist has no duty
to employ a worker simply to lose money.

Africa needs more capitalists like the Zulu Chinese factory owners
or Nigeria’s tycoons. South Africa’s condition of hyper unemployment
signifies an acute dearth of capitalist employers. African unions need
more capitalists; not more strikes.