The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) along with its Affiliate, the South African Municipal Workers' Union (SAMWU), trust that the Constitutional Court will confirm the unconstitutionality of the Municipal Systems Amendment Act when it hears the case on Tuesday, 10 September. The Constitutional Court will hear arguments on this matter. This follows the Labour Court's earlier progressive finding in favour of SAMWU.
In November 2023, the Labour Court ruled in favour of SAMWU when it found that prohibiting all municipal employees from holding office in political parties was unconstitutional and ordered government to pay the costs of the case. The judgement was backdated to November 2022, rendering instructions to employees by municipalities to resign from any political office bearer positions they might have held or risk being dismissed, invalid.
The Federation and its militant Affiliate, SAMWU, strongly believe the Municipal Systems Amendment Act of 2022 is fundamentally flawed, dangerous and simply unconstitutional as it introduced a new blanket ban on all 350 000 municipal employees from holding office at any level in a political party. This is a gross and shamefully unconstitutional assault on the right of freedom of political association and expression of not only municipal workers but in fact all workers.
The original draft of the Amendment Act agreed to by the ANC-led Alliance, government and tabled at Parliament provided for a rational and limited restriction on the rights of political association to municipal managers and the senior managers reporting directly to them. These provisions were quietly and clumsily amended by Parliament on the instigation of the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) and extended to include all 350 000 municipal employees. This moved it from being a narrow limitation of the rights of a few, to the blanket prohibition of constitutional rights of all municipal employees.
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The motivation for the original limitation of rights of municipal managers was based upon the belief that when such managers held office in a political party they could undermine or overrule the Mayors and Mayoral Committees they account to. Extending this to include municipal security guards, cleaners, electricians and refuse collectors was ludicrous and a shocking attack on workers' constitutional rights. If it is allowed to stand, it will be a gross undermining of the Constitution and there is no telling how far it could be extended to incorporate all public servants, parastatal employees and eventually private sector workers. It could even lead to the eroding of our hard-won democracy.
Thousands of municipal employees previously received letters from their managers effectively threatening that if they did not resign from their political party positions, they would be fired.
COSATU previously raised the matter repeatedly with the former Minister for Cooperative Governance and the 6th Parliament, who all shamefully failed to act in defence of workers' rights.
SAMWU previously took an earlier version of this Amendment Act to the Constitutional Court and won. Again in 2023, the Labour Court ruled in favour of SAMWU and declared these provisions of the Act unconstitutional and issued a stay of execution to all municipalities in this regard. COSATU is convinced that municipal workers' hard won constitutional rights of freedom of association and expression will once again be affirmed once the Constitutional Court provides judgment on this precedent setting matter.
