STATEMENT ON THE HEARTLESS CITY OF CAPE TOWN DISMISSING OVER 100 BLACK AND MOSTLY WOMEN LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS

31st January 2024

STATEMENT ON THE HEARTLESS CITY OF CAPE TOWN DISMISSING OVER 100 BLACK AND MOSTLY WOMEN LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS

As the union we are appalled by the way the City of Cape Town has dealt with these officers. Late last year, towards Christmas, the municipality wanted to dismiss these officers but as the union we managed to postpone these hearings only to learn afterwards that our members had to be paid via EFT as they were presumed dismissed before even being dismissed, in other words had the hearing been not postponed they would have been dismissed by the municipality regardless.

As the union we call on the City Manager to intervene in this situation and the entire municipal council to be properly briefed and intervene as these officers are from Khayelitsha, Mfuleni, Gugulethu and all black townships within the City of Cape Town. Failure to intervene, will be understood that the municipality and the Democratic Alliance which oversees the municipality does not care.

These members were dismissed after a formal purported incapacity. It must be known that our LRA dictates that through an incapacity the dismissal must be last resort, but the city elected to disregard that too. It’s a purported incapacity because the union made submissions on the 26th of January 2024 to the city after the members were served with incapacity papers, no response was given to the union submissions except for the termination of employment. What is of great concern is that firearm training is provided by the city, they trained these members at a particular standard and assessed them at different standard and failed them.

The city assessed these members for vehicle driving as well, many times on short notice for all these assessments, sometimes waking members from nightshift for the assessments only to get failed. This possible the reason why they had no response to the union submission but took a shortcut to make black people to suffer as like the long suffering they were experienced during the dark days of the apartheid. On the contrary, the same Law Enforcement unit employed many white officers from SAPS who did not meet the units’ requirements and they were given a special privilege of more than 6 months to meet these job requirements.

Given the non-response to the union submissions obo these members as indicated above after an agreed submission date and based on all the ambush instructions to go for vehicle and firearm assessment knowing very well that these employees are not privileged to buy their own cars or guns, it now looks clear that the municipality perhaps intended to dismiss these officers. This is also supported by the fact that even for firearm competency, which is only given by the city as the employer, the city has dismissed officers for it even though shortcomings were raised to the City which were never denied.

As the union we call on the City Manager, MMC of Safety in the Municipality and the Mayor to intervene immediately on these massive dismissals and stop this ill-treatment of previously disadvantaged and vulnerable black brothers and sisters. To add many of these members are single mothers who now will struggle to put bread on the table and take care of their children. We also call on the DA as a political party which is governing at the will of the people to show understanding of the circumstances of black people as the fact that it is only black people that have been dismissed should have gotten those in authority to revisit their ill-gotten decision.

We call on the DA to intervene as this is the same LEAP program which they use to boast on the media about with massive employment and as well as the Western Cape government. This is the same unit which had its hands full during the last devastating taxi strike where some of them lost their lives which now the City shows its true colours. In addition, about 50% of these members have been dismissed.

We call on authorities of the municipality including the council to pay particular attention to safety and security management who disregard City policies when they want to dismiss trained officers which could contribute to the crime within the metro as many have been dismissed even when having a drug problem instead of being rehabilitated.

In addition, we have written directly to both the City Manager and Mayor for an urgent intervention, we will see if they will respond positively.

For further enquiries:
H. Gagayi
021 696 2522 / 072 4478 091

OR

A. Hearne
021 696 2522 / 072 571 1633