South Africa

Yesterdays "strike" by Cosatu smacks of political opportunism and a heavy dose of hypocrisy. Cosatu faced with declining membership and an increasingly complacent membership decided to stir things up yesterday with a "strike" against the high levels of unemployment in SA. According to estimates by SACOB this strike caused up to about R500m in losses for the country due to lost production. Apparently most of the problems protesters had, concerned the government -

"We believe the fact we are unemployed is because of the policy of this government," said jobless Cape Town resident Mhlobo Gunguluzi. "It is because of the ANC that we are unemployed."

Righto. So...we want to bring attention to the high unemployment rate and demonstrate our solidarity with the unemployed, how can we achieve this? Aha - we will hold a strike that a) harms our employers thus making it harder for them to hire any of the legions of unemployed b) gives us a free holiday (hehe) c) offer no tangible solutions to the problem but just demand others change and finally d) not offer any personal sacrifices to make the labour market more flexible! Splendid, lets do it...