On Thursday morning, a mob of striking union members including Fort England Hospital (FEH) staff marched to the hospital on a mission to influence non-striking workers to join the strike. The strikers marched through the corridors of the different hospital wards, chanting freedom songs and causing a disruption.
On Thursday morning, a mob of striking union members including Fort England Hospital (FEH) staff marched to the hospital on a mission to influence non-striking workers to join the strike. The strikers marched through the corridors of the different hospital wards, chanting freedom songs and causing a disruption.
A South African Democratic Nurses Union (SADNU) member, who preferred not to be identified, addressed the crowd outside the hospital’s registration offices.
Afterwards he told Grocott’s Mail that they demand an 8.5% increase and “we are fed up with the government and feel that we are being betrayed”.
An FEH nurse who wished not to be identified said: “Even after this 8.5 we are still to claim our money from the hospital and all kinds of backlog. We’ll come back for it, comrades!” None of the non-striking FEH workers chose not to comment.
Meanwhile, there was talk of the strikers going to Mary Waters Secondary School, which has been the only Grahamstown east school where some teachers have been going to school during the strike.
Earlier in the morning, the learners were told to leave school early to avoid them. A Grade 12 student at Mary Waters, Thabiso Mafani said, “At school we hardly learn, even today we were there and we were told that the strikers are coming because they see that Mary Waters is still attending school. So the teachers warned us that they would come and force us out, so we left early today and couldn’t learn.”
Mafani and the rest of the school’s Grade 12s are supposed to have been writing their trial exams and are meant to be preparing for their final exams which are less than two months away.
“I would like to write the trials but now with the strike I have lost my energy and it is disturbing us and if the exams were here I don’t think I would do well, I can’t just write without preparation. The strike does not state what will happen and how and when are we writing or if the exam timetable will change.”
