JOHANNESBURG, GAUTENG — The South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) has fiercely pushed back against the Democratic Alliance’s push to halt the City of Johannesburg’s R10 billion wage agreement, with SAMWU Regional Deputy Chairperson Lebogang Ndawo declaring that workers will not be made scapegoats for the municipality’s systemic failures.
The standoff centers on a politically-facilitated salary agreement between the City of Johannesburg and SAMWU, which aims to adjust municipal workers’ salaries across the board over a multi-year period. The deal, which has been defended by the city as addressing long-standing pay disparities, has drawn sharp criticism from the DA, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana, and various civil society groups who argue the city simply cannot afford the commitment.
The DA has formally requested that Gauteng Cooperative Governance MEC Jacob Mamabolo intervene in the city’s financial affairs, arguing the wage deal is unfunded and will further plunge the municipality into fiscal distress. Finance Minister Godongwana has gone further, ordering the city to halt the wage bill and warning of potential funding cuts if the agreement proceeds.
But Ndawo has dismissed the opposition, characterizing the DA’s relentless legal and political challenges as the behavior of “an obsessed partner” that has exhausted every avenue — from court applications that failed, to appeals to the National Treasury — and is now turning to the provincial government.
“We are beyond the space of being angry with the DA,” Ndawo said. “We understand now they are like an obsessed partner that we have because they’ve tried everything in their power. They went to court, they failed. They went to national treasurer. They are stuck. Now they’re going back to the provincial government.”
Ndawo went further, suggesting the DA’s opposition to the wage deal is rooted in racial dynamics, describing the party as “a white party that does not want black employees to be paid properly.” He argued that the salary adjustment — referred to internally as the PFA — is specifically intended to address historical discrimination that has persisted in the City of Johannesburg for decades.
“It’s addressing the historical discrimination that has been happening and is currently happening in the city of Johannesburg,” Ndawo said.
The union leader also took aim at what he described as the selective outrage over municipal finances, pointing out that city councilors receive annual salary increases without facing the same public scrutiny.
“There are many other challenges — there’s corruption,” Ndawo said. “Even the same councilors, they being paid at the correct level but they constantly get increased every year and nobody talks of these financial challenges when it’s their time to get an increase. But when it’s a time to adjust salary, then suddenly people are suffering.”
When pressed on service delivery failures — including Johannesburg’s notorious potholes and irregular refuse collection — Ndawo insisted that workers are ready and willing to perform their duties but are hamstrung by management failures. He cited a lack of fuel for refuse trucks, the absence of a functioning asphalt plant in the city, and broader corruption issues flagged by the Auditor-General as the real culprits behind poor service delivery.
“The challenges of service delivery are not aligned to workers,” Ndawo said. “They are a result of fuel not being put in terms of the trucks that they are using, and it’s not a workers’ problem. The potholes are there because we have struggled to have a plant — an asphalt plant — that is functioning in Johannesburg, and that is not the worker challenge.”
Ndawo also clarified that the multi-billion rand figure represents a salary adjustment to bring workers in line with a Grade 10 salary benchmark, rather than a simple annual increase. He noted that SAMWU had already agreed to a phased-in implementation approach specifically to avoid bankrupting the city, and that negotiations remain ongoing regarding how the city can meet its obligations if it cannot fund the full amount upfront.
“We are forever willing to engage with the city as and when we see challenges,” Ndawo said. “We are reasonable leaders in the union. We have got reasonable members that understand that service delivery is our priority. But we must also be paid correctly.”
He added that SAMWU has pledged to assist the city in improving revenue generation and is actively participating in revenue collection processes, emphasizing that the crisis requires cooperation between workers, politicians, and the community.
The City of Johannesburg has maintained that it is legally bound to honor the agreement, arguing that workers are owed the adjustments after years of below-benchmark pay.
However, critics argue that the unfunded mandate will inevitably come at the expense of capital maintenance and service delivery budgets, with residents bearing the cost through deteriorating infrastructure and unreliable basic services.
The matter remains unresolved as pressure mounts from multiple fronts — the DA, the National Treasury, and civil society organizations — while SAMWU holds firm that its members deserve fair remuneration and refuses to accept blame for a crisis it says was manufactured by mismanagement and corruption, not by workers demanding their rightful pay.
