The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) notes with disgust and outright condemnation the reckless, insulting and anti-worker remarks attributed to the Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, during the handover of the Financial Recovery Plan at Ditsobotla Local Municipality in the North West, on 29 May 2026.
According to media reports, Minister Godongwana alleged that workers at Ditsobotla Local Municipality only work ten days a month and are often seen drinking alcohol in parks during working hours. These remarks are not only irresponsible, they are a direct attack on the dignity, integrity and livelihoods of municipal workers who continue to render services under some of the most difficult and unbearable working conditions in the municipality.
What makes the Minister’s remarks even more callous is that workers at Ditsobotla have themselves been victims of the municipality’s collapse. These are workers who have gone for months without receiving their salaries on time. These are workers whose third-party deductions, including medical aid and pension fund contributions, have not been paid over for months, placing their healthcare, retirement security and family wellbeing at risk. It is therefore deeply offensive for the Minister to stand on a public platform and attack workers who have already been subjected to financial hardship, uncertainty and indignity by the very municipality that employs them.
SAMWU rejects with contempt the attempt by the Minister to reduce the deep-rooted crisis at Ditsobotla to a lazy and dangerous stereotype about workers. Municipal workers did not collapse Ditsobotla. Municipal workers did not pass unfunded budgets. Municipal workers did not preside over years of political infighting, instability, poor governance, financial mismanagement and the destruction of basic systems of administration. Municipal workers did not create the crisis that has rendered the municipality unable to meet its obligations to communities and workers.
The crisis at Ditsobotla is a political, governance and administrative crisis. It is a crisis born out of instability in leadership, factional battles, poor oversight, lack of consequence management, and years of failure to build a capable local state. For the Minister of Finance to stand before the public and single out workers as though they are the principal cause of the municipality’s collapse is dishonest, opportunistic and unacceptable.
As SAMWU, we are not opposed to accountability. Where there are allegations of misconduct against any employee, the employer must follow proper processes in terms of the law, collective agreements and disciplinary procedures. Workers cannot be tried and convicted through public statements by politicians. If the Minister has evidence against any employee, that evidence must be handed to the municipality and processed lawfully. What we will not accept is the public vilification of all workers on the basis of untested allegations and hearsay.
Minister Godongwana’s remarks do not come as a surprise. This is the same Minister who, through National Treasury, wrote to the City of Johannesburg in an attempt to reverse the Politically Facilitated Agreement, an agreement concluded to correct long-standing wage disparities affecting municipal workers. This confirms what SAMWU has been saying, that National Treasury has increasingly positioned itself as an anti-worker institution that seeks to interfere in collective bargaining, undermine negotiated agreements and dictate to municipalities how workers must be treated.
As SAMWU, we are convinced that National Treasury is run by people who are hostile to workers and their gains. Treasury cannot continue to behave as though it is a bargaining party when it is not. It cannot sit outside bargaining structures, wait for workers and employers to conclude agreements, and then emerge through letters, circulars and financial recovery plans to undermine those agreements. We do not negotiate with National Treasury, and we will not allow National Treasury to impose itself as a shadow employer over municipal workers.
Minister Godongwana must understand that workers are not the enemy of service delivery. Workers are the backbone of service delivery. It is municipal workers who collect refuse, repair burst pipes, attend to electricity faults, maintain roads, operate water infrastructure, clean public spaces and serve residents at the coalface of local government. These workers often do so without adequate tools of trade, under unsafe conditions, with collapsing infrastructure, political interference and uncertainty about whether their salaries, medical aid contributions, pension contributions and other benefits will be honoured.
The Minister’s remarks are even more offensive coming from National Treasury, an institution that has consistently imposed austerity measures on municipalities while pretending that service delivery can be improved by weakening the very workers who deliver those services. Treasury cannot starve municipalities of resources, impose rigid financial recovery plans, interfere in collective bargaining, and then blame workers for the collapse of services. This anti-worker posture must be rejected.
SAMWU notes that the Minister’s remarks were made during the handover of the Financial Recovery Plan for Ditsobotla Local Municipality. As a Union, we will study the contents of that plan once it is made available to organised labour and workers. However, we state upfront that no recovery plan can succeed if it is built on scapegoating workers, cutting jobs, undermining collective agreements or reversing hard-won gains. A municipality cannot be rescued by declaring war on its workforce. Any genuine turnaround process must be rooted in stabilising governance, ensuring the consistent payment of salaries, immediately settling outstanding third-party deductions, filling critical funded vacancies, strengthening revenue collection, improving infrastructure, ending political interference, enforcing consequence management and meaningfully engaging organised labour.
Workers are not flat tyres to be changed at the convenience of politicians, as the Minister appears to have insinuated. They are human beings, breadwinners, parents and members of the very communities that Ditsobotla Municipality is meant to serve. SAMWU rejects any language that dehumanises workers and presents them as disposable objects to be discarded whenever politicians seek to escape accountability for their own failures.
SAMWU therefore calls on Minister Godongwana to publicly withdraw his reckless remarks and apologise to the workers of Ditsobotla Local Municipality. We further call on the Minister and National Treasury to stop using workers as scapegoats for failures created by political and administrative leadership.
We also call on Ditsobotla Local Municipality, the North West Provincial Government and National Treasury to engage SAMWU and organised labour meaningfully on the Financial Recovery Plan. Workers must not be spoken about in their absence. They must be part of the solution because they understand the municipality, its challenges and the practical interventions required to restore services to communities.
We will not allow any Minister, political party, administrator or Treasury official to use municipal workers as punching bags for failures they did not create. The road to rebuilding Ditsobotla does not lie in insulting workers. It lies in fixing governance, ending corruption, restoring stability, respecting collective bargaining, paying workers on time, settling statutory and third-party obligations, and placing workers and communities at the centre of the municipality’s recovery.
Issued by SAMWU North West Province
Vincent Diphoko
Provincial Secretary
083 580 8815