While the South African constitution and labour laws protect the right of workers to strike, I’m not sure that I can endorse any of the current events taking place under our noses.

Public servants walked out of their jobs and into the streets on Tuesday, demanding that the government pay them at least 8,6% more and give each and every one of them a R1k housing allowance too.

Zwelinzima Vavi, the general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), spoke about the strike, making outrageous statements such as “we are prepared to die for this” – a not-so-veiled threat that the strikes could turn violent.

There are about 1,3 million public servants in South Africa and there are likely to be further labour disruptions, as the government seems set on not meeting the demands of the public servants. At least not at the moment.

Now let’s look at some of the background that underpins the current strike and then let’s ask ourselves some pertinent questions.

For instance, the teachers and nurses are part of the striking workers and I do have some sympathy for them as it is these people who mould lives or save lives and, as such, are a fundamental asset to our country.

If they do their jobs.

But then a baby is left to die in Alexandra while nurses sit around and do nothing to assist a mother who had pleaded for their help.

School results show that matriculation levels are falling, the incidence of illiteracy and innumeracy are rising rapidly and that millions of school children are not being taught.

The very same striking teachers who now want to be rewarded for their failure are not teaching them properly.

The whole ridiculous system of outcomes-based education has been abandoned (it was imposed by public servants remember) as a failure and the legacy left by the system is a lost generation of millions of school children.

Let’s spread the net a little wider.

A report from the eThekwini municipality confirms that the council is owed R682m in unpaid rates mainly from government departments. Guess what? It’s the public servants who are failing to pay the government’s bills and it’s other public servants who are failing to collect the money too.

Extend that net a little bit wider and you find that that council alone is owed R4bn in unpaid rates and unpaid bills from government departments. One of the largest defaulters in Durban is none other than the Department of Human Settlements. It allegedly hasn’t paid its bills for the hostels that were transferred from the department to the city.

Durban is not alone: The government departments in the Western Cape owe the City of Cape Town R280m in unpaid rates and services accounts and the national government is the biggest culprit owing R171m of the outstanding amount.

Municipalities and government departments around the country owe Eskom R189m for electricity that has been used, but not paid for. All of this despite the fact that consumers in the respective towns and cities have paid their bills to the councils - and the councils have just not paid their dues.

The Department of Public Works admits that the national government departments, including the Department of Defence and Military Veterans, the police and the prisons owe local municipalities R673m in service charges and R400m of this amount is owed by security departments.

So let’s see what a quick snapshot of the striking workers shows us:

- Workers incapable of doing their jobs are demanding more money;

- The public servants responsible for paying bills or collecting outstanding amounts are simply not doing so;

- Nurses are signing death warrants for thousands of suffering patients and teachers are failing to teach our children – some even molesting them, going to school drunk or even thrashing our children into silent submission.

- Public servants in our national government departments (almost every one, from Land Reform to Human Settlements) are not even paying their bills on time.

And guess what, all of these government departments haven’t paid what they owe because they are just not efficient enough to do so.

And who is responsible for this lack of efficiency?

The public servants – the very people who are parading up and down our streets demanding that they are paid more for the work they do.

What work do they do?

I don’t know about you, but I am sick to death of this culture of entitlement that envelopes our public service sector: I’m tired of seeing taxpayers’ money being poured down the drain in corrupt deals, massive inefficiency, notoriously widespread incompetence and absolutely no respect for the principle of “doing the job properly”.

And I’m just as sick and tired of listening to self-righteous spokesmen like Zwelinzima Vavi and Patrick Craven pleading the workers’ case.

What these people need to do is look inwards to the workers that they represent and start doing something to boost their levels of competence and efficiency. South Africans cannot afford to accept their mediocrity (both the mediocrity of leaders who fight for workers rights and the mediocrity of the workers themselves).

If we had a public service that was truly efficient then perhaps I would be a lot more sympathetic when it comes to striking workers. In fact, I might even go out with the teachers and nurses and picket with them.

But let’s face the facts: Our public servants are a pretty useless lot.

There isn’t a single department, province or local council that is a model of efficient service delivery. There isn’t a single beacon of hope among the millions of public servants who are out on the streets demanding more money.

I’m sure that I am just one of millions of ordinary South Africans who are watching the strikes in centres around the country with a sense of dread and a sense of hopelessness.

The dread is because, in time, I’m sure that a motley band of irresponsible, uncouth, unruly and ungovernable people will trash our streets, destroy some school classrooms and even start beating innocent people.

Hopelessness because the government will eventually succumb to the demands made by this huge band of legitimised thieves and end up rewarding them for not doing their jobs properly or efficiently.

And that our local councils, provincial authorities and national government departments will be just as incompetent and inefficient tomorrow as they are today and were yesterday.

And we’ll have to pay the higher taxes, higher levies and higher charges that will be used to reward this incompetence.

Now wouldn’t it be refreshing if those olde worlde terms of productivity and efficiency were used as the benchmarks for higher pay, better working conditions and, yes, higher housing allowances too.

*Paddy Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com. The content of his columns constitutes his personal opinion and doesn’t pretend to be facts or advice. Contact him at paddy@neomail.co.za.

Readers' Comments Have a comment about this article? Email us now.

It’s shocking, it’s a bugger-up, what is happening in south africa and i cannot see it stopping.

then those kids? the schools are not funtional ... where are they going to end up?

if they can band together to do bad why cant they band together to do good; does anyone know how to make that happen? – Anonymous

I enjoy reading your column every week. This week however I feel that I must respond to what you have said about especially the teachers. I think it is unfair to generalize when it comes to teachers. True there are useless ones as there are useless reporters, taxi drivers, doctors, lawyers etc. A lot of teachers do a lot of good work. Let’s have a look and see which teachers these are. At which schools do they teach and I am not talking about private schools. I know teachers that are at school at 06:30 in the mornings (bet you didn’t think that was possible) and leave after 17:00 EVERY DAY. (bet you didn’t think that was possible either).Then on Saturday they are on the sports field coaching soccer or umpiring a cricket match or taking the schools choir to some choir festival and getting home late on Saturday afternoon. Yes these people are out there in the public schooling system and I am sure you know that. – Conrad

Couldn’t have said it all better than you did. - Â