LETTER: Crush the unions

Day after day, week after week, we read how trade unions are holding the entire country to ransom by threatening, intimidating and destroying. As Carol Paton writes, they “think just coming to work is enough” (“Public-sector bosses are scared of unions and retribution,” November 6).

Mining, education, electricity supply and the civil service are all but beyond repair. Unions are the enemy within; they represent a relatively small percentage of the country’s population and exist mainly to fund the lifestyle of their top structure.

There is a delicious irony in the fact that a man who rose to prominence through the labour movement is now being hoist by his own petard. Trying to beg for investment in a labour market such as SA’s will quickly see all those “pledges” turn into flights of fantasy.

The only way President Cyril Ramaphosa can avoid the explosion of that final devastating downgrade to junk status and the inevitable slide into the IMF’s embrace is to crush the unions. Even if it takes a year of violence and destruction, rubbish piling up in the streets and an army of police to control the inevitable backlash, it will be worthwhile if the result is the destruction of that great Marxist curse on humanity.

Alas, Ramaphosa and the ANC have no stomach for anything tough, so will continue to fiddle SA over the fiscal cliff.

Nigel Dott, Douglasdale

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