Eleven years after liberation, “there are four million unemployed in our country ,” Cosatu general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, told a huge Johannesburg crowd that jostled and squeezed to get closer to hear their leaders.
Perched on a truck, Vavi’s voice boomed out through giant speakers across the square. He slammed the government’s black economic empowerment policies saying they effectively excluded workers and called for “new strategies to transform the country toward equitable growth, not just to redistribute a bit through the tax system.”
And as the crowd followed their leaders like the Pied Piper of old, across the country in big cities and small towns, more Pied Piper streams showed their growing dissatisfaction with the effects of job losses and unemployment.