Press Statement dated 18 November 2025
Issued by Petrus Mashishi, SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) (Johannesburg Region)
Good morning members of the media, and fellow South Africans.
Today, November 18th, 2025, is a very good day for workers in the City of Johannesburg. We want to announce that today, SAMWU concluded an agreement with the City of Johannesburg that will finally and decisively address the scandalous salary disparities that have plagued this municipality for decades.
It is upon this monumental victory for labour, a victory earned through years of sacrifice and struggle, that we must issue a statement of disappointment and anger at the continued smear campaign orchestrated by sensationalist media.
We categorically reject the destructive, misleading narrative, spearheaded by the Sunday Times, that this hard-won settlement is the result of "blackmail" or an attempt to hold the G20 summit hostage.
This dishonest public discourse does nothing but discredit a legitimate, CCMA-guided legal process and fundamentally disrespects the thousands of workers who have dedicated their lives, their sweat, and their energy to serving this city for decades. When the media chooses to sensationalize justice, they become complicit in perpetuating injustice. We are forced to ask: Why is the media so eager to frame a long-overdue victory for justice as an act of crime?
We need to be clear, this agreement is not merely a transient political negotiation, it is the rectification of a generational historical injustice. For over three decades an entire working life for some of our veterans, the City of Johannesburg has utterly failed its dedicated employees, beginning with the reckless and cynical decision to halt salary progression in 1995.
This negligence was a political choice. This negligence festered for years, leading to the necessary militancy of the 2016 Pikitup strikes and the subsequent creation of the Politically Facilitated Agreement (PFA). Yet, even after a legal agreement was reached, the rot continued.
While top officials and political principals were expediently placed on the appropriate Grade 10 salary scale, the majority of our members, the frontline heroes, were shamefully left to languish on the lower Grade 8 scale. The devastating result is an accumulated debt of R10.3 billion.
We repeat, the R10.3 billion is not just a figure but it is the crystallised sum of human suffering. It represents decades where workers could not afford decent homes, where medical aid bills went unpaid, where the dreams of sending a child to university were crushed, and where the grinding weight of debt compromised the very dignity of an honest day's labour.
This systemic economic violence, perpetuated by the City's negligence, forced our members to live below the poverty line, even while they maintained the essential infrastructure of South Africa's economic hub. It is a moral disgrace that the City would only move with this sense of urgency once the looming threat of international embarrassment at the G20 summit forced their hand.
This demonstrates a deeply twisted set of priorities where international perception is valued above the basic dignity and legal rights of its own workforce. Our members were forced to resort to the most powerful tool available to them, the threat of withdrawing their essential labour simply to compel the employer to honour a contractual and legal commitment that should have been settled years ago.
It is impossible to discuss this victory without exposing the hypocrisy that seeks to tear it down. We must address the hypocritical and transparently political outrage emanating from the Democratic Alliance (DA), whose City of Johannesburg caucus leader, Belinda Echeozonjoku, denounced the settlement as a "crisis" and an act of "financial mismanagement".
The DA's manufactured outrage is nothing short of political theatre and gross hypocrisy, exposing them as an anti-worker and fundamentally anti-black party opposed to the economic upliftment of municipal staff.
We remind every resident that when the DA coalition governed this city, they did everything in their power to stall, deny, and frustrate justice for these very same workers, relentlessly refusing to genuinely implement the PFA. Their tenure was characterized by attempts to delay, litigate, and starve the PFA process of resources, actively contributing to the immense debt burden the current administration now faces.
Their current crocodile tears over "financial mismanagement" ring hollow, as they were the ones whose political instability contributed directly to the paralysis that allowed this R10.3 billion debt to accumulate and fester. The DA cannot speak on behalf of the poor and demand service delivery excellence while actively fighting against the economic upliftment of the very black workers who staff our clinics, service our townships, and ensure our suburbs are habitable.
Echeozonjoku’s malicious claim that the payment is a "disgrace" while residents wait for water is a transparent and cynical attempt to weaponise service delivery issues against the workers who dedicate their lives to solving them.
The media and the opposition have focused entirely on the source of the payment, alleging a malicious "diversion" from crucial capital projects like water and roads, to accuse SAMWU of contributing to the service delivery crisis.
This argument is fundamentally flawed and tragically hypocritical. We proclaim loudly and clearly that workers are not the problem; they are the solution. SAMWU believes with every fibre of its being that workers must be prioritised in the interest of service delivery.
It is the hands of our members, these men and women who the DA is so quick to condemn, who fix the bursting pipes, clear the waste from the streets, and repair the damaged infrastructure. Yet, how can the City expect optimum performance, diligence, and commitment to service delivery when it simultaneously subjects these same workers to decades of underpayment and financial stagnation?
This settlement is a declaration that the era of starvation wages and institutional neglect is over. This is not money being "thrown away" it is a capital injection into the human machinery of the City.
The City’s own official statement confirms that this settlement is based on "common job grading, external benchmarking"and is subject to the PFA’s principles of "affordability and sustainability". This agreement, by finally achieving Grade 10 parity, fundamentally changes the economic trajectory of thousands of working-class families for generations to come.
For us, this settlement is not merely back-pay; it is a key that unlocks human dignity. It means a municipal worker can finally walk into a store with their head held high. It means their children can now aspire to better schools and vocational training. It means replacing the constant stress of food insecurity with the stability of a paid-off bond or the ability to manage chronic illness.
This investment is life-changing, it restores the fundamental faith that hard work in public service will be justly rewarded. The City is not paying a debt to a spreadsheet; it is repaying a debt to human beings, and in doing so, it restores the very foundation of efficient service delivery.
When workers are compensated fairly and their labour stability is ensured, they are healthier, more motivated, and more effective. A municipality that fails its employees will inevitably fail its residents. By settling this debt and achieving parity, SAMWU is, in fact, laying the foundational requirement for improved employee performance and, consequently, stabilised and enhanced service delivery for the residents of Johannesburg.
The Mayor's office has stated that the payment will be funded over three years through "improved revenue management, structural efficiencies and strict expenditure controls, not through any diversion of capital funds".
This means the City has committed to finding the money internally, a task they should have completed years ago, rather than robbing infrastructure budgets. This is the difference between a crisis created by political negligence and a solution achieved through robust negotiation.
We, therefore, issue an urgent call to all mischievous characters to stop treating this settlement as a political casualty of the G20 and instead embrace it as a necessary investment in its most valuable asset, being its people.