‘Truck companies need to employ South Africans, say protesting drivers’ 7 July 2020

Today we are calling for every South African truck driver to make sure that his truck does not operate. These were the words of All Truck Drivers Foundation Secretary, Mandla Mngomezulu, who told City Press that the strike carried out by truck drivers on Tuesday morning was to “ensure that South African companies stop hiring foreign nationals”. According to Mngomezulu, it was a nationwide strike and “forces in Port Elizabeth, Cape Town and the Northern Cape are already on the ground”.

… “South African truck drivers are sitting at home unemployed yet they have the required paperwork to be driving,” he said. “We know that the main reason that these local trucking companies hire foreign nationals over South Africans is because they are avoiding complying with the necessary safety regulations and other things – including registering employees for unemployment insurance fund.”… “Foreign nationals must go and work in their countries and we as South Africans will work in our country. Unemployment in our country is already a huge issue and we cannot let it continue by allowing trucking companies to hire foreign nationals while our own people are unemployed and starving.”

…Manana’s words come at the back of an announcement by truck drivers last month that, a nationwide strike against all trucking companies to remove non-South African drivers and replace them with local drivers was imminent. At the time, foreign truck drivers said if attacks continued they could not rule out retaliation on SA drivers in the region.