Download PDFAfter a lengthy struggle against precarious temporary contracts the Gauteng Community Healthcare Forum gained a major victory when almost 8 000 CHWs gained permanent employment in June 2020. This victory was preceded by a long struggle since 2009 when Khanya College first started organising CHWs or home based care workers.
Forum
With the support of Khanya College the CHWs embarked on a strategy to organise CHWs in all the clinics in Gauteng. This struggle went through different phases and employed different non-violent organisational methods. In 2016 the South African Labour Court ruled that CHWs are permanent employees of the Department of Health (DoH). But the SA government would not honour its own Labour Court legislation.
An important organisational development in the CHW struggle has been the formation of the Gauteng CHW Forum, an independent organisation in 2017. The Forum deepens women’s leadership at all levels and membership includes community participation. The Forum was a major victory for precarious workers internationally where workers, especially women, are forced into ‘voluntary work’, temporary contracts, and receive low pay or stipends. These conditions are difficult to sustain organisations.
Permanent employment
The permanent employment status of CHWs was achieved during the Covid 19 pandemic, when CHWs, frontline workers, continued servicing communities in local clinics visiting different homes, raising awareness and supporting households. During the pandemic Khanya was obliged to monitor local clinics to pressure government to provide PPEs in clinics.
The victory of the Gauteng CHWs inspired 70 000 CHWs nationally and all precarious workers. From a stipend of 3 500 a month, the CHWs’ salary increased two and a half times to R 8 500 with medical aid and housing benefits. The CHWs struggles throughout the country have renewed vigour in the face of an obstinate government hellbent on its neoliberal agenda.
Weaknesses
However, the victory of the CHWs unleashed a number of inherent weakness. The late Oupa Lehulere predicted that unless the political education of CHWs was consolidated before victory, it would create challenges for the Forum and for movement building.
While the traditional unions did not try to organise and concretely support their struggles, the victory of CHWs means increased potential membership for a union movement in decline. However, while the unions are recruiting CHWs through funeral schemes and loan schemes, they are not purposefully organising CHWs.
The increase in salary and social benefits (medical aid and housing subsidies) reflect the strong social forces and processes of class formation at play amongst CHWs, are stimulating their ideological desires for upward social mobility.
Rebuild the Forum!
The past 18 months has seen a decisive weakening in the Forum at different levels, reflected in the loss in membership, interest and the general decline in participation in the Forum at all levels. However, the CHWs’ positions remain precarious with increasing employer pressures linked to issues of ‘age’ and formal education as a means to stratify, divide and restructure the workplace. Linked to this are the needs of the broader community for quality public healthcare that affects the families and friends of CHWs. It is therefore important that CHWs do not take their victory for granted.
Objectively there is a basis for the continued organising and awareness-raising amongst CHWs in Gauteng and the need to rebuild the Forum. The Forum needs to urgently take cognisance of its weaknesses and purposefully develop strategies and campaigns to lock into the potential for its growth and rebirth amongst progressive CHWs and within communities.
This article was submitted on 31 January 2022 and first published in the Forum News January 2022 edition. You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Karibu! Online (www.Karibu.org.za), and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
