the phoenix
Poetry in Motion
It is strike season again, and this year NUMSA is flexing its muscles with extra vigour, having smelt blood both
literally and figuratively, and taking a leaf out of AMCU’s playbook. The automotive industry, in the midst of its own
little downturn, has no option but to take it on the chin. And every year, without fail, someone refers to this as the
winter of discontent.
I
n describing these predictable events, even I may have used this phrase a few
years ago, and I know that I and many others have borrowed other quotations
from the bard so many times that we all owe Shakespeare a debt of gratitude
in giving us his wonderful words and phrases to garnish our articles. But this
year I have decided to go even further, and to see what Shakespeare would have
said about the flirtation between NUMSA and AMCU. It was not a difficult task,
because there it was, neatly packaged in my all-time favourite sonnet, sonnet
CXVI. aBr is all about words in action, but we can also deliver poetry in motion!
Let me not to the marriage of true unions
Admit impediments. NUMSA is not AMCU
Which alters when it alteration fusions,
Or bends with the remover to FCKU:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Labour is not Management’s fool, though rosy t-shirts and bare cheeks
Within his bending clock card’s compass come;
NUMSA alters not with his stipulated hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me stuck,
I never downed tools, nor no man ever struck.
Now that I am in poetic and theatrical mode, let us have another go at what Shakespeare
would have said about the onerous legislation, in all its manifestations, that government has
unleashed on business. And who better than Hamlet, to look at this subject.
To BBBEE, or not to BBBEE, that is the question—
Whether ‘tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of Legislation,
And by opposing end them? To lose tenders, to die, to sleep—
No more; and by a share issue and a non-executive appointment, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural taxes
That Business is heir to? ‘Tis a constipation
Devoutly to be endured and tendered. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream of Nkandla ; Aye, there’s the backhander
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this legal albatross,
Must give us pause, and emigration
Apologies for making
light of such a serious
subject and love’s
labour’s lost, but as
they say in the classics
it is a comedy of errors
and much ado about
nothing. Hopefully, this
winter’s tale will turn into
a midsummer night’s
dream, and end up as
Whilst this issue of aBr is jam packed with information, our monthly contribution cannot do justice to the wealth of information
available on a daily basis, so don’t forget to get your daily fix on our website. Make sure that you make regular visits to
| words in action
2
august 2014
you like it.
www.abrbuzz.co.za