We will close in SA, car boss says

ONE of the seven major car manufacturers in South Africa – three of them based totally in the Eastern Cape and the other with a specialised plant here – is threatening to close its operations because of the unstable labour environment.

This shock was delivered on the first day of a Numsa strike.

Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa (Seifsa) chief executive Kaizer Nyatsumba dropped the bombshell yesterday afternoon, after receiving a memorandum from Numsa earlier in the day. He said he had received a call from "the chief executive of a major car manufacturing company based in South Africa" who had informed him he was "under 'considerable pressure' from his head office in America to close operations down in South Africa and to move them to a country with a more stable labour dispensation". - Cindy Preller