Emalahleni municipal community members fight over jobs

A dispute over jobs at Kindal mine in Mpumalanga last week resulted in Emalahleni municipality employees being assaulted by a group of angry residents. 

This came after Kindal mine announced last Thursday that it was going to employ 200 people, but community members - mostly young people from Phola and Orgies (Emalahleni) - prevented people from the Emalahleni town from  being considered for employment and chased them away.  Police had  to be called to separate the warring groups.

Then the following day, community members from Emalahleni inner city stormed the municipal building,  assaulted and chased away community members from Phola and Orgies working at the municipality. 

They said since people from  Phola and Orgies do not want  them  to work at the mine, they too should not work at the municipality, which is based on their side of town.

“They must leave, they beat us up  and didn’t want young people from our area to get employed at Kindal, which is at their side. We all belong to this town of Emalahleni but they started segregation and they must leave, we don’t want them here because the municipality is on our side,” said community members who didn’t want to be named. 

Emalahleni municipality spokesperson Lebo Mofokeng told Sowetan that they had to use law enforcers from the municipality to quell the situation.

“We are totally against this kind of segregation over employment by residents of Emalahleni. We understand that unemployment is a problem not only at Emalahleni but the whole country. We are calling  on our people to refrain from resorting to violence over employment and stopping people from working at each section of the municipality," said Mofokeng. 

Spokesperson for the police in Mpumalanga Brig Leonard Hlathi said they cannot comment because no one opened a case.