Workers’ Call to Boycott Clover

Sunday, 9 January 2022
Immediate Release

The Anti-Repression WG of the C19 People’s Coalition supports and is in solidarity with the
thousands of Clover workers and their allied organisations who have issued a call to ordinary
citizens, communities and civil society organisations not to buy Clover Products. We join the call
to all South Africans for a full boycott of Clover products.

The Clover workers – who are largely organised under the banner of GIWUSA and FAWU –
have been on an indefinite strike since late November 2021.
The demands of the strike action are clear:
1. The unconditional re-instatement of all retrenched workers.
2. The re-instatement of the dismissed Empangeni workers.
3. The complete scrapping of all austerity measures including the 20% salary cuts.
4. The disinvestment of CBC.
5. The nationalisation of Clover SA under workers’ control and its complete transformation into a
co-operative.

We condemn in the strongest terms the deployment of a police detail on behalf of the company
to ‘control’ striking workers, even as government refuses to intervene on behalf of workers. This
is not the first time government has provided the company with a police force, as it also did so
during a strike against Clover in October 2020.

We honour the memory of union member Khilson Manaka, who died when hit by a moving
vehicle while fleeing rubber bullets from police on the first day of the strike in 2020.
Milco SA, a subsidiary of Central Bottling Company (CBC) an Israeli company operating in
occupied Palestinian land, purchased Clover last year, with a clear mandate of closing local
factories in favour of importing and distributing Israeli products instead. We stand in solidarity
with the plight of the Palestinian workers whose livelihoods have been decimated by CBC, and
whose unions have wholeheartedly endorsed the South African strike action.

We should all do what we are able to help sustain and support the workers and their actions,
who are putting their livelihoods at risk to stop the unjust and oppressive labour practices of
Clover.

For those who can, please make a donation here:

Account name: GIWUSA
Bank: Nedbank
Branch Acc No: 1180111508
Account type: Cheque account
Branch Code: 10210900
Reference: Strike Support

As part of the rolling mass action against Clover/Milco the striking workers will be demonstrating
at the CCMA (Corner Fox and Eloff Street) in Johannesburg at 9AM with solidarity action in
Cape Town’s CCMA (76 Darling Street, Zonnebloem) at 10AM on Monday 10th January 2022.

We furthermore support the action at the South African Parliament scheduled to take place on
Thursday, January 13, 2022. This is an important intervention to call on the National
Government to be consistent in the enforcement of its policies on the protection of workers
against exploitative, colonial-like practices as well as to actively pursue the stated policy of
internationalist solidarity with the plight of our Palestinian sisters and brothers.

FORWARD WITH INTERNATIONALIST SOLIDARITY!
DOWN WITH REPRESSION AND EXPLOITATION OF WORKERS!

Anti-Repression Working Group of the C19PC

To report incidents on police, military, private security and Law Enforcement violations please go
to report.org.za.

For more information:

Tauriq Jenkins, ARWG C19 PC
tauriqishere@gmail.com

Dale McKinley, ARWG C19 PC
dtmckinley@gmail.com