{"id":239832,"date":"2022-10-12T14:28:12","date_gmt":"2022-10-12T12:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/conned-security-guards-hold-peaceful-picket-for-forgiveness-at-uct\/"},"modified":"2022-10-12T14:28:12","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T12:28:12","slug":"conned-security-guards-hold-peaceful-picket-for-forgiveness-at-uct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/conned-security-guards-hold-peaceful-picket-for-forgiveness-at-uct\/","title":{"rendered":"Conned security guards hold peaceful picket for forgiveness at UCT"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Nombulelo%20Damba\/ndh_conned_guards.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/conned-security-guards-hold-peaceful-picket-for-forgiveness-at-uct.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">The fired guards and their families gathered at UCT\u2019s upper campus on Tuesday. They asked students to forgive them and support their plea to be insourced. Photo: Nombulelo Damba-Hendrik<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The 31 security guards who were sacked after they disrupted a June exam gathered with their families at UCT to ask students to forgive them and for their support to be insourced.<\/li>\n<li>The guards say they were misguided by student activist Sibusiso Mpendulo, who claimed to be a lawyer and acting in their interests, saying he had won court orders and opened a Hawks investigation.<\/li>\n<li>The Hawks has denied this and confirmed that it does not have him on record.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The 31 security guards, who were fired for disturbing a June exam at the University of Cape Town (UCT), have asked students to forgive them. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/conned-security-guards-hold-peaceful-picket-for-forgiveness-at-uct.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>The guards, their families, and Students Representative Council (SRC) members held a peaceful picket on the university\u2019s upper campus plaza on Tuesday. They want students to support their plea to be insourced by UCT.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, GroundUp <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/the-fmf-activist-who-lied-to-workers-and-cost-them-their-jobs\/\">reported<\/a> on how former student activist Sibusiso Mpendulo had falsely claimed to be the guards\u2019 lawyer, promising to fight for them to be insourced. He then led them to disrupt the June exams, which resulted in the workers being dismissed.<\/p>\n<p>In June 2016, the then Vice-Chancellor Max Price announced that UCT would insource about 1,000 employees in July 2016. But none of these guards, who worked for the Groote Schuur Central Improvement District to patrol UCT, were hired. They say they met the requirements, but UCT had hired guards from outside instead.<\/p>\n<p>More than 400 students were sitting on the plaza steps as worker leader Amos Qwabi explained that it was on Mpendulo\u2019s advice that they went into the exam halls.<\/p>\n<p>He said Mpendulo had told the guards that UCT\u2019s SRC had approved the disruption and they believed him. He said that they paid Mpendulo for years, including paying for his trips to Pretoria, where he claimed he was meeting the Hawks on their behalf.<\/p>\n<p>Qwabi asked students if they forgave them, and students shouted \u201cyes\u201d and clapped their hands.<\/p>\n<p>SRC acting president, Siya Plaatjie, said that the SRC believed in guards\u2019 struggle to be insourced. She recounted the SRC\u2019s strange dealings with Mpendulo.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo be honest we didn\u2019t see it coming until later, when one of our members who is studying law kept on pointing out a few errors on documents Mpendulo was showing us. He would ask Mpendulo for certain papers and he would respond by saying he left them home or come up with an excuse,\u201d said Plaatjie.<\/p>\n<h2>Families speak of hardship<\/h2>\n<p>The guard\u2019s families told students about the difficulties they face since their family members lost their jobs.<\/p>\n<p>Nosidima Ndlokolo, 59, said her son Masixole had been taking care of her and three other siblings. \u201cThings are really tough at home. I\u2019m not working, I lost my job during [the lockdown]. My last born is doing grade 12 and was hoping to study next year but I don\u2019t see that happening since Masixole is not working because no one is going to help her with registration money,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Cebisa Nkumbi from Samora Machel is a mother of three. Since her husband lost his job, their family relies on social grants.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEvery day I pray that UCT does the right thing and hires them. My husband has worked here for close to ten years. He deserves to be insourced,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Simthembile Qondo, a father of seven children, said all they want is for UCT to insource them, or at least tell them why they had not been hired in previous insourcing rounds.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf they can tell us what requirements they are looking for so that we can get them. Because on what they posted we are confident that we do qualify,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<h2>Holes in Mpendulo\u2019s Hawks story<\/h2>\n<p>We asked Hawks Western Cape spokesperson Zinzi Hani about the case allegedly opened by Mpendulo on behalf of the guards against UCT. As reported, someone purporting to be from the Hawks, a \u201cDetective Tsiya\u201d, contacted the guards and took statements from Qwabi at the Cape Town Central police station.<\/p>\n<p>Hani said denied that Mpendulo could have opened a case in Pretoria, as this matter would have been processed in the Western Cape.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe do not have any detective by the name of Tsiya in the Western Cape,\u201d she said. It\u2019s unclear if this person works for SAPS.<\/p>\n<p>UCT was contacted for comment on Sunday and Tuesday. Their comment will be added once it is received.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/conned-security-guards-hold-peaceful-picket-for-forgiveness-at-uct.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The fired guards and their families gathered at UCT\u2019s upper campus on Tuesday. They asked students to forgive them and support their plea to be insourced. Photo: Nombulelo Damba-Hendrik The 31 security guards who were sacked after they disrupted a June exam gathered with their families at UCT to ask students to forgive them and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":239833,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-239832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/conned-security-guards-hold-peaceful-picket-for-forgiveness-at-uct.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}