Pretoria - People, and not mathematics, build cars at the Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa in Pretoria.
This is according to people who marched from Mamelodi, Eersterust and Nellmapius yesterday to the carmaker and the Tshwane Automotive Special Economic Zone to demand work opportunities. The group staged a similar march a few weeks ago.
They were reacting to the company’s representative Shibishi Maruatona, who said many young people from the communities did not study maths as required at job-entry level.
However, the protesters, led by Tshwane Bahlali Dudula, urged Ford to remove the pure mathematics prerequisite “because a majority of pupils in high schools in surrounding communities were not doing pure mathematics”.
They argued that the requirement was not scientific and isolated young people from job opportunities.
The crowd said they did not want to hear what Maruatona was saying and claimed it was unfair for young people to be denied work opportunities because they did not study pure mathematics.
In their view, they could learn to build a car, operate machines and organise and deliver tools and equipment regardless of their mathematics skills.
Maruatona told them the company had many skilled professionals such as accountants and engineers that it would use to provide this important training to those interested to have the mathematics skills required when posts became available.
Maruatona ruffled the feathers of the crowd when he told them that Ford, although employing a lot of people from local communities, did not have job opportunities at the moment. He said they were willing to work with the leaders to ensure they were involved in the recruitment when opportunities arose.
Leader and march organiser, Khutso Smesh Semetjane, said they would not sign the document Maruatona read to them because they did not agree with what Ford was saying.
He said they would engage further to flesh out a favourable reaction from the company.
He said: “Former president Nelson Mandela once said ‘it becomes useless to continue to speak non-violence with an entity whose response is savage attack’.
“Ford, you may not be attacking us with guns, but you are attacking us by taking away our bread. We are not going to fight you today, but know that we are ready for a fight.
“Tell the president of Ford in Africa, Neale Hill, that the people were here. We will be going back to the table with them. People have a habit of underestimating us. They thought we would not march again. They thought we were only hungry on June 14 when we came here, but they did not know that indeed we are hungry every single day.”
They only signed an agreement with the Tshwane Automotive Special Economic Zone.
Its representative, Zama Ndebele, said it heard the plight of the marchers and would work with them to create opportunities immediately.
Ndebele said this would start with a joint team to take the names of the people looking for work and place them in a database to be presented to investors.
“We are also going to set up a team because each corporate has a duty to contribute towards community development. And we are saying, as part of our responsibility, nothing can be done in Nellmapius, Mamelodi and Eersterust without the involvement of the people from those areas.”
The crowd then moved to an industrial park near the N4, where the names of those looking for work were written down.
Pretoria News