BusinessLive writes on the death of veteran unionist Cedric Gina, who passed away on Monday in Durban’s Addington Hospital after a short illness.
Gina was a former president of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and later the founding general secretary of the Liberated Metalworkers Union of SA (Limusa). He started his unionist career in 1993 when he was elected a shop steward at Numsa. Gina was instrumental to Numsa’s growth after he was elected to the helm in 2008. He resigned from that organisation when the showdown with the union’s mother body, Cosatu, got heated in 2013. Numsa was expelled from Cosatu in 2014 for expanding its organisational scope and for choosing not to support the federation’s alliance partner, the ANC, during the national elections. Gina was charged with forming a metalworkers union within Cosatu, though Limusa failed to gain traction and has had fewer than 10,000 members since its inception. He was voted out of Limusa in December following squabbles over the control of the small organisation. On Monday, Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla observed: “He dedicated his entire life to liberating the working-class people from the shackles of exploitation. We all owe him for his sacrifices and commitment. His untimely death has created a vacuum in the working-class leadership and we will miss his passion and easy-going manner.”
- Read Theto Mahlakoana’s report in full at BusinessLive
Read too, Labour fraternity mourns Gina, on page 8 of Sowetan of 29 January 2019
And also, Ramaphosa sends condolences to family of trade unionist Cedric Gina, at The Citizen
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page