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Cape Town - “Comrade, I have a problem with this T-shirt,” Treasury Director-General Lungisa Fuzile said in an awkward moment during the Nehawu march to Parliament on Wednesday.
“This T-shirt is not made in South Africa,” Fuzile said when he was asked to abandon his blue suit jacket and shirt in favour of the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union’s red T-shirt.
He had been given the task of standing in for Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, who was due to deliver the 2017 Budget in the National Assembly.
The Nehawu members had marched to Parliament in protest over Gordhan's austerity measures that they say are making it harder to deliver services as promised.
They handed out T-shirts to members, to the driver of the flatbed truck that carried their sound equipment and his assistant, and to a group of school girls passing by.
After listening to the reading of the memorandum in the blazing heat, he was given his own Nehawu T-shirt. Before discarding his jacket, he peered at the T-shirt's label, and said he would not wear it because it was not made locally.
According to the label, it was made in China.
But, without skipping a beat, Nehawu provincial deputy chairperson Philiswa Nzimande told Fuzile to make sure there was money in the budget to boost local manufacturing.
The SA Clothing and Textile Workers Union has repeatedly urged fellow unions to source their T-shirts locally, in a bid to boost the local textile industry.
