Union faces liquidation over legal bills

The South African Municipal Workers Union has been placed under provisional liquidation after failing to pay its former law firm R2.4-million in outstanding legal bills.

Johannesburg attorney David Maimane brought the application in the High Court in Johannesburg for debt dating back to March. Samwu cut ties with the firm, KD Maimane, on June 3.

The union says it will apply for the order to be repealed.

"For the sake of peace we are prepared to pay them their two million," Samwu general secretary Simon Mathe told the Sunday Times on Friday.

Samwu has about 180000 members countrywide, each paying R65 a month in membership fees. It is the majority union in the local government sector.

Delivering his ruling on Tuesday, acting Judge Daniel Berger said anyone with a "legitimate interest" should give reasons "why this court should not order the final winding up of the respondent on February 21".

In his founding affidavit, Maimane said Samwu owed the firm money for legal representation it had provided "to and on behalf of the members and for the respondent upon its instructions".

"I telephoned the president of [Samwu] to request an urgent meeting to discuss non-payment of the account and other issues. He indicated that I should contact him after the August 3 local-government elections.

"When I did phone him on a number of occasions I was not able to speak with him and I left messages. He never returned my calls," Maimane said.

On September 16 he received a request from the union asking how much it owed him in total. He gave the figure but never heard back from it, he said.

Maimane said when he eventually met with the union's leaders he was told the union was struggling to collect members' contributions from employers.

But Mathe told the Sunday Times the union had only become aware of the court case this week when it was issued with the provisional order.

"We have instructed our attorneys to apply for an urgent rescission of that court order, because we were not aware of the proceedings against us," he said.

Asked why the union had not paid its bills, Mathe said: "The issue that might have complicated things is that at the office we received a lot of suspicious invoices and we appointed a company to conduct an investigation.

"Unfortunately the invoices from [Maimane] were also subject to the forensic investigation.

"We cannot pay any amount to anybody before we can satisfy ourselves the invoice is legit."