A City of Cape Town waste worker who was fired for asking a resident for a tip has won his job back. The Labour Court dismissed the City’s bid to overturn his reinstatement.
Acting Judge MJ Motshekga ruled that the dismissal of Shahied Ebrahim was substantively unfair. The court found the City had not shown that keeping him on would be intolerable.
Ebrahim worked in the City’s Urban Waste Management directorate as a senior operational supervisor and driver. He had 34 years of unbroken service and a clean disciplinary record when he was fired.
The case started with an incident on 16 May 2023. Ebrahim was on duty in the Lakeside area with a colleague, Mogamet Yaheet Warner.
A resident, David Van der Walt, said Ebrahim asked him for a tip in return for removing two bags of rubbish outside his property. He reported it on a community platform and to his ward councillor. He also shared a photo of the municipal vehicle, timestamped at 7.41am.
Ebrahim denied asking for money. He said he and Warner had stopped to eat food they had bought earlier that morning. Warner backed his version.
The City charged Ebrahim with misconduct. It said he had misused a municipal vehicle for private purposes to ask residents for money.
At arbitration, Commissioner Orlando Moses looked at the vehicle charge and the tip charge separately. He found the vehicle had been lawfully issued to Ebrahim, stayed on its route and carried no unauthorised passengers.
Moses did find that Ebrahim had asked Van der Walt for a tip. He accepted the resident’s evidence over the worker’s denial.
Even so, the commissioner ruled that dismissal was too harsh for a first offence, given Ebrahim’s long service. He ordered reinstatement from 1 April 2024, with back pay limited to three months. Ebrahim also received a final written warning valid for 12 months.
The City then went to the Labour Court. It argued that asking the public for money was dishonest and unlawful. It said its zero-tolerance approach justified dismissal and that trust had been destroyed.
The court rejected these arguments. It said breaking the City’s rule against asking for rewards or favours was misconduct, but it did not automatically mean dishonesty.
The court also said a zero-tolerance policy could not decide the punishment on its own. Each dismissal must be justified by the facts of the case.
The City’s reliance on the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act was turned down. The court said this argument was raised for the first time in its heads of argument and was never put to Ebrahim at arbitration.
Senior superintendent Ernest Pharo had testified that the City could no longer trust Ebrahim to drive a municipal vehicle. The court found this evidence was not enough.
Judge Motshekga said an employer’s claim that trust was broken could not, by itself, block reinstatement. The court said reinstatement remains the main remedy for unfair dismissal.
The court dismissed the City’s review application and made no order as to costs.
Source: this article is based on reporting by IOL. Image: IOL. Written with the help of AI and published by the Tzaneen Voice News desk. See our Editorial Standards.
Kgomotso Maake covers news and politics for Tzaneen Voice. Kgomotso reports on government, Parliament, municipalities, courts, crime and service delivery across South Africa, with a close eye on how national decisions reach towns like Tzaneen and the wider Limpopo province. Stories are written in plain English and focus on the facts: who made the decision, what it means, and what happens next.