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The people who could really lay claim to the slogan ‘pay back the money’, the pensioners of Transnet, today walked to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to demand that their circumstances are immediately and decisively improved while the court case against Transnet and the state continues.

Adv. Anton Alberts, the FF Plus’ parliamentary spokesperson on transport, who assisted with organising the march on the insistence of the pensioners, says about 250 pensioners from all racial groups participated to demonstrate their solidarity and handed a memorandum to the office of president Jacob Zuma.

The march was the idea of black pensioners and some of them went to a lot of trouble to travel to Pretoria from as far as Louis Trichardt.

The claim of nearly R80 million, the largest civil claim in South Arica’s legal history, is now the subject of a court case.

According to Adv. Anton Alberts people older than 90 years participated in the march. A person aged 91 collapsed on the way and was assisted by paramedics. Another pensioner of 92 who is wheelchair bound, also participated in the march.

“This show of unity would have made it clear to the president that black and white have been effected equally badly by the wasting of their pension funds and that there is no empathy from the side of the state with the people who assisted over many decades to build up the railway system.

“From the side of the FF Plus, we will ensure that the president gives attention to the document and will ask him to react to it.

“If there is somebody who truly has reason to demand their money back, it is these people who for years have unnecessarily been suffering in extreme poverty,” says Adv. Alberts.

Issued by FF Plus