9 May 2000
The South African Communist Party (SACP) fully supports the May 10 General Strike called by COSATU. The SACP supports workers’ actions to focus the attention of the country on job losses and job creation. None of the COSATU demands have been sufficiently addressed. Workers have no other option but to use their mass power to support their demands. We call upon unemployed people, particularly working class communities to support this action.
The SACP General Secretary, Blade Nzimande, will take part in the Mpumalanga (Nelspruit) COSATU march. Other SACP national and provincial leaders have been deployed in the other COSATU marches in the different towns and provinces.
The SACP rejects accusations that such struggles by workers are disruptive to our economy. There is nothing as disruptive to any economy than massive unemployment and poverty, which disrupts family life and deprives workers of their only means of livelihood. It is not the general strike by workers that is disruptive, but the ongoing investment strike by the bosses in this country.
If the bosses believe that they are going to build the
economy of this country over the carcass of the working class, they are
living in a fool’s paradise. They dare not underestimate the resilience and
determination of South Africa’s working class to fight.
We reject the call that teachers should not be part of these working class struggles. As the SACP we are committed to a culture of learning and teaching in our schools. But we cannot separate hungry children from a culture of learning and teaching. It is, after all, these teachers who have to deal with hungry and collapsing African children on a daily basis in our schools. These calls for teachers not to join the strike display insensitivity towards the fact that the majority of children in our schools come from the very same working class that is subject to this job loss bloodbath. In pursuance of what is otherwise, an important objective, that of the culture of learning – the working class must not be mischievously turned against itself as if this culture of learning can succeed on hungry stomachs.
The SACP wants a job creating economy led by an active state, which intervenes in the economy. The SACP calls for the urgent implementation of the resolutions of the 1998 Jobs Summit. We call for the next three months to be used to focus on sectoral summits and to convene, immediately thereafter, a summit to evaluate progress and plan the way forward.
We also appeal to unemployed workers not to be misled by forces who want to use them for their own ends of undermining our democracy. Let the unemployed workers direct their anger at the bosses who are responsible for unemployment and job losses in our country.
CONTACT
Mazibuko K. Jara (surname Jara)
Department of Media, Information & Publicity
South African Communist Party
Tel: 27 11 339-3621/2
Fax: 27 11 339-4244
Cell: 083 651 0271
Email: sacp1@wn.apc.org