26 April 2016
The South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU) held a very successful march on Saturday, 23 April dubbed - the Mother of All March.
The Party and the federation would like to thank all those who participated in the march and ensured that it became a resounding success. The commitment to the course is a clear demonstration of how serious they take the struggles of the working class and the poor.
The Party and the federation would now await the government`s response to the demands contained in the memorandum. It is the government`s response to our demands which will inform our next course of action. But we want to assure the members of both COSATU and the SACP that such a response will be at the centre of the struggles of the working class and the poor from now onwards.
Secondly the socialist axis in the Province made up of the SACP and COSATU has noted, with serious concern, the recently released employment equity figures. Whilst we are generally concerned about the figures, nationally, we are particularly concerned about KwaZulu-Natal.
According to the 16th Commission for Employment Equity Report, in KwaZulu-Natal African males accounted for a mere 9.8% of top management posts while White males stood at 47.9%.
The report also showed that White male representation at senior management level had in fact increased from 32.7% to 32.9% in 2015. Indian males account for 18.8% which is a gross over-representation.
African female representation in senior management positions which stood at 5.8% in 2014 increased to 6.1% in 2015.
The SACP and COSATU in the KwaZulu-Natal Province believe that this is a reversal of the gains made through progressive legislation in the past twenty years such as Employment Equity Act.
The report vindicates our concerns at the lack of transformation in the workplace.
The SACP and COSATU believe that one of the major contributing factors to this is the lack of proper skills development programme because it is through proper skills development programmes that people can be empowered to play a meaningful role in the workplace.
We will call on the provincial legislature, through the Premier of the Province, to debate this matter.
The Party also calls on COSATU and all its affiliates to engage with their employers on the recently released report and how its findings can be reversed.
In addition both working class organisations will be calling on the convening of a skills development summit to see where the bottlenecks could be in the transfer of skills to empower the previously disadvantaged.
The Party would also like to reiterate its position on the reprimand of SACP Deputy National Chairperson, in his capacity as the Minister of Public Works, Cde Thulas Nxesi.
We believe that the reprimand was unfair and uncalled for especially because when Cde Thulas joined the department as its political head tenders had already been awarded and he is the one who instituted an investigation which led to corrective action taken against a number of officials who committed wrongdoing in the project.
We beleive that the reprimand plays into the running of government on factional basis and it is this obsession with factions which has plunged a number of countries such as Syria, Sudan, etc., into terminal problems. We warn the government to refrain from taking factional battles to state institutions.
Issued by the SACP & COSATU Kwa-Zulu Natal Province.
For more information contact Themba Mthembu @ 083 303 6988 or Edwin Mkhize @ 082 399 7756