5 March 2003
1. Introduction
On this important occasion I bring revolutionary and fraternal greetings from the Central Committee and the entire membership of the SACP. We greet you in this year, the 10th anniversary of the assassination of our late General Secretary Cde Chris Hani, the 10th anniversary of the passing away of that giant of our revolution, Cde Oliver Tambo. This year also marks an important anniversary for the SACP. It is exactly 50 years since the reconstitution of the Communist Party of South Africa as the South African Communist Party after its dissolution and banning in 1950.
We particularly feel privileged to come and address the Congress of the Communication Workers Union - a very important formation operating in one of the fastest changing sectors in this current phase of imperialist globalisation. We sincerely hope that you will use this Congress also to reflect on the broader strategic and tactical challenges facing the working class, identify and strategise around opportunities and threats to consolidating working class organisation in our country, as well as identify the key tasks that should inform your organizational and political strategy in the telecommunications sector. It is also on some of these issues that I will focus my input this morning, so that we can properly locate your sector and tasks facing you within a broader framework of strategic challenges facing the working class and the national democratic revolution. To this end I want to focus on the immediate challenges facing the working class in general, and the trade union movement this year.
2. Understanding the current imperialist offensive
You are holding this Congress against the background of a threatened US-UK war against Iraq. In order to properly understand this, we must remind ourselves of the politics of imperialism, of which this war is an expression.
What is imperialism? Imperialism means the domination of finance capital in the globe and, through this, the penetration of capitalism into every corner of the world. This is critically accompanied by the subjugation of the world economy to the logic of capitalism. Of course this is not a new phenomenon, though its form and character might change and manifest itself in different ways. Marx and Engels, as far back as 1848 in the Communist Manifesto, said:
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere… In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations
Capitalism and imperialist globalisation are a threat to us. The working class needs to be absolutely vigilant against the danger of many of us, including some of our foremost cadres, being converted - however unwittingly - into functionaries of capitalism. Marx and Engels, again in the Manifesto, noted this tendency:
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers… The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
It is this underlying logic and nature of capitalism that saw the colonisation of countries, including ours, laying the foundation for what are currently unequal relations between the North and the South. Under imperialism, underdevelopment of former colonised countries is not just an aberration, but an essential component for capital accumulation globally.
The nature of capitalism is to expand and conquer every market as well as natural resources. Capitalism is characterized by both economic and political crises, and it thus has a tendency towards violence and war to achieve its objectives. We should all know that what are referred to as the two world wars in the last century were essentially about inter-imperialist competition for domination of the world.
What we today refer to as "globalisation" is essentially a new phase of imperialism after the collapse of the Soviet Union and a bloc of socialist countries. The Bolshevik revolution, the socialist revolutions in many other countries, and progressive national liberation struggles had during the last century acted as a "break" on this logic towards global domination. These became an important counterweight to the capitalist imperialist agenda of global capitalist domination. With the absence of this counterweight today, imperialism is prepared to continue with its wars in order to subjugate the globe to the interests of capitalist transnational corporations.
It is within this logic that we should understand the planned war against Iraq. What we are seeing here is a return to war as an instrument of imperialist policy. Fundamental to the planned war against Iraq is an attempt to conquer the world's oil fields.
What is perhaps new in this phase of imperialism is the preparedness of the United States to act alone, even ignoring and risking relations with some of its imperialist allies, like in Europe. This is based on a new security doctrine under Bush whereby the US would act as the vehicle of "world civilisation" (read enforcer of global capitalism). This new security doctrine is contained in a document adopted by the Bush administration which, amongst other things, says "Our (US) forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build up in hopes of surpassing or equalling, the power of the US". Condoleeza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, further elaborated on this strategy: "But if it comes to allowing another adversary to reach military parity with the US in the way that the Soviet Union did, no, the US does not intend to allow that to happen, because if it happens, there will not be a balance of power that favours freedom" (In "American Empire", by Rainer Rilling, Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, Paper 2/2003).
The challenge for the working class in this regard is to throw its weight behind and lead a global peace movement opposed to war. But this must not just be limited to an anti-war stance; it should be used as a platform to garner the widest possible forces to challenge imperialism and its logic. The building of a progressive global peace movement is one of the critical challenges facing the working class globally, and left forces need to harmonise their actions much more consistently in order to create a basis for a challenge to imperialism in the medium to long term. This is very important for our own working class to understand.
3. The unity and strength of the trade union movement as the pillar of strong working class organisation
Your Congress is taking place in the midst of one of the most challenging and testing period for the trade union movement globally and not least in our own country. The neo-liberal restructuring of the workplace, and the fundamental cutting-edge changes in the telecommunications sector, pose one of the most difficult challenges for any union in this sector. It is in this sector that we are seeing some of the far-reaching stratification of the working class. This sector is experiencing huge experiments in capitalist privatization, resulting in outsourcing and retrechments.
Your Congress is also taking place against the background of one of the most risky ventures by Telkom. The listing of Telkom in the Johannesburg and New York Stock Exchanges, in the midst of turmoil and slowdown in the ICT markets, pose a very serious danger to fulfilling the developmental mandate of this organization. It is a listing done in the wake of massive disconnections for the poor, thus severely limiting our capacity to roll back the frontiers of poverty in terms of job creation and service delivery of telephony. Most unfortunately it is an exercise embarked upon in the face of massive worker dissatisfaction, above the heads of and ignoring the concerns of the workers and the poor. Only on Monday morning did a spokesperson of the IPO on SAFM agreed to the fact that this whole process might see another 10 000 jobs lost, with a possibility of these rising to 20 000! Why we are doing this in the midst of one of the massive job losses in our country only time will tell.
The listing of Telkom and the selling of the Khulisa shares is justified on the basis of black economic empowerment. Perhaps this is the clearest example of what BEE has come to mean, despite claims to the contrary. BEE in this instance means the disempowerment of 46 million "shareholders" with Telkom remaining a full public entity, with a smaller group of "shareholders", supposedly in the interests of black economic empowerment. We think that it is very important for CWU, even at this stage to take up these matters earnestly. Failure to do this means major changes in your sector are taking place and simply passing you by, and that is a sure recipe for the severe weakening of the union.
There is currently a major offensive against most of the big COSATU unions, backed by a media offensive. Attacks on the NUM, SADTU, problems in NEHAWU are not accidental. As the SACP we feel that this is part of an offensive to weaken the trade union movement and consequently the working class as a whole. We dare not allow the weakening of the labour movement, as it is an important and most organised component in the struggle to deepen the NDR and for socialism.
A critical question therefore arises for CWU. Are you strong as you are supposed to be? Our observation is that given the scale of the challenges in your sector, CWU is not as strong as it should be. You should therefore use this Congress to honestly and frankly grapple with. Is CWU as united as it should be? Again from a distance we are not certain, and this is an issue that must be honestly reflected upon. In order to answer these questions and seek to overcome the problems, we also need to undertake a very frank assessment at this Congress on whether there is adequate service to members. A number of unions have been experiencing a decline in effectively servicing members. Are you adequately servicing your members? This needs to be confronted squarely without trying to avoid real shortcomings that might be facing the union.
Of fundamental importance is the state of unity of CWU. Is CWU united, and focused on mobilization of the workers to face the challenges of this fast changing sector? Are there leadership squabbles at national or regional levels? If there are, we need to face them squarely and discuss them openly at this Congress. Are there some amongst us who are more concerned about our individual positions at the expense of the unity and effectiveness of the union? We should do that with a view to finding answers to these problems and challenges. Coming to Congresses and taking resolutions as a matter of routine without a frank analysis and examination of our problems is futile. The losers will be members in your sector, and ultimately the weakening of the working class struggle.
Another important question is that of the extent to which CWU is conducting political education and cadre development amongst its leadership and membership. A union that does not undertake such education is bound to experience problems and consequently decline and become weak. Such political education must crucially include education of leadership and membership about the challenges facing each sector in which you operate. It must also include broader political education about the role of the working class in the national democratic revolution and the struggle for socialism. Are we embarking on serious education for leadership and education? Again this Congress must do a frank assessment and commit resources for education. That is why it is also important that CWU must support the ESTABLISHMENT AND APPROPRIATE RESOURCING of the CHRIS HANI INSTITUTE in order to formalize political education and cadre development of worker leaders and cadres.
We are raising all these issues because the SACP wants a strong CWU! The SACP wants to assist wherever it can to contribute towards a stronger CWU. The SACP is forever ready to undertake joint political schools with CWU. We would like to reiterate our availability to undertake such education in order to strengthen particularly the leadership corps of this union. Precisely because CWU is at the interface of worst effects of capitalist globalisation, it needs to pay particular attention to service, education and organizational strengthening of the union. Qina msebenzi qina!
4. The Growth and Development Strategy and Summit
One of the key challenges facing the working class this year is the holding of a growth and development summit. We should use this Congress to contribute towards defining priorities for the working class in any growth and development strategy. Much more critically is the challenge of how such a growth and development strategy should be implemented in the sectors in which you organise. Even more important is how these considerations should inform your bargaining strategies and organization building.
Let us be concrete about what we mean by CWU identifying and struggling for concrete growth and developmental issues in the sectors in which you operate. To the SACP these will be amongst the most important issues to be discussed by this Congress and around which a programme must be developed to strengthen CWU.
For the last three years the SACP has been engaged in a campaign to transform the financial sector. Amongst some of our objectives is to restructure and strengthen the PostBank in particular to play a key role in making basic financial services available to our people. We would like to work together with CWU to ensure that this becomes a reality. We would like to see CWU taking up this struggle much more vigorously as it is closest to the very issues we are raising. The question is what programme will CWU adopt here to play a central role in this campaign. This is a very concrete challenge we are posing to you comrades.
A matter that is closest to the SACP is that of the state of the media in South Africa. Ownership structures and the dominant ideology in the media is completely untransformed and not adequately challenged. This is an important sector in which CWU organize. We desperately need a campaign for the transformation of the media to ensure that the perspectives of the workers and the poor are progressively represented. This is a campaign that CWU can play a very important role. It is a matter that the SACP would be glad to have a bilateral with CWU to jointly strategise around an offensive towards the transformation of the media, with a particular focus on the public broadcaster. We cannot limit our work here to matters relating to conditions of employment, but we need to look into broader transformation issues. We propose a strategic session between the SACP and CWU on this issue as a matter of urgency.
Perhaps the fundamental question for CWU is that of developing a coherent vision and strategy for organising in the ICT sector. We need a comprehensive analysis of the changing profile of the working class in this sector and develop appropriate strategies for organising. There is a growing sense that the ICT sector is increasingly moving beyond the organisational reach of unions like CWU. I hope you are also not developing a sense of despair in this regard. We need to follow the NUM example which successfully challenged the notion that the mining industry is a sunset industry. Today we have a mining charter and a new approach to the mining industry, thanks to the vision and activism of the NUM. CWU needs to follow a similar approach with the ICT sector, building on the sector summit resolutions.
The SACP is also concerned that many affiliates have left socio-economic struggles to the federation, COSATU, without taking up these socio-economic struggles in their own sectors. Detractors of COSATU consequently find a reason to seek to divide the federation from its affiliates. These detractors would then claim that the problem is with COSATU otherwise its affiliates have no problem, as they would not have raised such issues in their own sectors. For instance for CWU it is critical to take up a number of socio-economic issues. Apart from the question of the role of the Postbank raised above, CWU should be tackling the causes of job losses in its sectors. CWU should also be taking up a campaign around the role of the ICT sector in poverty eradication, urban and rural development, and job creation. The ICT sector held a relatively successful sector summit recently, but to what extent has the union sought to struggle for the implementation of the resolutions taken at that summit? Does CWU have a programme to educate and mobilize its members for the implementation of the summit resolutions?
In addition to these the government has committed itself to the extension of telephony to the majority of the people of our country, including a whole range of ICT services. There is also the Universal Service Agency, whose establishment was part of serious engagement between government and the unions. The question that needs to be asked here is to what extent are we organized as CWU to ensure that these commitments are realized? Have we been engaging the USA for instance on its programme and activities and the role that CWU can play in the implementation of such programmes.
In relation to the Growth and development summit, the Alliance identified FIVE critical issues that we should seek agreement on:
1. Investment - critically, the question of mobilisation of domestic resources, including workers' pension and provident funds. This is a very important issue to discuss so that we can seek to have control over these most important assets of the workers. I suggest this is an issue you must place very high in your bargaining and organizational strategy this year, as well as other matters relating to job-creating investment in the sectors in which you organise.
2. Job creation - we need to identify potential for job creation in your sectors and address how to mobilise the union to struggle for these.
3. Social equity - this should not just be limited to affirmative action, but most critically to investments in areas that will tackle the social deficits and inequalities in society. This is a very important issue, which should inform all our strategies. Tackling these questions should also prepare us as the working class to engage with the heightened focus on black economic empowerment and the empowerment charters that are emerging. We must ensure that black economic empowerment must not be limited to, nor primarily defined as, empowerment of a small elite. CWU and the working class as a whole need to embark on a heightened offensive to ensure that BEE principally serves the interests of the workers and the poor. It cannot merely be limited to matters of ownership. The challenge is what kinds of offensive should the working class engage in to contest and seek to direct BEE towards the benefit of the workers and the poor. You should give particular attention to BEE in the sectors in which you organize.
4. Prices and inflation - the challenge of food security and lowering of prices of basic foodstuffs as a strategic priority for the working class
5. Local initiatives, micro enterprises and co-operatives - what is the scope for struggling for the promotion of these issues in the sectors where you organise? Where do the companies in the ICT sector source their secondary businesses, etc?
Whilst all the above does not constitute a complete growth and development strategy, they are fundamental in beginning to turn our economy around towards job creation and an accumulation path in favour of the workers and the poor. These matters must be struggled for in our very own sectors. The KEY challenge comrades is that each union MUST develop a vision for the sector in which it operates. It must not merely content itself by fighting defensive battles and issues of conditions of service, important as these might be. But the critical question is what vision does CWU have for the development and transformation of the media, the postal sector, the telecommunications sector, etc. If this Congress can begin to provide some framework for this, you would have gone a long way in repositioning and strengthening CWU. You understand your sectors better than anybody else does, and can best answer how we should be seeking a growth and development strategy for these sectors.
6. The challenge of strengthening our Alliance and the leadership role of the working class
Given the struggles for a progressive peace movement and attempts to challenge imperialist aggression, our Alliance becomes even more important. It is the only vehicle capable of leading progressive forces for change in our country, as well as making a significant contribution to building a progressive global peace movement. The world is entering a stage where the Alliance unity is imperative if we are to forge spaces for implementing a progressive agenda in South Africa.
It is therefore imperative that we build on the positive climate created by the ANC Conference and the January 8 statement to strengthen our Alliance. But it is necessary that we also take a step back and look critically at our Alliance and the class context within which it operates.
We need to remind ourselves that our alliance is fundamentally a class alliance. We have tended to regard the Alliance principally and almost exclusively as an alliance of organisations, somewhat losing sight of the class basis of that Alliance and those organisations coming together. An exclusive emphasis on the organisational composition of the Alliance, without focusing on its class foundations, tends to freeze the alliance into its (past) historical forms without adequate attention being paid to the implications of changing class realities in our society. Is it not possible for instance that some of the differences in the Alliance might be an expression of changing class realities both within the Alliance and in broader South African society? For example, to what extent are some of the government's policies favouring certain class interests at the expense of others?
Our alliance is fundamentally a class alliance of the black, mainly African, working class and the broader mass of urban and rural poor and marginalised, a black petty bourgeoisie, progressive nationalists, the black middle class and an emergent black bourgeoisie. Clearly our government policies have benefited, in one way or the other, all these class forces and strata. Given a hostile global terrain and the impact of imperialist and neo-liberal policies, as well as the emergence of new class interests within the ranks of the Alliance and society in general, there are bound to be new contradictions, albeit secondary, that emerge. For instance, the current growth path and accumulation regime is on the whole against the consolidation of the interests of the working class, and arguably sections of the black petit bourgeoisie and middle strata. We need to constantly analyse the class trajectory of the accumulation regime underway, the manner in which it is impacting on the nature of the Alliance, and how we should seek to respond collectively to it. That is why political education and cadre development, amongst other things, is important for your union and the working class as a whole.
7. Building vehicles for forging closer SACP and CWU relations
One important challenge for us is that of forging a closer working relationship between our two formations, the SACP and CWU. The SACP has taken a decision to form sectoral units of the SACP. Perhaps it is important that we form party units in the different sectors in which you organize eg, media, postal, telecommunications, postbank, etc. These would be units of 3-6 communists to discuss and engage with the issues in the sector politically, and from the standpoint of the interests of the working class and the Party in particular. These units can also act to co-ordinate political education as well as building workplace units in the sectors where you organize. Such units will not act as secret cabals or caucuses within CWU, but as concrete mechanisms to consolidate our relations. In short comrades the SACP and CWU needs a bilateral at leadership level immediately after your Congress to discuss these and other matters of common interest.
In conclusion, we would like to say that it would be important for this Congress to identify 2 or 3 key campaigns - and not a wish or shopping list, as is the case with most of our Congresses - that are central in building a strong CWU. Such key tasks must be such that they help to provide an overall framework to carry forward all the resolutions we would have adopted here.
With these words, comrades, I wish you a successful Congress.
Blade Nzimande
General Secretary South African Communist Party