The timing of this special congress could have not been better. We face momentous challenges that require absolute theoretical and ideological clarity. We need to ask searching questions about the conditions facing the working class and its future; to review our strengths and weaknesses; and to determine what is to be done in the face of daunting challenges and huge opportunities.
I have no doubt that delegates gathered in this august Congress will be equal to the task. We dare not disappoint workers’ expectations in these difficult times.
This Congress comes soon after we have celebrated the first decade of democracy. We must use it to review our achievements and identify the many challenges now faced by workers and the poor.
None of us doubts that workers have gained immensely in the first decade of democracy.
First, we won democratic space within which to operate underpinned by a progressive Constitution. You only have to look at our neighbours in Zimbabwe and Swaziland to understand the extent of the political space won by the working class and its allies in South Africa. This we must guard jealously.
Second, workers have gained rights in the workplace, as contained in our progressive labour laws. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Labour Relations Act, which was the first salvo fired by the democratic government in its efforts to replace the apartheid labour regime.
We recognise, of course, that we must still do more work to translate all these pieces of progressive labour legislation into weapons at the hands of workers and our activists to defend and advance interests of workers at the workplace and in society in general.
The recent much published threat to exempt small businesses from the aspects of labour laws points to the correctness of the assertion that workers gains in any capitalist society are consistently under threat. We welcome the government’s more recent assurance that it will not undermine workers’ rights. The lesson from this is, once more, that the price of freedom is constant vigilance!
The third major gain for the working class was the provision of basic services, including shelter, health care, water, electricity, education and so forth, especially in the rural areas. Roll out of basic services is critical in the struggle to transform the gendered household division of labour and to relieve the burden currently borne by women. Still, millions do not have access to these basic services and there is a real possibility that rising user fees may cut-off those that currently enjoy access.
Government’s income transfers in the form of social grants provide a buffer for millions who otherwise will be plunged into destitution. Coverage is however not universal and there are millions of poor people, particularly the unemployed, that do not have a social safety net. For this reason, COSATU has called for the Basic Income Grant as well as mass job creation. We need real debate on these matters.
Comrades and friends,
While we recognise these gains in democratic space, social wage and rights at the workplace, we also recognise that for many workers they have been offset by deepening unemployment and poverty and by the failure to deal adequately with the HIV pandemic.
A new tidal wave of job losses is looming in mining and clothing and textile sector due in large part to the strength of the rand. Job losses and unemployment should be declared a national disaster.
We have a much higher unemployment than other middle-income countries. Even if we ignore those unemployed people who are too discouraged to seek work, almost 30% of workers here are jobless. That compares to under 10% in comparable economies.
The Minister of Finance says these figures must be wrong because otherwise we would see a revolution. Three weeks ago I was in Secunda. I found a massive stayaway and riot. Not even COSATU knew it was coming. In the past year, a wave of unrest has swept from Diepsloot in Gauteng to the Free State and the Western Cape. The less obvious underswell of crime, family killings and HIV infections arises largely out of mass youth unemployment.
True, the past year saw job creation in construction and retail. But these jobs are mostly low-paid and insecure. Moreover, they will not survive long if manufacturing and mining are shrinking.
The causes of mass unemployment are easily found. Above all, government has not moved consistently to restructure the apartheid economy. Instead, it adopted a neo-liberal export strategy that left our industries unprotected and unsupported. Job losses resulted on a mass scale while new employment lagged far behind growth in the labour force.
To make matters worse, government simply has no political will to deal with the overvaluation of the rand, which is an immediate cause of mass retrenchments in mining and manufacturing. Moreover, it has not fast-tracked WTO-legal safeguard measures for vulnerable industries. Meanwhile, workers are being thrown onto the streets.
The underlying problem is simple. Business knows one way of dealing with anything that threatens their margins of profitability – retrenchments at the slightest chance. It would rather retrench workers than find alternatives. In particular, we have seen the mining houses move abroad rather than develop our economy. Meanwhile, government has not done much to ensure all its programmes save and create jobs.
The economic growth path since 1994 has benefited the rich and big business. It has largely left behind the working class and the poor who gave their lives to bring this government into power.
Government seems to be helpless in face of the scourge of retrenchments and is reluctant to intervene to counteract job losses. This does not suggest government does not care – it has simply does not have ideas on how to avert job losses and create employment outside of the public works programmes.
While unemployment is soaring, workers’ pay and conditions have stagnated. The share of workers earning under R1000 a month has remained virtually constant even in the formal sector, at about 25%. That is, even in the formal sector, one worker in four earns under R1000 a month. Even in the unions, half of our members get less than R2500 a month.
Low pay is reflected in the declining share of wages and salaries in the national income. In 1994, workers got 51% of the national income; in 2004, their share had fallen to 46%. That is an indictment for our democratic society. It demonstrates that there is no easy trade off between low pay and jobs – we have got low pay, and we’re still not getting the jobs.
Against this background we need to ask the difficult question: Is the NDR on course? There no doubt that the democratic ANC-led government has registered progress in laying the basis for non-racial, non-sexist democratic South Africa as envisaged in the Freedom Charter. Yet political transformation has not been matched by substantial transformation of economic power. The recent bilateral between COSATU and the SACP concluded that in the economy, capital has gained the most from the past decade. In economic terms, capital scored the most and has reaped massive profits at the back of large-scale retrenchments.
Economic power is still in the hands of white monopoly capital. The aspirant and vocal black bourgeoisie remains numerically small and depends heavily on the state and white business for its survival.
In these circumstances, state power remains both a critical instrument for reshaping the economy, and a key site of contestation between capital and workers, reflected in conflicts within the bureaucracy and political leadership. In this contestation, the working class has in the past five years won some space for change, reversing the dedication to free markets and budget cuts experienced under GEAR.
But we must still go much further. The accumulation path inherited from apartheid and subjected to the chill winds of international competition is now a brake to progress to achieve the economic aims of the NDR. The NDR cannot and will not be pursued on a terrain of an apartheid economy – the time for serious transformation and a new growth path has come.
As our bilateral concluded, the first decade of liberation benefited capital in economic terms. The next decade must above all benefit the working class and the poor,
The challenge for the Alliance, and in particular the SACP and COSATU, is how we can achieve these aims. This is a critical question of strategy and tactics, which this Special Congress must discuss and enrich.
For our part, as COSATU, we see two linked challenges arising out of the current situation. We have discussed these issues at great length in our 2015 Programme.
First, we must mobilise our power to fight the wave of retrenchments. We need to demand that both business and government do more to protect and create employment. We can no longer sit by and watch as our members lose their livelihoods while their grown-up children stay home, having had no chance of getting a job since they left school.
For this reason, COSATU has brought a dispute on the unemployment crisis to NEDLAC. We are developing a programme of action, including mobilisation for mass action, which will be debated by our CEC at the end of May. Unemployment cannot just be a crisis for the poor and for workers, neglected by leaders in business and the state.
Second, we need to strengthen our organisation. In the past few weeks, I was able to spend a lot of time with comrades in two of our COSATU regions. The biggest lesson I learned is that we need to recognise that the recruitment of workers into the federation depends on a successful organisational development drive to improve service to members and the pick up our gains in terms of workers’ rights.
In short, the future of the democratic and revolutionary trade union movement depends on the successful implementation of four interlinked campaigns:
Given these challenges, what does the working class expect of its Party?
At the most basic level, we expect the SACP to support our efforts to build working-class power through organisational development, political debate and mobilisation.
We realise, however, that as a political party the SACP must also define its own role in representing working-class interests. This Congress must discuss and debate these issues. Above all, we have to evaluate the SACP’s progress and setbacks in meeting these responsibilities over the past ten years.
As COSATU, we obviously cannot dictate your tactics or strategies. But we can see three important questions for discussion.
First, we assume that the SACP cannot simply walk out of government. That means you have to discuss how to link efforts to build power and campaigns outside of the state with work within the state. Usually, this problem emerges as the question of how do we give a voice to our people when the state has undertaken mistaken policies, without undermining long-term relations that can also bring benefits?
Second, SACP members function both in the ANC caucus and the SACP. How do you manage the mandating process?
These are hard questions, without easy answers. But you might want to remember one of COSATU’s basic tenets: You won’t win in the boardroom what you can’t win in the streets. We must all ask, fundamentally, how we can build and use working-class power to ensure that the end decade of liberation brings with it economic transformation.
Working class power will not be constructed simply by declaring it. It must be consciously built and worked for – the ultimate test is to put into practice our declarations. We must work assiduously and tirelessly, building on the victories that we score as we march to socialism. In any struggles there are setbacks, yet the working class does not have the luxury to be despondent. Setbacks must be used to draw lessons and to march ahead. History is on our side!
Paul Notyhawa (Spokesperson)
Congress of South African Trade Unions
1-5 Leyds Cnr Biccard Streets
Braamfontein, 2017
P.O.Box 1019
Johannesburg, 2000
South Africa
Cell: 082 491 1591
Tel: +27 11 339-4911/24
Fax: +27 11 339-5080/6940
E-Mail: paul@cosatu.org.za