5 December 2006
SACP Message to COSATU on its 20th anniversary
Blade Nzimande, General Secretary
The Central Committee and the entire membership of the South African Communist Party brings its warm and comradely greetings to COSATU on the occasion of its 20^th anniversary. For the SACP this is also a moment of celebrating two decades of a rich, comradely alliance between our two formations. Together we have taken up the battle against an economic system based on exploitation of the majority and private profits for the few. Together we have opposed privatization. Together we have sought to high-light the job-loss blood-bath that has engulfed our country over the past decade. Together we have endeavoured to find programmes to address joblessness, casualisation and underdevelopment. Together we have committed ourselves to making the second decade a decade of workers and the poor.
We wish to state categorically as the SACP today, that we are very proud of having an ally like COSATU. COSATU is a highly dependable ally that has proved its trustworthiness and credibility through taking up concrete struggles of the workers and the broader struggles to deepen our national democratic revolution.
COSATU?s strength and resilience
COSATU was launched on an auspicious date 20 years ago. 1 December is also the anniversary of the emancipation of slaves, a little over 150 years ago. COSATU was formed on the back of a long tradition of trade unionism in the face of brutal oppression, repression and exploitation. South Africa, a colony and a mineral-rich country, was seen as a prized possession for the imperialists. Its self-sufficient people, however, were regarded as mere chattel and treated as such. Apart from a lengthy military conquest resisted by the people of South Africa, the development of capitalism was a brutal process of forced labour, including the use of laws to drive peasants off the land and into the mines, factories and shops that mushroomed across the country as its economy grew.
When COSATU was launched workers and activists had every reason to be sceptical about its survival as an organisation. Targeted by the apartheid regime, COSATU was harassed, infiltrated and at every turn bosses and the state sought to ensure that it did not survive, or if it did it was to be a weak, sweetheart organisation. This offensive by the apartheid ruling bloc was also manifested by attempts to form a union by the name of UWUSA, under the auspices of the IFP, but funded by Adriaan Vlok, that apartheid minister of police. UWUSA even held a rally right here in 1986, carrying a coffin written ?COSATU? hoping to bury this federation. Today we are proud that COSATU has grown in leaps and bounds and instead UWUSA ? an apartheid police project ? has long been buried.
There were reasons for the failure of all these efforts by the ruling class and its allies that remain relevant today as we seek to ensure the survival and growth of COSATU.
Firstly, COSATU is an independent trade union federation. This ensures its focus and commitment to worker issues and that it is not an extension or conveyor belt of any political organisation. Secondly, COSATU has always positioned itself as a militant, progressive, campaigning and programmatic organisation. It has taken up worker issues but always understood that workers are mothers, youth, people living with disabilities, and people living with HIV and AIDS and has therefore taken up broader social issues as well as socio-economic and political ones. Thirdly, COSATU has been in alliance with the ANC and the SACP and has worked with other progressive formations, constantly seeking to build alliances and influence society. It has always remained relevant and influential and has helped to build and shape the constitution and policies of our democracy and its government.
The existence and struggles of COSATU has taught us some very important lessons that we need to learn from. Firstly, there is no contradiction between being an independent trade union federation and at the same time enter into alliances, including political alliances. Though this is not without its own tensions, these tensions are not necessarily destructive but they become the locomotion of our revolution. It is this independence that has strengthened the Alliance. And it is the alliance that has reinforced this independence as a necessary component of a strong alliance.
As Slovo said in 1988, it is precisely in periods that require alliances that the working class and its formations must preciously guard their independence. The converse is also true as Lenin said, it is only an independent working class, with a clear programme, that can enter into principled alliances without sacrificing working class goals.
Challenges facing COSATU and the working class
This, as we know, has not been without challenges for the federation. In the post apartheid state, the contradictions of class formation, such as with BEE, the rampant nature of capitalist globalisation and is impact on the economy, have all taken their toll. COSATU has seen millions of its members lose jobs. In relative terms, workers are less economically well off than they used to be. For example, the gross share of income accruing to workers has fallen in the last decade.
These set-backs have been somewhat ameliorated by government policies, such as the extension of social welfare provisions, the delivery of basic services. But in stark terms, the major portion of the economic dividend of the transition to democracy has been appropriated by capital and its owners. Workers have borne the brunt of the economic sacrifices that have been made in the restructuring of the economy after its apartheid deformation. This is the challenge that COSATU must face in the next 20 years.
The SACP is firmly of the view that the capitalist economic path we are on is the main reason for the job-loss bloodbath and levels of poverty in our country. Whilst capitalism has gained enormously from our democracy, it is signally failing our democracy. It looks like as a country, including government?s economic policies, we are mistakenly pursuing a path that restoring capitalist profitability after apartheid is the best route to address our socio-economic problems. Clearly this project and path is failing to address systemic underdevelopment in our country. As the SACP we are also of the view that much of the recent turmoil within our movement is, in fact, symptomatic of the deepening crisis of a particular class project to shape the post-1994 state.
While some success has been achieved in consolidating capitalist profitability, this restored accumulation path has not ameliorated the crisis of underdevelopment, it has actively deepened it.
The SACP is encouraged that the National General Council of the ANC and subsequent intra-Alliance engagements have demonstrated that our concerns in this respect are increasingly shared by a growing number of comrades in our movement.
Marx put forward the view that under capitalism, the class struggle on the factory floor or at the work place is about working hours, working conditions, pay and other issues. In South Africa we are also saddled with the burden of the apartheid legacy, that has ensured continued patterns of racial prejudice and privilege, not least at the workplace. The capitalist state, no matter how progressive the constitution, continues to reproduce patriarchal relations and to promote relationships that prejudice youth. For instance, the view is still commonly held that younger people should get lower pay or even receive handouts while learning to do a job. This is usually a poorly disguised form of exploitation, making people work for lower wages because of high unemployment, with an emphasis on the youth bearing the brunt of this.
Being a country with a capitalist economy, with an embryonic developmental state and the need to radically improve the conditions of the working class and the poor, COSATU is a critical weapon for the working class in its ongoing struggle. COSATU has a proud history. It has generated thousands of cadres, several of whom have become Cabinet Ministers. It has contributed to the building of the ANC and the SACP, through ensuring its human and material resources are focussed on the strengthening of the Tri-partite Alliance.
As the SACP we have agreed with COSATU that the key challenge facing COSATU and the working class as a whole, is that of making the second decade of freedom as a decade of workers and the poor. We dare not allow the capitalist class to steal the victory of the workers and the poor of our country. The 1994 democratic breakthrough was essentially the victory of the workers and the poor, but the capitalist class is threatening to steal this victory from them.
To achieve this objective it is absolutely necessary that we intensify mass mobilisation of the workers and the poor of our country to challenge the current economic trajectory and the project that seeks to restore capitalist profitability as a basis for growth and development in our country. This is why as the SACP we fully support COSATU?s jobs and poverty campaign.
Another key challenge is that through this mass mobilisation we must seek to disrupt the emerging and dangerous relationship where business interests are creeping into some of our cadres in the state. We need instead to strengthen and cement the relationship between the working class and the state. Part of achieving this is to ensure that we strengthen the Alliance from below, strong, activist and campaigning ANC, SACP and COSATU local structures, including a vibrant civic movement.
In our campaigning, as formations both committed to socialism, we need to intensify our struggles to roll back the capitalist market, and lay strong foundations for our longer term objective of building socialism. We need to intensify our socialist propaganda and make the mass of our people understand that capitalism is no solution to the challenges facing our country. Under capitalism the workers and the poor of our country have a bleak future.
On our part as the SACP we pledge to intensify our campaigns on all fronts. We are going to intensify our mass action:
As has been the case we rely on COSATU to support us fully on these issues.
As we celebrate COSATU?s 20 years and salute its members and leaders, we in the SACP are confident that it will rise to the occasion and face the challenge of rolling back capitalism and laying the basis for building socialism. The SACP is proud of the role its cadres have played in helping to build COSATU over the years.
Viva COSATU Viva! Forward to Socialism!