Delivered by the General Secretary of the SACP, Blade Nzimande
Cde President, General Secretary and the rest of the national leadership of SACTWU, leaders of our Tripartite Alliance partners present here, our fraternal international trade union formations, cde delegates, comrades and friends. The SACP is once more deeply honoured to have been invited to address this Congress of clothing, textile and leather workers - a true parliament of the workers in this sector.
The SACP would firstly like to express its appreciation of the supportive role that members of your union have played supporting and strengthening the SACP - your own political vanguard. As Lenin said in the early 1900s, the surest defeat of the working class and its aspirations lies in the separation between its leading communist component and its organized labour formations. The unity between the two is the most important task to advance the struggle of the working class as a whole. There can be no victory of the working class struggle without the unity of the communists and the organized formations of the working class.
The revolution is on trial!
We have chosen as our main message to this Congress the fact that the revolution is on trial, not out of being fancy or sophistry in using words, but because our national democratic revolution is indeed on trial! What do we mean when we say our revolution is on trial?
Firstly, despite the many important and welcome advances made by our revolution over the last 13 years, the fundamental problem remains that we have not succeeded in changing the colonial character of our economy. In other words, ours is a revolution with some (significant), working class buttressed political power, but without economic power. This means that much as the national liberation movement has ascended to political power, but economic power still remains in the hands of the same old white (monopoly) capitalist class as under apartheid. Despite some black economic empowerment and advancement, this has largely benefited a small, and highly dependent and parasitic black section of the capitalist class, without any fundamental change in the ownership of wealth in our country, nor any significant changes in the character of South Africa`s workplace.
The current economic growth path over the last 13 years has primarily benefited the white capitalist class, and the (predominantly black) working class has been retrenched through a massive job loss bloodbath, casualised and outsourced, thus leading to a serious threat even to the continued existence of industries like clothing, leather and textiles. In fact our current economic growth path has threatened to wipe out whatever remaining capacity to produce clothing and textiles in our country.
In fact without the SACTWU-led struggles to save whatever is remaining of the leather, clothing and textile sector, your industrial sector would have been completely destroyed by now, and we possibly be importing virtually all of our textiles and clothes by now! It is for this reason that we say our revolution is indeed on trial, as the jobs of workers in your sector have indeed been seriously eroded!
Our revolution is also on trial precisely because ours was never a struggle to merely replace a white elite with a black elite. Our revolution has always been about the fundamental transformation of our economic realities as a basis upon which we can truly secure the political power of a radical national democratic revolution. Indeed ours is a revolution on trial!
Our revolution is on trial also because in its early years our government followed a misinformed policy of tight monetary and fiscal policy that downsized the public service and followed a wholly inappropriate policy of GEAR. It was a policy that led to the white (monopoly) capitalist class to be the main economic beneficiary during the first decade of our freedom.
That is why both the SACP and COSATU respectively adopted the Medium Term Vision (MTV) and the 2015 plan to ensure that the second decade of our freedom becomes the decade for the workers and the poor. Part of the challenge of this Congress is to debate how, within the context of the struggles of the clothing, textile and leather workers it advances both the objectives of the MTV and the 2015 plan. Ours is a struggle to ensure that by the end of the second decade of our freedom the workers and the poor become the primary beneficiaries in our political and economic dispensation.
Our revolution is also on trial because our organizations, especially those of the Tripartite Alliance are facing many tasks and challenges. The ANC, especially since 2005 is faced with many challenges of building a united organization. Never again should we allow our ANC to be faced with such problems, and therefore we need to ensure that it becomes a more united organization, focused on leading the Alliance and at the head of driving a radical national democratic revolution.
Our revolution is on trial because the working class may have lowered its guard during the early years of reconciliation, to allow a new elite (white and black) to use the reconciliation period to undermine the economic interests of the workers and the poor, and to consolidate the interests of the established and emerging sections of the capitalist class.
Our revolution is on trial precisely because it has to address the question of women`s emancipation and gender equality. The majority of the workers in your sector are women. However, BEE and affirmative action has predominantly benefited black males, and used the gender question and the 50/50 representation for the benefit of elite women, and consigning black women women workers to the bottom of the pile, as was the case under apartheid. SACTWU therefore has an important role to play in ensuring that ordinary working class women are at the forefront and the main beneficiaries of gender transformation.
If truth be told the question of women advancement and gender equality has been used by male comrades to opportunistically advance their agenda to consolidated political power. It has also been during times of internal political tensions that we have remembered that by the way women must be advanced, not as a genuine attempt at gender transformation. Indeed, our revolution is on trial, and we must not allow the advancement of women to be used as a mechanism for co-option and to consolidate narrow black male consolidation of power, especially over state institutions. We must not allow the question of the advancement of women to be used to secure agendas that are especially hostile to the interests of the working class.
If truth be told again, the question of the advancement of women and 50/50 representation is being used to advance elite women and consolidating male power. Surely, SACTWU, as an organization representing mainly women workers need to challenge this and ensure that indeed working class women become the main beneficiaries from these perspectives.
Most importantly, never again should we allow our COSATU to face such fractious challenges and attacks on some of its leaders as we saw in the run up to COSATU`s 9th Congress in September last year.
Never again should we allow the SACP to be undermined by forces hostile to a communist agenda, including disgruntled elements within its own ranks, as we saw it in the lead up to our 12th congress and continue to see now.
Our revolution is on trial precisely because we need to defend the unity of our organizations, and make sure that we get rid of all those elements who are hell-bent on dividing and weakening working class organizations, especially those who masquerade as champions of the working class whilst advancing the class project of the capitalist class, both the white and the elitist black sections of the capitalist class.
However the only solution to meeting the challenges of a revolution on trial is a politically conscious organized working class, capable of driving a SOCIALIST ORIENTED NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION led by a development state under the hegemony of a dynamic, campaigning and a liberation movement rooted amongst the mass of our people! We shall return to this matter later.
A job-creating, labour intensive industrial strategy
One of the key solutions to addressing the trial of our revolution is that of developing an industrial strategy, that is state-led, working class driven to ensure job creation and building sustainable livelihoods for the overwhelming majority of the workers and poor of our country.
That today the ANC National Policy Conference and the government are talking about a developmental industrial strategy is not least due to the struggles waged by SACTWU. At a time when it seemed as if the clothing and textile sector was being surrended to global pressures, SACTWU stood up and saw the realization of, amongst other things, an agreement on Chinese textiles, in a manner that has a huge potential to protect our domestic clothing and textile sector.
Part of the challenges in the clothing, textile and leather sectors include the fact this industry was being rapidly integrated into the vicious and ruthless global economy, and exposed it to the most unfair competition, guided by highly unequal and problematic rules and regulations. These sectors have suffered the most brutal of challenges that were brought forth by the integration into the global economy, with unfair trade rules and competition. Thousands of jobs and potential jobs were destroyed in the Clothing and Textile industry as South Africa`s unprotected industries were being exposed to unfair competition and trade practices in the global economy.
We wish to congratulate SACTWU for leading the struggle to ensure that the clothing, textile and leather sectors are incorporated into the emerging industrial strategy. But there is a vast difference between legislation and policies as pieces and their realization on the ground. To make these a living reality requires that workers in this sector should intensify their struggles, by building strong trade unions and continue to fight the surrendering of this industry to the logic of imperialist globalization. This means, amongst other things the intensification of the struggle against casualisation and informalisation of labour in the sector.
It is always important to highlight that the introduction and adoption of the Industrial Strategy is a result of calls by the working class movement in South Africa-COSATU and the SACP included.
However in order to fight this struggle successfully it is the SACP`s view that we must challenge the belief that South Africa is unable to challenge the dependent-development path on which our economy is on, with its strong colonial character. We must refuse to allow the clothing and textile sector simply to be dictated to by the imperialist global economic market. This requires a strong SACTWU, working together with the SACP.
Dependent development refers to the fact that South Africa has to export primary products, whilst continuously importing almost all capital goods and other commodities, which we have the internal capacity to produce, create jobs and reduce poverty.
One distinct factor about the SACP is that it has always acknowledged and appreciated the fact that the struggle for socialism can not be separated from the struggle to transform the colonial character of our economy, build working class-led national unity and seek to drive a sovereign economic development path.
The racialism and sexism sown by apartheid almost existed independent of the class exploitation, such that a narrow focus on resolution of the class contradictions did not guarantee the automatic resolution of the national and gender contradictions-hence our historical acknowledgement that the struggle for socialism in South Africa is uninterrupted from the struggle to resolve the national and gender contradictions.
Whilst we have changed some of the conditions for continued super-exploitation of especially the black working class, we have not fundamentally changed the colonial character of our economy, which still primarily shape the clothing, textile and leather sectors.
The SACP therefore commits itself to continue to work together with SACTWU to ensure the protection and growth of the domestic clothing, textile and leather sectors in our country. Our challenge is that of developing a concrete joint programme in this regard. This is because of the fact that it is only a politically conscious and organized working class that is best capable of defending its interests as the overall interests of the working class and society as a whole.
The low levels of remuneration of workers in your sectors and consistent struggles by clothing bosses to refuse to recognise workers` rights is a reflection of the continuing colonial character of our economy.
The SACP 12th National Congress: Defend and strengthen the organizations of the working class
As part of the current growth path there has been increasing attacks on the working class taking different forms. If we are to advance many of the objectives outlined above, we need to understand the nature of the attacks on the working class, as a basis for a counter working class offensive.
If our revolution is on trial, then there is a solution; the strengthening of the SACP as the political vanguard of the working class, and building strong progressive trade unions under the umbrella of COSATU. Our country is crying out for decisive working class leadership, and it is for this reason that there is an increased offensive against the working class, both politically and economically.
The struggle of clothing, textile and leather workers cannot be waged in isolation from broader working class struggles. An important recent advance made by the working class.
The SACP has emerged from one of its most successful congresses, the 12th National Congress. In short, our Congress came to the conclusion that the struggles you are waging in the clothing, textile and leather sectors, the broader trade union struggles in society, the attacks on, and attempts to smear, the SACP, COSATU and some of their leaders, are all part of the broader class struggles over the direction that our revolution should take. Is it to be a capitalist or socialist oriented democratic revolution?
It is for this reason that our 12th Congress decided that the key tasks in the immediate period is that of building working class hegemony in six key sites of power: the state, the economy, the workplace, the communities, the ideological and in the international sphere.
Part of achieving the above is that of reconfiguring our Alliance such that it is able to reflect the challenges of a liberation movement that is in power. Our 12th National Congress has, amongst other things, correctly and comprehensively resolved that we should continue to contest State power, in a reconfigured alliance. This is the alliance we have consciously built since 1928 as a fighting nationalist revolutionary movement against the white bourgeoisie (white monopoly capital) and the imperialism.
We call upon this SACTWU Congress to reflect on these very important challenges and how it contributes to building working class hegemony in the whole of society, guided by COSATU 2015 and the resolutions of the SACP 12th Congress.
This also means that we have to unapologetically discuss the kind of ANC we need to build; an ANC with a working class bias, and with a leadership committed to these goals and building an Alliance that is more cohesive and ready to achieve the goals of a radical national democratic revolution, aimed at principally benefiting the overwhelming majority of our country - the workers and the poor! Go and even be more active in your ANC branches!
This calls upon escalating the current working class struggles as a conscious effort to build working class hegemony in society! We wish you a successful Congress. Amandla!