7 September 2007
Blade Nzimande, General Secretary
Introduction
The SACP would like to take this opportunity to congratulate yourselves for merging the Peforming Arts Equity (PAWE) and the Musicians Union of South Africa (MUSA) to found CWUSA. The SACP particularly congratulates the leaders and members of CWUSA, and all the formations that have agreed to constitute a single coordinated Union in the Creativity industry, for a job well done in ensuring that there is working class unity in the industry to advocate for and protect workers’ rights and interests.
The SACP is particularly happy that the Creative Workers Union of South Africa is affiliated to the most revolutionary trade union federation in the country and continent, COSATU and therefore joining the thousands of the South African working class, that appreciate that the struggle for complete liberation cannot be limited to boardrooms and factory floors, but should include.
One lesson, which the working class in South Africa should learn is that unity of the workers could fundamentally transform society as a whole and change the value systems that have been sown by apartheid capitalism. The sector in which you operate is one of the highly exploitative sectors, dominated by powerful monopolies and other interests; yet the workers’ struggles in this sector are somehow hidden. The pattern has been that your situation only comes out when your colleagues die poor, and only then is the exploitation of workers in this sector is highlighted and that it recedes from the public eye again
Society and our Communities are constantly exposed to, entertained by and enjoy the talents and hard work of creative workers, yet the strains, non-recognition they suffer in the industry is not of public knowledge.
There is no doubt that Creative workers in South Africa have significantly contributed to the struggle for national liberation in South Africa, and should continue to raise through music, arts, poetry and other means the challenges that society is facing in the present period.
Some key tasks and challenges for CWUSA
The first and most critical challenge for your union is to ensure that you do indeed organise the many creative workers, who often work in isolation, suffering quietly from the exploitative practices in this industry. You must know that it is one thing to form a union, but a bigger challenge lies ahead in ensuring that you recruit as many workers as possible. The SACP knows very well that your task would not be an easy one, since it is not very easy to organise workers who tend to work individually or in small groups and tend to sign individual contracts.
A related task is that of confronting the key capitalist companies who precisely exploit the fact that you tend to sign individual or small group contracts thereby offering pathetic amounts. In addition they use this reality to sow divisions and competition amongst yourselves thus undermining the unity of the struggle of the creative workers
A critical challenge facing CWUSA will be that of conducting political education within your sector. This is absolutely important so that your members understand their role within the broader context of the challenges facing South African society. In addition you peform a very important intellectual and ideological role in society. You are the interpreters and communicators of the trial and tribulations, joys and sadness facing society, as well as the many challenges facing our society, including poverty, unemployment and joblessness. It is therefore important that our creative workers have the correct ideological orientation, articulating the interests of the workers and the poor of our country. It is also important to understand that the fundamental source of your problems is capitalism. Labour is the only ‘commodity’ that does not set its own ‘price’ in the ‘market’. When you go to a shop you buy on the basis of prices set by the shop owner. But in the case of labour you are told how much you will be paid for your ‘product’. The SACP is committed to partnering with you in this important task of political education and ideological development of your members.
One of the big struggles you have to wage is that of campaigning for the promotion on local creative work in the local broadcasting and media industry, especially the public broadcaster, the SABC. This is a struggle you can never wage individually, but can only be waged collectively. As the SACP we are concerned about the dominance of American and Western material in television, creative work, arts and culture. Whilst we cannot and should not isolate ourselves from the rest of the world, but our local creative work must be given priority. This must include the struggle to confront corruption in the broadcasting and media industry, whereby only those who can cough up money, usually backed by powerful capitalist interests, have their work broadcast.
We also wish to congratulate you for the efforts you are putting into fighting piracy, especially of your music. The SACP regards this as one of the critical tasks for CWUSA and as the SACP we pledge full support for you in this regard, as this constitutes one of the biggest threats to our creative work in our country
The formation of CWUSA should also be seen as part of the struggle to reclaim your work, your originality and your creativity. Capitalism is actually the biggest destroyer of this creativity, since more often than not you are asked to modify or even change some of your own creative work in order to suit the interests of those who pay for your work. In many instances you become alienated from your own; sometimes you can hardly even recognise some of your work in order that you make a living. The struggle to reclaim your work is fundamental to the advancement of the kind of South Africa that serves the interests of the overwhelming majority of our people – the workers and the poor
The SACP also calls upon those of our creative workers who have made it and are successful not to stand aside, but to join in with the rest of the creative workers. We also use this occasion to call upon all the creative workers of our country to join CWUSA in their numbers
The struggle of creative workers is part of the broader struggles of the working class as a whole
It is going to be very important that the struggle of creative workers concretely becomes part of the struggles of the working class as a whole.
The SACP has just emerged from its highly successful 12th National Congress. Incidentally it is for this reason that we see the renewed class offensive against the SACP in the wake of this Congress. There is a concerted campaign to try and discredit not just the image of the SACP, but this is part of a broader offensive against the working class as a whole
Our 12th Congress has identified the key task facing the working class in the short to medium term as that of building working class power in all key sites of influence and power in society. To this end the SACP has identified six key areas of priority in this regard; building working class power in the state, the economy, the workplace, the community, ideologically and in the international sphere. What does this mean for creative workers?
In so far as the state is concerned this means that government in particular needs to develop policies that recognise and seek to advance the interests of the arts and culture, and that seeks to nurture local talent. This means state intervention to seek to pressure private capital for instance to invest more resources in fostering local talent. Government is for instance developing an industrial strategy aimed at growing and developing our economy. Creative workers need to ensure that their own interests are strongly factored, and we need a sectoral strategy to transform the creative industry and seek to end the exploitative practices in this sphere
Building working class power in the economy, means in your case, amongst other things, precisely what you are starting today, building a strong progressive trade union in this sector. But it also means strong challenging the colonial character of our economy which is still in the hands of the same old white capitalist class. Together with COSATU we have committed ourselves to the struggle for making the second decade of our freedom a decade for the workers and the poor. We came to this commitment given the reality that, in economic terms, the first decade of freedom has benefited the same old capitalist class, now joined by a tiny black elite. Your struggle therefore is to ensure that if the first decade of our freedom was not a decade for creative workers, then the second decade of our freedom must be a decade for creative workers!
Building working class power in the workplace means in your case transforming the unequal relations between the big capitalist companies and creative workers, especially black creative workers. Whilst to many people your workplace appears to be the stage, but behind that stage lie deeply rooted exploitative practices. Part of your challenge in this regard is also to eradicate the problems of drugs in this industry. Whilst the SACP knows that the problem of drugs is a society wide problem, not just in the creative sector, your sector remains particularly vulnerable. The SACP would like to join in with you in fighting this scourge.
Creative workers are part of the community. You are also in many ways the custodians and articulators of the many challenges facing our communities. CWUSA will have to be part of the many struggles being waged by our communities for a better life. You should seek to continue to be, in your own way, the voice of the struggles of these communities.
I have already above highlighted the importance of creative work in the broader struggle for ideas in society. In many ways creative work is about ideas, is about communicating message and influencing society on the kind of society we would like to build. As a progressive union of creative workers, you have an important role to play in propagating ideas of caring, social solidarity, selfless commitment to service of people. Our country is threatened by the growing mentality of self-enrichment, dog eat dog, threatening to erode the values that have liberated this country. CWUSA must be the foremost carriers of a pro-poor, pro-working class messages in our country
It is also going to be important that CWUSA uses the very extensive international linkages that COSATU has, to forge international links with your counterparts in other countries, especially in the developing world. We live in a unipolar world, dominated by an increasingly militaristic and arrogant United States. Creative work is a very important component in the struggle against imperialism and its neo-liberal values and practices. The struggle of the working class must truly be international if we hope to build a better, humane world, which as far as we are concerned can only be a socialist world, in which the working class determines its own destiny and that of the rest of humanity.
We wish to commit ourselves to building a partnership with CWUSA, throw our full weight behind your struggles. The immediate challenge will be that of forging common programmes and how our respective campaigns can help to strengthen our two formations. We also call upon CWUSA to join in and support our campaigns for the transformation of the financial sector, transforming the faceless credit bureaux and for a once off amnesty for all from these institutions, in the struggle for land and agrarian transformation, in the struggle for safe and affordable public transport and the struggle for an affordable and accessible public health system
With these words we wish you a successful congress!