Dear Comrades
It is with great emotion that I address you today at this COSATU Congress
For many years the Cuban people have supported the struggle of South African workers in the construction of a better society and for the rights and social security of every man or woman in this country.
Our contribution to the liberation movements in this continent, particularly in Angola, had a very important political and historical significance for the people of Namibia and South Africa.
During the last 30 years, thousands of doctors, teachers, technicians and other skilled workers from Cuba have worked together with our African brothers and sisters in the battle against ignorance, slavery and poverty.
Today, more than 300 Cuban doctors are working here in South Africa making a contribution towards extending health care to the whole population of the country.
This common history has a great meaning for the Cuban people and that’s why we sincerely appreciate you invitation to participate in your congress.
Brothers and Sisters, I would like to refer to the challenges that the trade union movement has to face at the present situation.
For decades our people were kept under the illusion that - if we opened ourselves to the unlimited domain for foreign markets and capital, if we privatized vital industries and services of our states, if we strove to become competitive - globalisation would reward those sacrifices, and like a magic key, it would open the doors to the First World. It would lead us to a developed and homogenous society.
The sour reality is that, today, there is more poverty than ever before. Trade union organisations have been stricken and weakened. The situation of children, youth, women, pensioners and the elderly is frightening. And the already disgraceful situation of health and education services and social security systems has deteriorated even more: states are becoming ungovernable as never before due to the broad corruption of felonies, drugs, the actions of organised crime and degradation of social conditions.
In the last decade, for example, Latin American countries have paid 180 billion dollars in external debt interest. In the same period, however, the total amount of debt increased by 117 billion dollars more, and currently amounts to 135 billion dollars.
Under these conditions, how to prevent unprecedented growth in unemployment? How to prevent poverty from multiplying and half the population from being below the average poverty line? How to prevent transnational capital from controlling our most important productions and services? How to prevent workers from being constantly blackmailed and subjected to all sorts of working conditions with no protection whatsoever?
However, as the most recent history shows us, the bloom of globalisation and neo-liberalism has not been able to meet the increasing needs of workers worldwide. On the contrary they have harshly destroyed the labour and trade unionist conquest, which had taken the workers more than a century of struggle to achieve.
Men and women had no other value than that of being mere commodities, marginalising people and entire continents, while destroying the natural environment with the same rage with which they try to crush culture and political diversity. The concentration of the wealth and power of trans-nationals attains dimensions beyond anyone’s imagination.
Globalisation, as currently outlined neo-liberal programmes and hegemonic world dominion schemes is, above all, a political project - which we must not admit as our unyielding fate, nor as the best of possible worlds, but which we have the right and the duty to fight with all our strength against.
The struggle will continue. And if the current situation is not substantially modified, violent strikes and social disturbances will take place, as these are already anticipated in many areas of the world, including developed countries.
We therefore feel that our most important aim today is to create a common front to force trans-national capitalism to reconsider its policies and to give up its abnormal practices. We feel the need to establish a consensus on a basic platform for concerted efforts by trade unions and public forces as a whole, without sectarianism of any kind, without discrimination or desire of protagonism that will lead to failure.
With this purpose, representatives of 350 trade union organisations from 81 countries and all over the world, including the Cuban Central Organisation of Trade Unions, held an international meeting of workers against globalisation and neo-liberalism in Havana last August. There they demanded that the right to work, to occupational safety and social security, to health education services, to union freedom, to a more equitable distribution of wealth and that respect for the dignity and integrity of migratory workers be also globalised.
I would like to refer to the situation in Cuba. 38 years ago our people chose the path of revolution and socialism in such an uneven world as this. Notwithstanding the aggression we have gone through, that path has ensured for us independence and a high degree of social equality. None of those dreadful consequences arising from neo-liberalism, which we have described here, exist in my country.
Cuba has done its best in favour of employment and security for workers. Not a single Cuban has been abandoned in the last 38 years. We do not intend to be a model for anybody, but all we demand is respect for our self determination.
My people face a blockade which attempts to destroy it by hunger and disease. While free trade is encouraged, the imperialist government of the United States wages an economic war against Cuba. Not only that; it also tries to involve the rest of the world in this war through the Helms- Burton Act. While speaking about plurality and democracy, the United States stirs up political and ideological war against my country, and denies in a dogmatic and intolerant way our right to have our own different social model. While calling for entering into international treaties for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, another criminal biological aggression has just been carried out from the United States against our island in order to destroy our plantations.
Is that hegemonic, brutal, illegal and immoral behavior the standard of co-existence among people which is around the corner for the world?
I sincerely thank you, dear friends, for this invitation to address you. You can count on the Cuban Central Organisation of Trade Unions for the success of our common struggle for anything that could get us closer to concerted action, to greater solidarity and to co-operation amongst our organisations.
I thank you very much.