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Cosatu statement for Freedom Day26 - 04 - 06 |
COSATU statement for Freedom Day
The Congress of South African Trade Unions calls upon all its members and every South African to join the celebrations of Freedom Day on the twelfth anniversary of our first democratic elections on 27 April 1994.
That momentous day changed the lives of every South African. It gave us all hope that after decades of suffering, struggle and sacrifice, our lives could be transformed.
Since then we have passed a democratic constitution and many laws which protect workers' rights to a minimum wage and protection against exploitation and abuse. Millions of people have moved into new homes and been provided with running water and electricity. They have been able to see their children receive an education and been given access to better health care.
Before 1994, workers were treated little better than slaves, hired and fired at the whim of bosses, forced to work long hours for poverty pay, often forced to live in unhealthy single-sex compounds and brutally attacked when they stood up for their rights. Today we are legally free to organise in unions and bargain collectively and are protected by laws which guarantee minimum employment standards.
The fact that on 1 March 2006 the overwhelming majority of people once again voted for ANC councillors shows that the people, especially workers and the poor, have confidence in the ANC and its alliance partners, COSATU and the SACP and look to us to continue to improve their lives.
But while Freedom Day is a time to congratulate ourselves, it must also be a time for find ways to solve the many problems that still blight our lives. The 22 million South Africans who live in poverty and the 41% of the working population who are unemployed are not truly free. The fruits of freedom cannot be enjoyed if you have no job, no money, no food on the table, nothing to pay your children's school fees or no proper health care for your family.
The millions who suffer from HIV/AIDS and other deadly diseases, many of which are diseases of poverty, are also not truly free. Many of these diseases would have disappeared if people could afford good food and had access to the medicines they need, including antiretrovirals for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Freedom is also still only a long way off for the many workers, especially on the farms, whose employers ignore the labour laws and treat them no better than before 1994. The trade unions and Department of Labour keep coming across bosses who pay below the minimum levels laid down in sectoral determinations, who lock workers in at night, ignore the health and safety laws, ride roughshod over hard-won legal rights, and who assault and even murder workers who fight for their rights.
Freedom Day, closely followed by May Day, is also the ideal time to launch a new political offensive against unemployment, poverty, ignorance, disease and crime. COSATU calls upon the government and civil society to support our Jobs and Poverty campaign, which takes off again on 9 May with protest strikes and marches in each sector of the economy.
Despite a small increase in the number of new jobs, we are creating only half the number we need to meet the target set by the Growth and Development Summit of halving unemployment by 2014. Mass unemployment, and the poverty it causes remains the biggest single obstacle to our complete liberation. We must see it, together with the fight against HIV/AIDS, as the most urgent task for the nation.
We are also demanding that all the progressive labour laws passed since 1994 be rigorously enforced. Workers' rights must not exist only on paper but in our everyday lives.
Laws alone however will never win us complete freedom. The key to winning real freedom for workers is strong, militant trade unions. We must recruit all those workers in low-paid, insecure, dangerous and unhealthy jobs, and give them the confidence to fight back against their ruthless and racist bosses. We must also transform our own organisations, so that they give better service to their members.
The workers' movement played the leading role in overthrowing apartheid and winning our freedom. It must do so again, armed with COSATU's strategic programme - Towards 2015. On Freedom Day 2006 let us take the struggle for transformation to new heights and finish off the national democratic revolution.
We have to win as great a victory in the fight for the economic liberation of our people, as the victory in the fight for our political liberation that we celebrate today.
COSATU urges every worker, and all South Africans to celebrate Freedom Day actively, by attending the many events around the country, and not just watching TV or going shopping. Then on Monday 1 May, we want to see workers in their thousands flooding into the May Day rallies around the country.