COSATU statement on Human Rights Day 2008 19-03-08

 

COSATU statement on Human Rights Day 2008

On this, our Human Rights Day, the Congress of South African Trade Unions pays tribute to all the heroes, heroines and martyrs of our liberation struggle, whose commitment, bravery and self-sacrifice won for us the human rights that we enjoy today.

In particular this day we dip our flags in memory of the 69 people of Sharpeville, who were cruelly murdered on 21 March 1960. Their tragic deaths were a turning point in our fight to liberate our nation from the shackles of apartheid. They showed the world the brutal character of the racist dictatorship. May they never be forgotten!

As a direct result of the struggle in which they lost their lives we now have one the world's most democratic constitutions, which guarantees fundamental human rights and has spawned many progressive laws to enforce these rights. We have won labour laws, which protect workers, by ensuring basic standards of justice and fairness, equal opportunities, minimum wages, good working conditions, and protection from victimisation.

But we must never be complacent about human rights. On this day, as well as celebrating our achievements, we must realistically examine whether all South Africans really enjoy the freedoms and rights they are granted in the constitution.

As we said on this day last year: "Laws must not just look good on paper; they must translate into real improvements in the lives of the majority of our people... Legal rights put no food on the family's table or pay for school fees and medical bills."

That is why, as a workers' movement, we need to be especially vigilant to check what progress we have made in advancing and consolidating socio-economic rights. Constitutional rights are of little worth if you have just been retrenched, or your job has been casualised and you face a life of grinding poverty.

Human rights must always include the right to well-paid, secure, safe and healthy jobs. They must encompass the right to basic services, healthcare, education, running water, electricity, public transport and welfare grants. Human rights are inseparable from the eradication of the high levels poverty and unemployment, which undermine our positive achievements since 1994.

The situation is made worse by the widening inequality in our society. If you are rich you enjoy far more rights. You have been getting richer since 1994. You own a house in a walled suburb with private security; you send your children to good private schools; you are cared for in the best private hospitals and you have plenty of access to credit and banking services.

If you are poor, unemployed or a casualised worker you have the legal right to all these things, but you do not actually possess any of them. You are most likely to be little better off, or for some even worse off, than in 1994. Your life is one long struggle to put food on the family table, pay school fees and keep out of debt.

On top of that, many workers are likely to suffer racist abuse and even physical assault from the many employers who still imagine they live in the apartheid days and do not understand the meaning of human rights.

Nowhere is Human Rights Day more relevant than on the farms, where workers enjoy the fewest rights and are the most exploited and abused. Yet that is also where workers are also most likely to be forced to work on their holiday and have no chance to celebrate the rights they are denied anyway.

In 2008 nothing much has changed on the farms. Ruthless employers still pay poverty wages, summarily evict tenants from their homes, sometimes assault, rape and even murder their workers. Now, as we saw graphically in Special Assignment on Tuesday 18 March, they are also exploiting, under-paying and ill-treating Zimbabwean workers who are coming here to escape poverty, hunger and even worse attacks on human rights by the Mugabe government.

COSATU demands that these and all other immigrant workers are granted exactly the same human rights enshrined in our constitution as South African workers and must not be discriminated against.

We utterly oppose xenophobia, which wrongly blames, stigmatises and even attacks foreigners for causing unemployment and poverty, whereas, as we said last year: "These workers are not the cause, but fellow-victims of a system which exploits all workers, and of employers who take advantage of vulnerable people. We must never let our class enemy divide and rule us; workers' unity is essential in the fight to end unemployment, poverty and exploitation."

While defending the rights of immigrant workers in South Africa, we are also stepping up our campaign for human rights in the countries they come from, especially Zimbabwe and Swaziland. This year we dedicate this Human Rights Day especially to:

Our comrades in the Swaziland textile workers union who have been brutally forced to end a heroic strike against low pay and exploitation by the Royal Swazi Police, who opened fire on peaceful demonstrators, raided strikers' homes and threatened them with death if they did not end their strike;
Our fellow workers in the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions who will be bravely taking on the might of Mugabe's state forces, as he tries once again to rig the election on 29 March and return himself to power.

We remember all the other workers around the world who are denied their basic rights to organise and protest - in Sudan, Western Sahara, Palestine, Burma, Colombia, Iraq, Iran, and many other parts of the world.

Strong, independent trade unions are always the best tool for defending human rights and democracy. All dictators fear a powerful, united workers' movement. COSATU urges all its members to commemorate this historic day by recruiting new members into their union and into our alliance partners, the ANC and SACP, so that we can consolidate and expand our forces to defend and extend our human rights.

As always on these public holidays, we call on employers to give their workers their workers time off, so they can enjoy their holiday. The only exceptions should be genuinely essential public services, and they must be properly compensated with double pay. These days must not be for business as usual in our shopping malls but a non-trading day, where we have time to spend with our families and to remember the events like Sharpeville that shaped our history.