Volume 7 No 2 - March 1998
The beginning of April sees the launch of the mass recruitment campaign. For the first time in COSATU's history, we have chosen a month during which all our leadership, shopstewards, organisers and the Alliance will be out recruiting members for COSATU affiliated unions. While attendance has been disappointing in certain regions and unions, many shopstewards and organisers from various unions have been involved in the preparations. What remains to be seen is how we translate the mobilisation into a successful campaign.
Shopstewards and organisers have a responsibility to ensure the implementation of this congress resolution. Shopstewards and organisers have an opportunity to prove that, given an opportunity, they are able to play a role in building their unions. Our target should be the most vulnerable workers in the informal sector, women and youth, farmworkers and the public sector. At the same time, where we have less than 100% representation, we should use the opportunity to increase our majority.
Ons ken almal iemand wat vir die staat werk. Ons moet hulle vra om COSATU te join. Maak nie saak of hulle in 'n vakbond is nie. So lank dit uit COSATU is, is dit nie 'n vakbond nie.
Building organisation
This campaign is not only about recruitment. It is also about rebuilding our local structures, servicing of membership, preparations for May Day, building local and regional leadership, as well as putting into concrete action the agreement in the Alliance to help build one another's structures. With many people unemployed, some being retrenched and others earning starvation wages, we also intend to use the campaign to popularise our positions on job creation, the need to defend or jobs as well as our commitment to fight for a living wage.
Locals
In the past we all complained about the powers and role of locals. The last congress adopted positions to correct the situation. For the past month we have been involved in meetings to relaunch most of these structures. It is still too early to tell, but our records show that, as sometimes happens in the CEC or EXCO, local meetings have been poorly attended. I wish to make an appeal to all of us to put aside time to build COSATU. Failure to build COSATU holds a danger to the trade union movement. We will have failed to galvanise those outside of COSATU behind the only trade union federation with a vision to lead workers into the next millennium.
Central Committee
In June this year we will be holding a Central Committee to take forward issues raised by the congress on socio-economic issues as well as finalise our approach to the forthcoming elections. All affiliates should revisit their resolutions which were submitted to the congress to see which ones remain relevant. At the same time, we are finalising discussion documents on these issues. Shopstewards should start now to finalise our approach to the development of social and economic policies. We should be clear that the debate on the elections at the CC will not be about whether or not to support the ANC in the next elections, but about the nature of such support. In the meantime, we are discussing with the ANC and the SACP how we take forward the issues raised by the Alliance Summit. We are also participating in the ANC election structures.
Public hearings
Most of you have read in the media about our withdrawal from the public hearings by the joint standing committee on finance. Contrary to media reports, we have not withdrawn from the parliamentary processes, but from this one committee.
The reason for this is that there is as yet no legislative process that allows members of parliament to make certain changes within limits on the budget.
We believe it is a waste of membership fees to send delegates to Cape Town every year to make presentations only to be told that, while we agree with what you are saying, we have no power to accommodate you view points.
Mbhazima Shilowa, Cosatu general secretary
MBSA collaborated with apartheid
I wish to congratulate Cosatu for its role in fighting the cruel and inhumane alliance and the state and capital against humanity.
In 1984, I was working at Mercedes Benz of South Africa (MBSA), where Unimogs (apartheid army trucks) were built. I was publicity secretary of the East London Youth Congress. In August 1984, I was detained by the South African security branch.
I was tortured and asked about my activities as an executive member of the Youth Congress and chairperson of shopstewards at the factory. I happened to have extracts from a book of SACP leaders Yusuf Dadoo and Moses Kotane in my wallet for discussion in the youth offices after work.
During the torture my wallet fell out and was picked up by a certain Mr Schoeman who opened it and read the extract. While I was being tortured by a certain Mr Keith, Mr Venter and Mr Bhekiso and a certain coloured security guy, Mr Schoeman called two white officers to another office having the extract in his hands.
They came back and instructed that I must be taken to the police cells. The following morning, they told me that they heard everything about me from a certain Mr Lindley, who was a security manager at MBSA. They took me to my locker at MBSA. It was already unlocked though I had left it locked. They opened it and, to my astonishment, they found nothing, even though I had left political reading material there.
Mr Lindley, a former Selous Scout from Zimbabwe, took us to his office and told me that if I keep banned books on company property I would be arrested. He opened his desk drawer, took out my reading material and handed it to the security branch.
A lot followed. My house was searched and I was further tortured, including suffocation using a tube.
In 1987 we embarked on a living wage strike demanding R5-00 per hour at MBSA. The strike lasted nine weeks until resolution was reached with the mother company in Germany and cde Les Kettledas.
In the third week of the strike, myself and cde Mtutuzeli Tom (now Numsa president) were taken from our houses at about 3-4 am by the then Ciskei security police. They questioned us in depth about MBSA activists, claiming that we were making MBSA a terrorist battlefield. They said if we bring that nonsense into Ciskei they would teach us a lesson.
During the strike, when cde Kettledas was in Germany for the strike, SA security branch harassed us as shopstewards on company premises. They escorted us when we were going to negotiations and took photographs of us. I was again detained from my house, taken for interrogation and later released.
In February 1988, I was about to leave for Germany to attend an Auto Transnational Information Exchange conference in Stuttgart. I was arrested from the union offices three days before I was due to leave. They interrogated me about my trip to Germany and activities at MBSA and in Numsa. When workers heard that I had been detained, they went on strike demanding my release. They released me with a warning by Mr Radie, a security policeman, that if I say anything bad in Germany about a single South African, whether a policeman or manager, they will know and I must not come back to South Africa.
In 1988 when I was only active in the trade union movement, I was again detained. They said I am going for six months state of emergency detention and that Mr Lindley and other managers had a strong case against me about attempts to render MBSA ungovernable. They alleged that this was COSATU's strategy and that MBSA has been used for its militant stance.
These stories are indications of a clear collaboration between MBSA and the apartheid apparatus.
MW Nonyukela, ex-Numsa organiser
I thank those who sacrificed for this country. In The Shopsteward Vol 6.6 on COSATU's programme for 1998, you say Cosatu structures must campaign to reach at least 50% representation in their industries. This is difficult for the following reasons:
We need to come up with a quick solution before it is too late.
Enos Chiloane, Cawu branch treasurer, Springs
I want to say to our shopstewards and even our office bearers to work very hard this year. We should make sure that we attend locals meetings each and every time. We don't have to make excuses. I wish all of us to work as a team. Shopstewards must stick to their duties at all times.
I hope our bosses will change and think about us as workers, even in the negotiations. They mustn't make things tough. Let them do what is right for workers as we work very hard.
Let our bosses not only think about their own pockets. They must also think about us. The production is done by workers. We are the ones who make money for them so they should pay us good salaries.
Every company should build houses for workers. If they look at Telkom, it has been fair for their workers. I am not criticising, just highlighting some of the things which are happening in our companies.
Let us be together as one, as our president, Tata Madiba, has said.
I wish our bosses a prosperous new year of 1998 and hope for the best fairness and honesty from them as we work for them. I think that 1998 will be the best for all us South Africans.
Viva Ppwawu viva! Viva Cosatu viva! Forward with socialism forward! Forward with the movement of struggle forward!
Moffat P Motshabalekgosi, Ppwawu shopsteward
I dreamed of a dream that defeated my imagination. Yes, I dreamed. I dreamed of South Africa being led to freedom by cde Madiba. Of course he is the first African president of democratic South Africa.
There was jubilation and ululations from the rainbow nation as he carried the candlestick of leadership and brought unity to different racial groups in our country.
There was hope and life in the face of South Africa. However, the westerly winds soon blew out the candlestick in his hands and the darkness and confusion set in.
The Western world, countries led by the IMF and World Bank, then realising the darkness in our country, offered a sophisticated candlestick and promised that it shall put SA in the light that shines beyond its borders and into the sea surrounding it.
To the detriment of all, however, their light only covered ten percent of the country, and the rest of our country was left in the dark as the doors of education and learning were closed, and it became fertile soil for drug trafficking, murder, hunger, low wages, mass retrenchments and the whole country drifted to resemble the biblical Sodoma.
Education became a privilege and the socio-economic life of the nation became survival of the fittest.
The whole country suffered from anxiety and panic disorder, and realising the loss of manpower for the human energy driven IMF candle, the casualties were given free medical services to recover early for provision of cheap labour.
Then I saw cde Chris Hani coming out of his grave, and in his hands he held a powerful light that destroyed the darkness of confusion, the doors of education and learning were opened, and the country drifted towards social order.
Yes, I dreamed, I dreamed a dream that society lives through social norms and values. Lest we forget the Vietnam holocaust, SA shall drift into the sea of drunkenness. Our children, the youth of our country, shall be the slaves of our ignorance.
Let us feed our children with the milk of human kind, for the future of a nation depends on the adequate socio-economic development of our youth.
Yes, I dreamed a dream that evoked my emotions, the emotions that are the burning oil of our National Economic Revolution.
Amandla! Socialism is the future
Michael Mashabela, Nehawu KwaMhlanga Branch Nurses Co-ordinator and ANC Councillor, Ekangala TLC
Ooh Freedom...
For decades we've been fighting for you
For decades we've been crying for you
For decades we've been deprived of you
Ooh freedom, ooh freedom!
Our brothers and sisters lay there in the graves of sorrow with their hands balled into fists inside their coffins. They died shouting Freedom! Freedom! We want freedom! But what was the response? Only red-hot apartheid.
Ooh freedom, ooh freedom!
Yes! we have achieved freedom, so should we rejoice? But what about those who died for this freedom? Should we cry? Ooh, why tears because we're free?
Fellow workers rescue me from this pool of confusion. Should I say I'm free, while still earning starvation wages for a hard, sweated job?
Should I say I am free, while still living in a shack whereas bosses live in mansions. Yes! I am enjoying freedom of speech, but when will we be free from these capitalist chains?
Socialism is the future.
Joseph "Mjay" Mazibuko, Numsa shopsteward, Springs local
