Volume 7 No 4 - June 1998
After a mere 12 years of its existence, Cosatu will undoubtedly become one of the first workers’ movements in the world to adopt a comprehensive socio-economic policy.
The Central Committee from 22-25 June will look in an integrated way at all socio-economic policy adopted since Cosatu’s inception as well as resolutions received from affiliates for the 6th national congress. This is an historic occasion indeed.
The main challenge facing the 451 delegates is to ensure that we develop a concrete programme of action which is not constrained by financial resources to back the policies that the Central Committee will adopt. At the forefront of such a programme should be the campaign to defend our jobs and for job creation.
The Central Committee will also develop a clear and well-resourced campaign to take forward the 6th national congress resolution on ensuring victory for the ANC in the 1999 general elections. The question of the election manifesto and elections list process will also be discussed extensively in the Central Committee.
Many Cosatu affiliates are planning to hold regional workshops and conferences which will feed into their national executive committees so that they can obtain clear mandates on all issues to be discussed by the Central Committee. Has your union arranged similar processes or will your union delegates attend the Central Committee without your mandate?
The Jobs Summit
The Presidential Jobs Summit continues to be one of the most hotly debated questions in our country today. Yet nobody knows exactly when it will be held. Business had submitted its proposals which are no different from their Growth for All document submitted in 1996. They repeat their cry for labour market flexibility and a two-tier labour market. Apart from these tired old demands, the bourgeoisie is not telling us about their own contribution to halt retrenchments and create jobs.
The government has still to present its proposals, months after the deadlines set have passed. As part of preparing for the Alliance Summit, the Alliance is looking at a strategy for job creation and thereby building a common agenda for the Jobs Summit. As indicated in this magazine, the Alliance Summit will take place a few days before the Central Committee.
For Cosatu, the Alliance Summit will have failed if it does not reach some agreement on macro-economic policy and elements of the Alliance programme that will be part of the election manifesto.
1999 elections
The 1999 national elections are fast approaching. Alliance structures continue to be weak or dysfunctional in many areas. The counter-revolutionary forces are mobilising to ensure that the ANC does not secure a clear majority in the 1999 elections.
All these threats point to the need to build strong ANC, SACP, Sanco and other mass-based structures on the ground and to strengthen the Alliance at all levels. The counter-revolutionary threat instructs us to more than ever before mobilise for a decisive ANC victory in the coming general elections.
Sadtu strike
Sadtu is poised to embark on a strike in demand of job security for teachers and for national norms and standards to be set at national level. This means that pupil-teacher ratios should be a national policy instead of being left to provinces and the dictates of deficit cuts and budgets.
Cosatu supports these demands and the strike. Cosatu members should therefore be in the front rows of marches called by Sadtu to support these demands. Cosatu is not unconcerned about the devastating impact this will have on the education of our children. It is with this in mind that we continue to seek a speedy solution to the crisis we face in education.
- Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu deputy general secretary
The editorial comments of the last two editions of The Shopsteward (March & April / May 1998) touched on what is bound to be a big issue in the political life of the workers’ movement over the next few months — the 1999 elections. Both editorials are at pains to confirm the decision taken at the September 97 Cosatu national congress — to support the ANC in the coming elections.
What is striking in both editorials is the lack of attempts to advance the debate on the 1999 elections beyond the decisions of the national congress. Both editorials are silent on Cosatu’s options in relation to the nature and content of the election platform. Both comments are mum on how the elections can be used to strengthen the federation politically and organisationally.
The issue of the election campaign and platform are on the agenda of the coming Cosatu central committee and it is primarily the task of affiliates to put forward positions on these issues. My problem is that, instead of rehashing congress positions, the leadership is supposed to guide the debate.
But more striking than the absence of guidance, is the assertion by the federation’s general secretary, Mbhazima Shilowa, that "our support (for the ANC in the 1999 election) is not conditional upon the ANC’s acceptance of our proposals...".
Such a statement makes one wonder whether the federation is giving the ANC a blank cheque, when the RDP one has clearly not been cashed. What is the point of canvassing for a party when before you engage it, you already declare that your support for that party is not conditional on it accepting your proposals? What is the point of developing policy proposals for the platform if their acceptance or rejection does not matter much?
Surely, cde Shilowa will know that the "agreed broad thrust of the NDR (whatever this means)", which he suggests as the basis of Cosatu’s support for the ANC, does not help us much. Unless the federation vigorously fights for its proposals, the support that we give to the ANC will be a blank cheque. The proposals that the federation puts forward must be concrete. They must move beyond "broad thrusts".
Maybe the reason cde Shilowa is resorting to vague "broad thrusts of the NDR" instead of concrete demands is that the latter approach raises the possibility of the ANC not agreeing to what Cosatu puts forward and therefore poses the question which everyone has been embarrassed to ask: what happens if there is no agreement on the election platform?
No one will deny that the significance of the coming election also lies with the event providing an opportunity for workers to reflect on their experience since April 1994 and under an ANC-led government. The "unconditional" approach has the potential to block this reflection.
Over the last few months we have been treated to a few doses whose aim is to make us believe that the Alliance is alive, kicking and according to cde Shilowa "the main motive force for transformation". First we were told after the August 1997 Alliance Summit that the federation was able to move the ANC on Gear. Secondly, after the ANC’s national conference we were told by the Cosatu delegation to the Conference that the ANC did not adopt Gear. All of this we are told when every policy and initiative by ANC ministers and MEC’s smells Gear, when on the eve of Alliance Summit, the ANC makes pronouncements on monetary policy and on the state — issues which are on the agenda of the summit.
The coming elections are important in many respects. In addition to providing an opportunity for political reflection, the event presents the workers of our country with the opportunity to reclaim freedom. Over the last four years, arch-enemies of democracy have presented themselves as the custodians of democratic rights which the masses bitterly fought for. In the name of freedom, the bourgeoisie is giving its system a new lease of life. In the name of freedom, an elite is enriching itself while the majority of those who fought for freedom remain poor.
The battle for an election platform presents Cosatu with an opportunity to lead in the fight to reclaim freedom. The unconditional approach and approaches based on "broad thrusts of the NDR" will fail us in the fight to reclaim freedom. Also not assisting is the fear that if Cosatu makes it clear that its support for the ANC is based on the movement agreeing to address outstanding issues, this will then precipitate a crisis within the Alliance.
What the federation needs is an identification of issues which it will fight for and make them the mandate of the ANC. Only in this way will the 1999 elections assist in the process of political clarification of the working class.
- Dinga Sikwebu, Numsa education head
Allow me to air my view in my mother tongue concerning the song Nkosi Sikelele iAfrica.
Ka maswabi le ka kgopolo e e fokolaga ke kwa ke le maswabi ka fao pina ya seshaba e opelwago ka gone bjalo ka ge re dira kwaito. Ke bolediswa ke pina yeo e o pelwago ke sehlopha sa gabo rena sa Boom Shaka ka fao ba epelago pina ye ya setshaba ka goba ke kwebe e ntsikoya mali ka fao ba sa e hlompego ka gona. Ga se gore ke kgatlanong le moonopelo wa bona ba ka tswela pele go opela fela ka kgopelo anke ba hlompe kosa ya seshaba ke boikokobetso. Go ya ka ponelo pele ke kwa kosa yea ba I opelago ka gone e hlabisa dihlong. Mothomi wa yona e leng the late comrade Enoch Sontoga a bego a I hlama o be a bona ka fao rena bathe goba setshaba sa rantsho se sokolago ka goga. Ditapelong tsa gagwe o be a rapela gone anke setshaba sa ramtsho se be le khutso a bile a rapele go yo godimodimo gore anke a boloke setshaba sa rantsho. May the soul of the late cde E Sontonga rest in peace!
- Jonas Thato Kekana, Ppwawu shopsteward, Isando
We appreciate and accept the challenge from The Shopsteward, Vol 7.1, February 1998. We want to show how the company (Meadow Feeds in Pietermaritzburg) used apartheid during the previous government and its role now.
This company gives ranks according to nationality. They don’t use qualifications or the standard of education to give ranks. The management ranks are for the whites, foreman/ supervisor and plant operators for the Indians. Africans are doing the labourers jobs. It doesn’t matter what standard of education one has. If the company gives the job that was being done by Indians to an African, they drop the pay rate of the job. Where Indians and Africans are doing the same job, the Indians get paid more than the Africans.
They do not want the intelligent Cosatu shopstewards in the company. They try with all their power to chase them out. Now the company is busy retrenching the Africans and employing only whites and Indians as contract workers.
During the previous government, the company gave only whites apprenticeships in fitting, electrical and motor mechanic. But now it is finished because they do not want to implement affirmative action. They trained only whites to drive and got licenses for them, but they refuse to train Africans.
On August 14 1991, the company locked out all Cosatu members during the wage negotiations. We won the case in the Supreme Court but we haven’t been paid yet.
There are too many problems of apartheid in this company.
- Zephried Ngubane (for shopsteward committee)
Comrade, how glad I was to find a questionnaire in your February 1998 issue of The Shopsteward. Your magazine comes irregularly to my address and yet my address is with my union. I am very glad to receive your magazine.
Your magazine has helped my child a lot during the past year. She is a student at the University of the Western Cape in Bellville.
I would like to request information around the historical background of the federation when it was still Fosatu and before. I also need an anniversary edition of the magazine for one of my children who is in high school. I do not have all this information. I have about eight of your magazines.
- Jakes Conradie, Western Cape
We are sending you a subscription form to make sure that you receive the magazine on a regular basis. You can find information about Cosatu’s historical background in the December 1995 special edition of The Shopsteward to mark Cosatu’s tenth anniversary.
Domestic workers are still very oppressed. Since Cosatu advised domestic workers to disband, we have not heard anything discussed about us. There is nothing happening to revive our union. Since the position of our congress suggestion from Cosatu was restructuring, we want to know why domestic workers have been kicked out of Cosatu, since Cosatu is for all workers. The slogan is One Worker, One Union, One Country, One Federation. Where are domestic workers in your federation? Domestic workers are not even on the CEC agendas.
Comrades, we still waiting for our comrades to help build us as you did in other affiliates. You can count all the numbers of workers in affiliates in their millions but without domestic workers you are not representing all the workers of South Africa. Comrades, consider the issue of domestic workers. Maybe allow us to participate in workshops so we will be briefed and get education.
Apartheid is still very high, discrimination is still very strong.
- Domestic workers, KwaZulu Natal
The Cosatu national congress in September 1997 resolved that the CEC should commission research on the establishment of advice centres for servicing domestic workers. The congress also said Cosatu should consider finding a viable home for domestic workers as part of the demarcation process to form broad sectoral unions or cartels in Cosatu. The issue of organising domestic workers was again raised in this context as part of Cosatu’s three-year programme adopted at the Cosatu CEC. The demarcation process is still in progress.
As workers we have a duty to perform in our community structures. We don’t need to distance ourselves from these structures. We must play a vital and a leading role and give direction to the community.
As Cosatu we are involved in the mass recruitment offensive as workers, not just shopstewards, but all of us. We must participate to recruit more members because we know them better than anyone.
It needs total commitment from us as shopsteward, officials, ROB’s and NOB’s, and even the whole workforce, to work together. In the community structures, especially the civic, we need to lead this campaign. We must make sure that we give them an understanding of this campaign whose main objective is to get workers to join Cosatu. We want the branch of the civic to include this campaign in their meetings and structures at branch, area, block, street and yard committee level.
These civic structures are well organised and we must utilise them to gain more members. There are important issues that need to be discussed and Cosatu members can give direction to the community because they have more information.
I want to encourage workers of Cosatu to participate in community structures. The civic and Cosatu can unite the people of this country.
The 1999 national election is coming up. The civic and Cosatu can campaign in the community about the importance of these elections, like we did in 1994. The NOB’s of Sanco and Cosatu should sit down and discuss their programme of action and to support both organisations. In Cosatu too we must discuss issues in the locals and affiliates that affect the community.
- Robert Mthombeni, Ppwawu shopsteward, Wits
