Address by COSATU General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, Dinner in Honour of SACTU and Vuyisile Mini in P.E - 5 Nov 2005

 

Members of the COSATU Central Executive Committee

Provincial leadership and COSATU activists in the Eastern Cape Province

ANC and SACP national and provincial leaders

Mayor of the Nelson Mandela metro – Nceba Faku

Family of martyrs Vuyisile Mini, Wilson Khayinga and Zinakile Mkaba

I warmly welcome this opportunity to pay tribute to Vuyisile Mini, one of the greatest and finest sons of the Eastern Cape and the trade union movement, a freedom fighter whose impact on millions of his and a later generation has still to be properly acknowledged.

This dinner dedicated to his memory and, through him, to all other SACTU activists in this province and elsewhere is a small token of appreciation to their gallant and unforgettable contributions not only to the trade union movement but to the liberation struggle as whole.

We are delight to see some of these cadres at this dinner, and we want to inform them that their sacrifices - and we know many such as Vuyisile Mini paid the ultimate price - laid a firm foundation that ensured that today we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the giant COSATU.

It is their contribution that ensured that today we are hosted here by a Mayor who is leading a democratically elected local government. We thank you honourable Mayor for hosting us tonight. Your gesture is extremely symbolic. On the 41st anniversary of the brutal execution of Vuyisile Mini we return to the region that produced him, not to mourn but to celebrate his life with a mayor we claim as our own. Thank you once more to the Mayor and his office.

Throughout this, our 20th anniversary year, we have been remembering the heroes and heroines who built our movement and fought for our liberation. We have already honoured Elijah Barayi, Moses Kotane, JB Marks and shall be marking the contribution of Dora Tamana, Stephen Dlamini and Ray Alexander.

Tonight and tomorrow we turn the spotlight on Vuyisile Mini - a workers’ and freedom struggle martyr, a Secretary of both the Dock Workers` Union and the Sheet Metal Workers` Union, an Executive Member and Organizer of the Port Elizabeth Local Committee of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) and the Secretary of the ANC’s Cape region, a soldier of the peoples army, Umkhonto we sizwe!

By a happy coincidence COSATU’s 20th anniversary coincided with SACTU’s fiftieth. It is timely therefore to reflect on the lessons we can learn from this mighty organisation in which Vuyisile played such a leading role.

SACTU was formed on 5 March 1955 at an Inaugural Conference in Johannesburg. I am happy to inform you that on 5 March this year we held a conference to celebrate ten years of our freedom, which we also dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of SACTU.
The creation of SACTU constituted a first attempt by the working people to build a giant non-racial trade union coordinating body, fighting for the common class interests of workers of all races, all sexes and all colours.

Like COSATU later, SACTU never confined itself to workplace issues but was involved in the political struggle against the national oppression of all Black people in South Africa - Africans, Indians and Coloureds. SACTU’s founding Declaration of Principles is just as relevant today as then.

“ History,” it declared, “has shown that unorganised workers are unable to improve their wages and conditions of work on a lasting basis. Only where workers have organised in effective trade unions have they been able to improve their lot, raise their standard of living and generally protect themselves and their families against the insecurities of life.

“… Just as the individual worker, or any group of workers, are unable to improve their lot without organisation into Trade Unions, so is the individual trade union powerless unless there is in existence a coordinating body of trade unions which unites the efforts of all workers. For such a trade union federation to be successful, it must be able to speak on behalf of all workers, irrespective of race or colour, nationality or sex.

“ The future of the people of South Africa is in the hands of its workers. Only the working class, in alliance with other progressive minded sections of the community, can build a happy life for all South Africans, a life free from unemployment, insecurity and poverty, free from racial hatred and oppression, a life of vast opportunities for all people.

“… We resolve that this coordinating body of trade unions shall strive to unite all workers in its ranks, without discrimination, and without prejudice. We resolve that this body shall determinedly seek to further and protect the interests of all workers, and that its guiding motto shall be the universal slogan of working class solidarity: - 'An injury to one is an injury to all!'

SACTU’s birth saw the trade unions play a decisive role in the growing mass resistance movement of the time. It joined the ANC and the Congress of Democrats to write the Freedom Charter which was adopted at the Kliptown Congress of the People in July of the same year SACTU was born.

Union leaders were in the vanguard of the struggles against forced removals, passes and Bantu education. They led bus boycotts and demonstrations against repression. Of the 156 freedom fighters charged in the Treason Trial of 1956, 24 were SACTU leaders, including its President, General Secretary and six NEC members.

It is because of the foundations laid by SACTU that today we have all-round cadres who understand the relationship between workplace struggles and broader struggles for social transformation. Unionists fought oppression and exploitation in the workplace, led street committees and community organisations for better houses, swelled the ranks of Umkhonto We Sizwe and formed the backbone of the ANC and the SACP structures.

Today at least two of the six ANC National Office Bearers are products of workers’ struggles. Countless are in the current NEC. They lead government departments as Ministers and senior bureaucrats. They lead local government. There are too many to mention.
We speak here of JB Marks, Moses Mabhida, Harry Gwala, Oscar Mpetha, Moses Kotane, Ray Alexander, Rita Ndzanga, Johannes Nkosi, Vuyisile Mini, Liz Abrahams, Wilton Mkwayi, Raymond Mhlaba, Dora Tamana, Elijah Barayi, etc.
SACTU membership grew from 20 000 in 19 unions in 1956 to 53 000 in 51 unions in 1961. That is why the state was forced to crack down.

This was at a time when black workers were not regarded as workers. In fact it was only in 1969 that the racist regime recognised Coloured workers as workers and only in 1979 did it recognise African workers as workers. The regime refused to register or recognize unions. Wages were dictated by state wage boards, some of which actually lowered minimum wages for their industry, forcing SACTU to launch a national campaign for a minimum of one pound a day, a forerunner to COSATU’s 1987 Living Wage Campaign.

The apartheid government made strikes illegal. SACTU leaders were arrested, detained and banned. Some died in detention. Others were forced into exile.
Then, in November 1964 Vuyisile Mini was hanged, along with Wilson Khayinga and Zinakile Mkaba, on trumped-up charges of committing acts of sabotage and complicity in the death of a police informer.

The reality is of course that these martyrs were killed because they had dedicated their lives to the liberation struggle and posed a mortal threat to the apartheid state and their capitalist cohorts.
That is why, as workers celebrate their successes and achievements today, we must never forget the huge debt we owe to Vuyisile Mini and thousands of others who fought and died for the freedoms we now enjoy.

Tomorrow at the rally at the Great Centenary hall in New Brighton, I shall say more about the lessons for today we can learn from these past struggles. But I can say with confidence that Comrade Vuyisile would be insisting, if he were still with us, that we study the past not for reasons of nostalgia or sentiment, but in order to organise better today and bring nearer the completion of our national democratic revolution.

Like us he would have applauded the democratic gains we have made since 1994. But he would surely also agree with COSATU that a society in which 40% of the workforce are unemployed and more than 20 million of our people live in poverty is not the kind of society that our struggle pioneers fought and died for.

The best way by far to commemorate our struggle heroes is to take up the fight they began and see it through to a conclusion, to a South Africa in which power really is on the hands of the people, and all the evils of racism, exploitation, poverty and inequality are banished to the past.
Forward to socialism