Address Cosatu 1st Deputy President Sdumo Dlamini, to NUM central Committee 24 - 05 - 07

 

The President of the National Union of Mine Workers comrade Senzeni Zokwana,
Members of the National Executive Committee
Leaders of the Alliance
Our International Friends and Guests
You the delegates of this important gathering

Please receive revolutionary and warm greetings from the 1.8 million members of your gigantic Federation the Congress of South African Trade Unions.

It is indeed an honor for COSATU to be invited to address the Central Committee of such an important formation in the political life of our federation and our country in general.

The year 2007 marks the 20th anniversary since the NUM 1987 Strikes against the Chamber of mines. It marks 20 years of bitter struggles by the battle-steeled and the forever-combat ready members of NUM, surviving the jaws of an Apartheid monster and the bullets of the SANDF.Yet you never surrendered. Your Spirit never dampened and your organisation was never broken and you never surrendered!

We remove our huts to pronounce you the heroes of our revolution. Indeed you have travelled an odious path of our revolution!
COSATU last addressed the Central Committee of NUM in 2005 through the mouth of our General Secretary comrade Zwelinzima Vavi.
At the time we had just ensured that the ANC won the National election, we were also preparing ourselves for what the General Secretary called ‘ the Mother of All Battles, against Joblessness and Poverty.

This was based on our observation that even though the ANC had been in power from 1994 and effected some improvements, the reality still remained that in economic terms, however, business, not workers, had won the most since 1994.

Evidence was and still is reflected that Workers’ share in national income dropped consistently since 1994 from a high of well above 50% to under 45% in 2005. Conversely, profits have increase as proportion of national income from 25% in 1994 to 32% in 2005. Infact profits had risen as a share of the national income, while wages had fallen. The share of workers in the national income had declined from around 52% in 1994 to 46% by 2005.

There was a painful reality that 40% of our people were unable to find work. We pointed out that most of the jobless were relatively well educated young Africans who had never had a job.
As we gather here today this picture have not changed as we will show later except in the minds of a few elites who now drive poach cars and live in Luxary high income areas. Unfortunately those who want to paint a picture of the age of hope are from our own ranks in the liberation movements.

That is why as COSATU we have taken serious steps to prepare our input towards the ANC Policy Conference in July. That is why we will be having the Jobs and Poverty Conference on 18th –19th June at Birchwood hotel where we have invited all the Civil Society formations even those outside of our traditional fold. We want to create a common platform for the poor and develop policy momentum towards engaging with both the ANC and government. We will use the space to profile the Freedom Charter and make a call that it must be the bases to measure any progress on the economic front.

We have said this must be the decade of the working class and the poor and we know from experience that only through our struggles can we achieve this!
When we addressed the Central Committee in 2005 we set specific tasks for the NUM in response to the organisational threats to the labour movement. Through the mouth of our General Secretary we pointed on Four Areas.

1. Improving the service to members and we said that would include improving support for shaft stewards and organisers, including training and resourcing.
2. We called for the intensification of the Campaign on Picking up the gains. We said we must do more to ensure that the rights we have won in the law books translated into real rights in the workplace.
3. We said we must organise the unorganised. We pointed out that construction had the fastest growth in employment of any industry, and employs more workers than all of mining. But the jobs were usually temporary, lasting only for specific projects. Most employers are small, and many are informal. Two thirds of workers are in companies with less than 20 employees. We said there was a need to assess the new organisational challenges arising in the mining sector. In particular, we said we needed to asses how effective are the unions' strategies in dealing with retrenchments, HIV/AIDS and outsourcing?
4. We said take action to stop the job-loss bloodbath.

Today we have come back to say this Central Committee must ask and answer a question , has the NUM been able to move on these challenges. If yes what has been the extent and if not why, where can we support as the federation.

I noticed that your secretariat report has already touched on some of these issues including on issues of Organisational Development. Our observation over the years has been that the NUM is one of those unions, which took Organisation development Programme very seriously .
Infact it can be argued that your organisational stability and success under hostile conditions of the changes in the labour market can be attributed to your scientific approach to matters of the organisation, tailor made for the union.

In his speech titled ‘Capitalism is a society of Wolves’, when he was addressing the plenary session of the sixth Congress of the Union of the Young Communist in Havana ,4th April 1992 Comrade Fidel Castro said

‘ We must engage in an all-out war against those who are ignorant of the facts. We should not tire of repeating specific arguments, over and over again. He continued and said ‘ religions repeat their same or identical arguments every year. Otherwise, they would not exist as religions. The same or identical dogma is repeated, otherwise they would not exist as religions. The same or identical principles are repeated. They are not only repeated every year; they are repeated every month, every day, every hour.
‘ We are not a religion and we are not a dogma; but our principles and our fundamental, basic ideas, our arguments must be repeated, not only every year, but every month, every day, and every hour because the truth must be repeated once, 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times, a million times if we want to spread the word, if we want the truth to be known, and if we want it understood. We must not be discouraged by those who believe arguments must not be repeated. I am not talking nonsense, I am talking about arguments. I am speaking of reason. It is impossible to ignore the facts. It has to be said once and a hundred times’

So comrades we have come here today to repeat what we said in 2005 and before that. There was a creeping danger that if we do not do that the lies that are being repeated about economic improvements in the country will end up settling as truth in the minds of the ordinary people and will have a resultant effect of demobilising the civil society, the masses and the organisations in the left.

On Jobs

For an Example we are told that 500 000 new jobs were created in September last year but we are not told that most of these new jobs were created in Wholesale and Retail; construction, and manufacturing Sector and these were sectors renowned for high levels of casualisation and sub contracting. We are not told that on the other hand , agriculture, mining, transport, community and personal services shed a combined total of 439 thousand jobs in the previous three years.
There is more emphasis on the fact that the period from 1997 to 2005 was generally a period of positive employment growth. Over that period, approximately 3 million jobs were created. But there is no emphasis on the fact that the strict labour force grew by 5.3 million people.

The private formal non-agricultural sector has been the main source of employment growth since 1997, generating about 2 million jobs (or two thirds of the total). The majority of new formal jobs were created in finance, insurance and IT related industries, retail and wholesale, and community and social services. To a lesser extent, manufacturing employment grew, but only by about 0.9% per annum.

The employed But Poor.

Those who feed us with information about economic success they do not tell us that according to the Labour Force Survey 54% of all workers earned less than R2500 per month in March 2006.

For the formal sector 45% earned less than R2500, 58% in the informal sector, and 96% for domestic workers. Close to a quarter (21%) earned no income in the informal sector in March 2006.

A total of 28% of all workers earned less than a R1000 per month in March 2006, whereas sixteen percent of all workers in the formal sector earned as much. The majority of workers in the informal sector (51%) earned less than R1000 and the corresponding figure for domestic is 77%.
This picture is made even worse by the fact that there was a re-definition of employment in official statistics to include subsistence agriculture. In addition the definition of employment includes activities like begging and car park attendants.

Can this really be called economic success?
Government Intervention.
Through ASGI-SA Government has now set a target to reduce unemployment by half in 2014.

The target has not been questioned; rather the debate has focused on how and whether the target will be achieved.

As noted by HSRC researchers, the issues at stake revolve around:

a. What does halving unemployment actually mean?
b. By how much would unemployment need to drop – from where to where? The unemployment rate is a ratio of the number of unemployed relative to the size of the labour force.
c. Flowing from this a question arises, would the unemployment rate be more affected by a change in the number of unemployed (or employed) or by a change in the size of the labour force?
d. What would be socially and economically acceptable rates of unemployment that would constitute our ultimate target? By when should we seek to achieve them?
In this regard COSATU has called for an industrial strategy that will enhance employment creation.

This call arises from the recognition that:

a. Colonialism and apartheid shaped the economy to support mineral exports, with very concentrated ownership and control. The result was high levels of underemployment and unemployment, especially in the former homeland areas.
b. The market will not lead to more equitable development or job creation unless the state intervenes to mobilize stakeholders to bring about change. In particular, the state must drive development, refocusing private capital where necessary:

We have said the most important interventions must support.

a. Labour intensive activities
b. More equitable ownership, especially collective ownership through the state, worker control and coops.
c. Investment in people and communities through education, skills development and social programmes like health, welfare and housing.
d. The strategy will require a greater balance between production for export and production to meet the needs of the poor in South Africa and the region.

Economy and Inequalities

It is constantly repeated that the economy is doing well and that we have turned the corner. Some are still saying that GEAR was right all along and that we are now reaping its fruits. There is an emphasis on high growth in the recent past. This is attributable to the following factors:

· A consumer boom reflecting low nominal interest rates compared to the high rates in the 1990s.
· A commodity boom reflected in the high prices for minerals especially gold and platinum.
· Increased government expenditure and investment since 2000.

This growth spurt has exposed serious capacity constraints in the South African economy and has stimulated demands for export. This has led to a widening current account deficit – i.e. we are importing more than we are exporting due to poor manufacturing capacity in some sectors.

The question that must be answered is to what extent is the growth being shared. As COSATU we are clear and we have said that the following factors should taken into account to answer this question:

a. The workers’ share in the national income compared to profits
b. Employment creation and quality of employment
c. Poverty and inequality

There is a dispute about the exact figures in poverty and inequalities but as far as we are concern there can’t be a dispute about the fact that the levels of poverty and inequalities remains unacceptably high.

Whilst we are being delayed in a debate about Gini Coeficiencies and poverty indicators Business is having it nice. This is not to say we will avoid the debate. Infact we have called for a discussion with government on what should constitute our poverty line.

For an Example the CEO of AngloGold former comrade Bobby Godsell received a package of R9,359,000 in 2005,with share options of R3,627,000 and a total package of R12,986,000.
Ralph Havenstein the CEO of Anglo Plat received R5,333,999 in 2005 alone with gains on share option of R1,875,600 and a total package of R7,209,599.
Davinder Chugh, the CEO of Mittal Steel earned a package of R3,543,767 with gains in share option of R920,367 and a total package of R4,464,134 .
Peter Cox of Sasol earned R9,227,000 in 2005 and gains on Share option of R6,433,00 and a total package of R15 ,660,000.

This makes us to continue to be angry about the levels of poverty, unemployment and inequalities in the Country. This makes us to say whatever the levels of brainwashing and indoctrination by the media and some economist we will not be confused because this is the reality we saw day in day out. Our people are miserably poor yet the bosses remain unbelievably rich. Is this fair?
We want to reiterate what we said in 1997 that for as long these conditions of misery remain for the millions of people, for as long as Poverty and Inequalities are there, a case for socialism will remain!

Conclusion.

The 1969 Strategy and Tactics and the Freedom Charter
Our point of departure remained what was said in the 1969 ANC Morogoro Conference in the Strategy and Tactics. It said ‘In our country - more than in any other part of the oppressed world - it is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without a return of the wealth of the land to the people as a whole. It is therefore a fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy. To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the root of racial supremacy and does not represent even the shadow of liberation.

Our drive towards national emancipation is therefore in a very real way bound up with economic emancipation. We have suffered more than just national humiliation. Our people are deprived of their due in the country's wealth; their skills have been suppressed and poverty and starvation has been their life experience. The correction of these centuries-old economic injustices lies at the very core of our national aspirations. We do not understand the complexities, which will face a people’s government during the transformation period, nor the enormity of the problems of meeting economic needs of the mass of the oppressed people. But one thing is certain - in our land this cannot be effectively tackled unless the basic wealth and the basic resources are at the disposal of the people as a whole and are not manipulated by sections or individuals be they White or Black.

We will rise in every opportunity we get to remind the people of our Country that Comrade Walter Sisulu, Moses Kotane, Oliver Tambo, , Moses Mabhida, Joe Slovo, Elijah Barhayi, Vuyisile Mini, Looksmart Ngudle, and hundreds of our cadres sacrificed their lives for a South Africa in the Freedom Charter whose road map was further conceptualised in the 1969 Morogoro Conference!

We will repeat this not once but every hour, every day , every month and every year as we struggle to ensure that the dream of the Freedom Charter and the vision set in the Morogoro Conference find expression in every policy of our country.

Amandla,
Aluta Continua!