General Secretary of Cosatu Zwelinzima Vavi address at the 21st Annivesary of Nehawu & unveiling tombstone of Bheki Mkhize 27 - 06 - 08

Zwelinzima Vavi Address to the NEHAWU tombstone unveiling for Bheki Mkhize and the 21st Anniversary celebrations, Ulundi, KwaZulu Natal

President of NEHAWU, Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya
General Secretary Fikile Majola
Members of the National Executive Committee
Former NOBs and other current and senior leaders of the NEHAWU
Family of comrade Bheki Mkhize
Leaders and members of the Tripartite Alliance
Comrades and friends

On behalf of the COSATU Central Executive Committee I bring to you revolutionary greetings and messages of solidarity on this important occasion. I cherish the honour of being with you as we pay tribute to one of the best unionists, one whom NEHAWU helped produce - Bheki Mkhize - as well as on your 21st anniversary celebrations.

Those who did not know Bheki Mkhize will hopefully know today why we are all here to pay tribute to his memory and legacy. Bheki was a warrior in the true sense of the world. He was fearless! He was an all rounder who understood that he is a member of the community first. He was in the forefront of the liberation struggles as a member and a leader of the African National Congress. He knew that only when we attain our freedom and democracy could we begin the long process of reconstruction to address the legacy of colonialism of a special type.

He knew that freedom would be meaningless unless we address all the three major contradictions that launched our revolution. He wanted to see an end to the oppression of black people. He hated the oppression and exploitation of workers. He understood that freedom and democracy on its own would not necessarily bring eradication of the oppression and exploitation of women.

Bheki became a unionist at a very young age. He was a communist who knew that real freedom will resume the day workers mobilise and impose their hegemony, based on the struggles for the control of the means of production under the leadership of workers for the benefit of all sections of our society in particular the working class. He hated the barbaric capitalist system.
That’s why Bheki symbolised the Alliance. That’s why, too, throughout his life he was dogged by death and numerous attempts on his life. Eventually he was killed by the then KwaZulu Police right in his home, after he had fought harder battles with the apartheid forces everywhere in Gauteng Province and elsewhere.

I am sure that Bheki Mkhize definitely regrets that his family misses him and that it has to live without their sole breadwinner. But he would have no regrets that he laid down his life for our revolution and its defence. Bheki Mkhize is a true martyr of the working class and the revolutionary movement led by the ANC.

The DA and the liberals and now surprisingly the Human Rights Commission might be horrified that Bheki Mkhize was so ready to die for his people. All those who have been distressed by our commitment to lay down our own lives for our revolution need to understand that this is not an empty commitment. It’s a real commitment. This is no propaganda: it’s demonstration of love for basic freedoms enshrined in the constitution.
To some there is no longer a revolution because we have a new constitution and a bill of rights. But to us who made supreme sacrifices in the past and who are willing to make supreme sacrifices in the future in defence of our revolutionary gains, the revolution is far from being over. Black people may be free to choose representatives of their chose like their counterparts, but they till today have to contend with the legacy of the apartheid oppression. Workers are not totally free despite the protection they enjoy in the constitution and the legislation. Women are not totally free when they remain oppressed and exploited by society and the capitalist system.

That is why the ANC remains a liberation movement. That is why the ANC strategy and tactics continue to talk about the unfinished business of NDR. That is why we are maintaining the revolutionary tripartite Alliance. That is why we call each other comrades and revolutionaries. And that is why we are prepared to die in defence of one another and for our revolution.
NEHAWU has throughout its twenty-one years of existence and before produced giants like Bheki Mkhize who went on to be key leaders of the liberation movement.

For twenty-one years NEHAWU has been a spear in the hands of the state and health workers. A small union 21 years ago, with members numbering in the tens of thousands, has grown to over 240 000. It has become the biggest home for health and state workers in government.
For over 21 years this union, NEHAWU has fought historic battles, initially with the illegitimate apartheid government and lately even with this democratic government to improve wages and working conditions of its members.
For the past 21 years NEHAWU has been one of the most important pace setters in the Federation COSATU. You made tremendous contributions to the theorising the role of our revolutionary and transformatory trade union movement. NEHAWU has been there through thick and thin with the most advanced forces of the liberation movement. I cannot remember a single moment of historic importance when you were not there in the front row flying the red flag high.

You are called upon now to respond to today’s challenge with the same vigour and determination that you have shown in the past. The biggest of these challenges is for NEHAWU to use every power it has to ensure a worthy outcome from this year’s wage negotiations. Those negotiations must produce an agreement that will help workers ward off attacks on their wages and their standards of living. The latest figure for inflation is 10.9%, way above the figure the Ministers have announced for their wage offer in the coming year.

Food prices have combined with petrol, high interest rates and now huge electricity price increases to hang like an albatross around the necks of many families. Our standard of living is taking a serious pounding. More and more of us are being pushed deeper and deeper into poverty. Inequalities are deepening.
The rich can adjust with ease with these harsh economic circumstances. We, the poor, have no reserves and these price hikes hit straight on the bone.
It is for this reason that we are now mobilising for a strike to demand that solutions be found to this crisis. From July 9, we plan a series of provincially based-strike actions, marches and demonstrations to demand action now by the employers to stop this carnage. We are going on a national strike on the 06 August.

The retail bosses who continue to smile to the banks in the midst of our misery are the worse culprits. They have continued to maximise profits and pay their executives astrominical pay packages while ordinary South Africans can hardly afford to place a decent plate of food for their families.
We call on all South African workers, black or white, we call on all progressive civil society formations, and we call on our alliance and indeed every South African who genuinely cares about this situation to join us in these marches and strikes.
Our wage demands must respond to this depressing economic situation from now onwards. We need to ensure that the burden of inflation is not borne by workers, but by employers.

But we have never been a union movement bound solely to the shop floor. Even as we mobilise around our members’ immediate needs, we need to consider our longer-term strategy. The critical question is how we understand our way forward from Polokwane.
Our view is that Polokwane opened the door to increased influence and support by the working class both within the government and in the Alliance. But we need to discuss what that means both for our actions and our demands. Critically, we need to give meaning to core progressive elements of the Polokwane resolutions.

• The resolutions call for all economic policies to centre, not on some abstract conception of growth, but on employment creation and poverty alleviation. That means we need to reconceptualise macro-economic policies, including narrow inflation targeting and restrictions on taxation, as well as industrial policy, which currently does not sufficiently indicate how it will create decent work for our people on a mass scale.
  
• The resolutions also call for an agrarian development programme, which must bring decent livelihoods to those of our people who were historically most oppressed – farmworkers and people in the former homelands. We need to ask what that means. Above all, we need to ensure that land reform becomes a programme that creates livelihoods on a mass scale for our people, in contrast to current government proposals that call only for enrichment of a few black commercial farmers. We also need to ensure that infrastructure and government services do more to support development of impoverished rural areas.
  
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the resolutions call for thoroughgoing democratisation of our society, from the state to the economy to communities on the ground. We need to ensure that the state bureaucracy becomes more responsive to the masses, that it has to listen to the concerns of our members and the working class as a whole, and that our organisations are treated as the legitimate voice of our communities, not as one more in a queue of special interests.

That is the agenda comrades we must ensure that the ANC take forward into government in 2009. This means we must rebuild the values and best traditions of the liberation movement, which are centred on selfishness. As we move forward let us make one thing clear. Those who have joined us in order to enrich themselves and their families must be identified and rooted out. Certainly we must not make a mistake of taking known crooks that see opportunity to line their pockets at every turn and give them power by electing them into our parliament. We must unite against use of patronage and state institutions. We must not allow our movement to slide into becoming ZANU PF. We must guard and hold to our traditions of open and robust debates. This is the only way we can honour Bheki Mkhize and other heroes and heroines of our liberation struggle.
Comrades,

The coming period poses new challenges for all of us. Even as we mourn Comrade Bheki Mkhize, and wish he were here to join us in this struggle, we know that he would have confidence in our militancy and our willingness to take forward the cause of our people. Polokwane opened a new stage in our struggle – a stage for genuine economic transformation and political democratisation. We must take this stage to a victorious conclusion.
I thank you