Cosatu G.S. Zwelinzima Vavi address to Popcru National Crime Swummit 08- 10- 08

COSATU General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi’s, address to POPCRU National Crime Summit,
8 October 2008, Gallagher Estate, Midrand

President Zizamele Cebekhulu
General Secretary Abbey Witbooi
Members of the National Executive Committee

On behalf of the National Office Bearers and two million members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, I bring comradely greetings and best wishes to POPCRU on the occasion of this important conference on one of the greatest challenges of our time - crime.

COSATU agrees totally with the decision of the ANC National Conference in Polokwane in December 2007 to make crime one of its top priorities for the next five years, along with education, health, unemployment, poverty and rural development. We have pledged full support for the campaign to organise street committees to mobilise the people against the criminals.

The overall levels of crime remain totally outrageous, particularly the shocking figure of 18 487 people murdered a year, which amounts to over 50 a day. One particularly alarming development is the horrifying increase in the murder of children, up 22.4% over the last year. As a society we should hang our heads in shame at such a trend.

I must also take this opportunity to pay tribute to the members of your union, who daily risk their lives in the fight against crime, and especially the 107 police officers who were murdered throughout the country during the 2007/2008 financial year. We owe it to them to make sure their sacrifice was not in vain, by hunting down those responsible for such crimes.

Comrades

There can never be any excuse for crime, but we will never defeat it if we do not understand its root causes. These lie in failed social and economic policies, which have not eradicated the highly skewed economic relations, we inherited from apartheid and which got even worse under the neoliberal free-market policies of GEAR.

We will never solve the crime problem until we have radically cut the appalling levels of unemployment and poverty, and in particular narrowed the high and growing levels of inequality.

Our February CEC received a report on the significant economic challenges that continue to face the majority of working people and the poor. Our unemployment rate remains one of the highest in the world, with current economic growth projections indicating a slowdown in the rate of new job creation.

The current financial meltdown around the world is threatening to develop into a full-blown recession, wrecking the prospect of faster job creation and putting existing jobs at risk.

Even when unemployment was declining since 2004, the new jobs were predominantly in sectors such as wholesale and retail, construction and private security, where jobs are extremely precarious, with little security, low wages, poor working conditions and low levels of compliance with basic conditions. They do very little to lift workers out of poverty.

The current strike by Woolworth’s workers is so important because it highlights the problem of casualisation, which is no longer just happening on the fringes of the economy, but implemented by one of our supposedly most prestigious companies.

Comrades

Though it is important to acknowledge the significant strides government has made in reducing poverty, challenges remain, especially in communities in the former Bantustans, other rural communities and the sprawling informal settlements around the country.

This is exacerbated by poor service delivery and cut-offs of basic services. In addition the rising cost of these services, especially electricity, and the rocketing increase in the price of food, are wreaking havoc on poor households and communities.

Although the economy began to grow faster from 2003 to 2006, the rate of growth is now slowing down again. Don’t just take my word for it. The Governor of the Reserve Bank, Tito Mboweni, whose interest rate hikes have made a big contribution to the problem, admitted in August that the slide towards recession is gaining momentum, with real growth in gross domestic product lower than the rates achieved in the last few years.

He revealed that the Business Confidence Index also declined significantly in the second quarter of 2008 and quoted evidence pointing to continued slow growth in the manufacturing sector, primarily due to sluggish new sales orders.

Meanwhile the wealth gap keeps growing wider, with Tito Mboweni himself joining in the party, with a massive 27.5% salary increase, more than double the inflation rate, which takes his annual pay, including fringe benefits, pension and medical contributions, to R3.796 million! It will be small comfort to workers that Mboweni is still lagging behind Jacko Maree, CEO of Standard Bank, who earned R18.63m in 2007, and Tom Boardman, chief executive of Nedbank, who earned R11.8m.

Our country is getting richer not only too slowly but in a way that widens inequality, as the working poor, the unemployed and poverty stricken communities are not reaping any benefit from growth, while a small elite minority get richer still.

So long as we have a huge proportion living in poverty and desperation, there will be a climate which breeds crime, as a few seek a quick route to riches by illegal means. Crime however is definitely not restricted to the poor communities. It has its own class structure, with, at the top price-fixing capitalists, drug-barons, hijacking syndicate bosses and corrupt government officials.

Crime is further encouraged by the alien traditions, which have crept even into our own movement, of self-enrichment and get-rich-quick at all costs. The capitalist, free-market system rewards greed and selfishness and creates the environment in which crime flourishes.

And always it is the poor majority who suffer most from the human consequences, the poor who cannot afford to protect their homes with electric fences or to insure their possessions.

Comrades

COSATU and its allies have the responsibility to start to turn the tide and create a new movement, based on the theme that the masses must not be spectators; they must play a decisive role.

The ANC Conference resolutions spelt out the strategy, which we all must now follow, including:

Encouraging our members and communities to participate in Community Policing Forums, prioritise and run campaigns around peace and stability issues, based on a clear programme that is linked to the Moral Regeneration Campaign.
A programme of mobilisation and integration of structures such as School Governing Bodies and Parent-Teacher Associations with safety and security structures in order to defeat crime in our communities.
Mobilising traditional leaders to play a more significant role in promoting peace and stability in rural areas.
Implementing the Rural Safety Plan and making it visible in rural areas.
Involving young people in a massive programme of community policing and safety that will include night street patrols and have stipends paid by government as part of the national youth service to instil the value to serve and protect the community and public property amongst our youth.
A firm resolution on Social Crime Prevention.
Police stations must be centres for coordinating mass mobilisation against crime.

In short, we must rebuild in our communities the vibrant fighting spirit of the anti-apartheid struggle and direct that spirit into the struggle against crime.
When I spoke at a Memorial Service for the late Lucky Dube I quoted some lyrics of his, which are very relevant to this conference. He was underlining the fact that all of us face the possibility of being affected by the scourge of crime ravaging our country.
Do you ever worry about your house being broken into?
Do you ever worry about your car being taken away from you?
Do you ever worry about leaving home and coming back in a coffin, with a bullet through your head?
So join us and fight this.
I could not have put it better. We must all join the fight against crime.