SACPblackStar.jpg SACP Message on the Occasion of the 30th anniversary of COSATU, 5 December 2015 Delivered by Comrade Blade Nzimande SACP General Secretary Build a Militant and Fighting COSATU to Drive a Second, More Radical Phase of Our Democratic Revolution On behalf of the South African Communist Party and its entire membership, I am here to say to COSATU, inqola ema sondo sondo and the entire 1,9 million members, Happy 30th Anniversary!! Cheers to 30 years of struggle. This occasion presents us with an opportunity to critically look back at the road that we have travelled; appreciate our successes and failures and most importantly to learn from such experiences. We often make such reflections as individuals when we celebrate such important milestones. Organisations are no different. Their anniversaries are used for critical reflection and most importantly to articulate a way forward. You could have not chosen such an appropriate rallying call, Unity and Cohesion of the federation in advancing the National Democratic Revolution. Indeed this is the purposes that the 500 000 members who established this federation established it for. To unite workers, build a strong and cohesive federation that will assert a working class agenda in the execution of the NDR. This, the celebration of the 30 years of the formation of COSATU must not be divorced from the revolutionary role played by your predecessors. It must in fact be a continuation. Of course the formation of COSATU signalled a major victory against the oppressive racist apartheid minority that has sought to suppress shopfloor mobilization in our country. Thirty years later, many have started to ask important questions, albeit cynically sometimes about the role, need and character of COSATU. Some have started to question in a cynical way, of course COSATU’s strategic path of the NDR being a seamless and most direct route towards Socialism. In questioning this path they have gone ahead to question the organisational forms that express this strategic objective in action made up of our revolutionary alliance. They have wiped from the collective memory of society the important gains of our revolution, i.e. a constitutionally entrenched right to organise and to strike, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, the Labour Relations Act, and the Employment Equity Act etc. Impatient given the challenges of the moment, they forgot what Karl Marx said in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte that “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already”. Their impatience reminds us of what Frederick Engels said when he wrote against the Manifesto of the 33 Blanquist Communards: “’We are Communists’ [the Blanquist Communards wrote in their manifesto], ‘because we want to attain our goal without stopping at intermediate stations, without any compromises, which only postpone the day of victory and prolong the period of slavery.’ “The German Communists are Communists because, through all the intermediate stations and all compromises created, not by them but by the course of historical development, they clearly perceive and constantly pursue the final aim—the abolition of classes and the creation of a society in which there will no longer be private ownership of land or of the means of production. The thirty-three Blanquists are Communists just because they imagine that, merely because they want to skip the intermediate stations and compromises, the matter is settled, and if ‘it begins’ in the next few days—which they take for granted—and they take over power, ‘communism will be introduced’ the day after tomorrow. If that is not immediately possible, they are not Communists. “What childish innocence it is to present one’s own impatience as a theoretically convincing argument!” You have just come out of a very difficult period as COSATU of having to deal with your own Blanquists of a special type. The task ahead however remains extremely challenging as well. The unity displayed at your congress however lays a solid basis to empower COSATU, fully appreciating the course of historical development, to grow from strength to strength. We have a simple message as the SACP to the Blanquists of our time. For as long as we live in a society wherein the majority have to sell their labour for a wage in order to satisfy their needs COSATU remains relevant and I must add the SACP as well. The alliance remains relevant. For as long as we live in a society wherein the rich and the poor are free to go to school but only the rich can exercise a choice of which school to go to, or which clinic and hospital to go to, or whether to sleep under the bridge or not, then this federation of Elijah Barayi, John Nkadimeng, John Gomomo remains an important instrument for our liberation. Saying this doesn't mean we are nostalgic and are not aware of the quantitative shifts that have taken place in relation to how Capitalism has restructured production, the workplace and consequently posing an objective challenge with respect to the work of COSATU – at the back of our integration into the global division of labour post 1994, adoption of liberalization measures and deregulation of the financial sector. Those measures have not been beneficial to our fight against our strategic enemy, Monopoly Capital. The SACP is aware that our democratic breakthrough didn't represent the defeat of monopoly capital in our country. It didn’t mean the defeat of an especially oppressive capitalist system. It still left Anglo American, De Beers, SASOL, SA Breweries (now SA Breweries Miller), Naspers (which today is threatening to take over and privatize the SABC), Old Mutual, and the big banks dominating our economy. Monopoly capital has not been idle. In response to progressive labour legislation they have actively under-cut our gains through casualization, through labour brokers, through mass retrenchments, through the employment of desperate illegal immigrants. Over the past 21 years there has been massive capital flight – reaching some 20% of our GDP in some years. All kinds of tricks are used to maximise monopoly profits and to minimise any responsibility for developing South Africa. There is transfer pricing and mis-invoicing. There is tax evasion, there is the use of tax havens, and there is collusion. In response to our new majority-rule ANC-led government’s attempts to advance reconstruction and development – South African monopoly capital has launched an investment strike. Monopoly capital has often succeeded in infiltrating into our own organisations. They have used narrow BEE. They have used bribes and all manner of fronting to find entry-points into government departments. They have fostered a class of vultures, the tenderpreneurs. Monopoly capital – in the shape of the old apartheid, broeder-bond, media giant Naspers and its off-shoot Multi-Choice have even swallowed up what was supposed to be democratic South Africa’s public broadcaster – the SABC. They have done this with the connivance, of course, of their bought lackeys in Auckland Park. We say that those in senior positions in the SABC who have lied to parliament, who have lied about their qualifications and who have been appointed illegally as the courts ruled must go!! Our government shouldn't even be wasting time and resources appealing the judgement to protect those who lie. It’s about time that we appoint a truly independent, competent Board at the SABC that is not remote controlled by an individual to rescue our public broadcaster. Trade unions control (in theory) vast retirement funds and these have been used to leverage union investment arms. In principle these union financial resources could be used to fund useful things for the working class – like public transport, affordable housing, and improved training opportunities for your children. There are some inspiring examples of union funds being used in this way. However, all too often, these retirement funds and investment arms have been the entry-point for a capitalist agenda to strike into the very heart of the union movement itself. This is why as we celebrate COSATU’s 30th Anniversary we must reinforce the historical necessity of a united COSATU, united affiliates of COSATU to launch a decisive battle primarily against monopoly capital and secondarily against the parasitic elements within our movement, masquerading as revolutionaries, who pursue an agenda of monopoly capital. We must be clear tactically not to confuse the two, albeit the second one is even more dangerous in the current phase of our revolution. We must not be in denial about some of our strategic errors that we made in our early years in government whose price we continue to pay till today. However we must unite and articulate a proper working class agenda to take us forward. This is not the time to play into an agenda of wedge drivers. We need a united COSATU to fend off the parasitic bourgeoisie and the looters who when we campaign for an overwhelming victory of the ANC in the forthcoming election will be with us albeit on a different mission – a mission to capture the state, talk in our language against outsourcing, talk our language about the strategic role of SOE’s etc., only to mean these must be vehicles for brazen corruption and self enrichment. Service to our people comes last in their minds. When we talk about defending our national sovereignty they talking about defending their right to steal from the public purse. Such recklessness plays into the hands of regime change agenda’s funded from abroad. We must deal with corruption not just in theory but practically. While the scourge of corruption is not by any measure the main cause of the economic crises we are confronting as a country, corruption fragments the democratic state and our movement, and opens up space for regime-change agendas. If we are to respond effectively to the economic challenges, then it is absolutely essential that as a movement we deal decisively with corruption and corrupt individuals. We must call for the full implementation of the ANC NGC Resolutions which are far reaching in these front, including on how organisational processes and procedures have been corrupted by some within the movement to pursue an agenda that stand opposed to the NDR – that of self enrichment. We need a united COSATU to deal with the problematic question of financialisation in our economy. Daily in our townships evictions have become a norm. The banks, with NEDBANK being the biggest culprit, are leading in this working with corrupt court officials to abuse the system of issuing garnishee orders and eviction orders. Our financial sector is concentrated in few hands and its time we must break up this oligopolistic feature which strangely even worries the IMF. The problem is not what the Treasury and the Reserve Bank call “Too big to Fail”, rather it is “too big to exist”. The trade union movement must be in the forefront of this campaign to call for proper regulations that differentiate amongst financial institutions so that we can create a proper state bank, license the Post Bank with a different model of business and mandate, create co-operatives banks that will be supported by the state and not subjected to the logic of profit maximization as embedded in some laws currently governing the financial sector. We need workers to use their resources wisely to transform the financial sector – why do we keep on relying on old mutual, Metropolitan and so forth to manage our money (and often use it to divide us?). Let us create what is ours, in the logic of solidarity and not profit maximization. The SACP calls for the trade union movement to have a proper discussion about how the investment arms are vehicles that allow for workers to have democratic control and increase their ownership in the economy and how these vehicles can be used to start to build a counter against monopoly capital and not just conform to the norm. To achieve all this it is important that we strengthen the trade union movement capacity to respond dynamically to the changes in the shopfloor. We always explain these dynamic changes by telling the story of "Nthabiseng" who has for the past fifteen years been working as a cashier at the till of a big supermarket. When she started 15 years ago all she was doing was to take money for the goods bought by customers. But today she is also a bank teller as people can take loans at supermarkets and withdraw money from the till points; she is also now like a passenger service agent at an airport counter as you can today pay for an airline ticket at the counter of a supermarket. As a small, but important diversion, Nthabiseng started as a full time employee directly employed by the Supermarket, but now is a casual worker contracted by a labour broker with no benefits, yet doing the job of four workers all at the same time - a classic mix of the capitalist labour market and financialisation! How does the trade union movement respond to such in relation to servicing this potential member, recruiting her into the ranks of the trade union movement and politicizing her to be part of a class for itself. We talk mutedly about how rival unions are seen to be winning cases – often we hear that PSA is better than this or that COSATU affiliate, why? Often we dine in restaurants and you hear that workers are not unionised. In fact they don't even talk about unions because they will be dismissed. We fly and we get to hear about how members who should be in SATAWU are being gobbled up by this and that union because we are perceived otherwise. One of the greatest issue in the mining sector that the vigilante union used to destabilize the NUM was to drive home a perception that some shopstewards were too close to management. The services sector is the worst sector in relation to how it treat workers. We sleep in hotels and we are served by workers employed by labour brokers. Comrades, its time we elevate our presence where it matters the most. Of course we must be aware that a call to strengthen our organizational muscle and presence doesn't amount to a call to compete with anarchy. We are raising this not to make comrades feel bad but reflect on this journey that we have travelled for 30 years and the challenges that we have met for our collective response. We must re-build worker control and worker democracy in the trade union movement. We must make sure that COSATU is in the forefront of workplace struggles and that the workers at the same time are at the forefront of community struggles – the struggle for a NHI, for free education for the poor, the struggle for public transport, the struggle against evictions, the struggle for basic services (access to safe electricity, clean water etc.), the struggle for safe streets – free of drugs and gangsterism, the struggle against backward patriarchal practices in our communities. In fact truth be told one of the reason why many of our branches are manipulated by looters for their own narrow benefits is that we are not occupying this space fully – we have allowed a Chinese wall between community struggles and workplace struggles thus allowing an emergence of thieves to control our structures. Comrades, we need to build capacity of our comrades. Our shopstewards and our organisers must be steeped in the theory of Marxism and Leninism if they are to be our true representatives and reliable core to fight for Socialism. Most importantly our members must be trained politically. Lest we do this then they will be taken for granted by aboMafikizolo who will lie to them and promise them this and that which they cannot deliver. Basics of trade unionism are important bearing in mind the kind of a worker we now have. We take it for granted that everyone understands why he or she should join a progressive trade union. We always talk mutedly about how people we know are not in progressive trade unions because they are not being serviced by organisers/shopstewards. We talk mutedly about how organisers/shopstewards are co-opted at the expense of workers. Unless we openly confront these tendencies we might not live to see this federation celebrate its 60 years. But a conscious worker will not be co-opted easily. Development of political consciousness amongst our members is very critical and as always the SACP is ready to work with COSATU to achieve these mutually reinforcing tasks. We also wish to leave you with the SACP Special Congress theme, that of focusing on uniting the working class, our communities and our movement. At the heart of this must also be to intensify an internal struggle to defeat all forms of factionalism in all of our organisations, as the basis upon which to unite the Alliance as a whole With these few words comrades I say once more, Happy 30th Anniversary COSATU. Amandla!! Issued by the SACP Contact: Malesela Maleka, Head of Policy and Research Unit Mobile: 082 226 1802 -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
