MKMVA supports the national workers’ strike against impending economic collapse
23 August 2022
The Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) applauds the workers of South Africa, and especially the two large worker’s union federations, for having put their differences aside, and taken decisive action to tackle our country’s deepening economic crisis.
MKMVA agrees with COSATU and SAFTU that our country is teetering on the brink of a total economic collapse, which will have consequences too ghastly to contemplate for workers specifically, but in general for our whole nation. We also agree with the workers that the current economic crisis was certainly not inevitable, but that it is the consequence of wrong socio-economic policy decisions that have been taken the ANC-led government.
Economic decisions in favor of a neo-liberal agenda, and maintaining the status quo with regards to protecting, and even enhancing the strangle grip of White Monopoly Capital (WMC), which include the deliberate running down of State Owned Enterprises (SOE’s) and a deliberate, persistent, program of aggressive privatization, has increasingly eroded the State’s ability to drive an economic policy program in favor poverty alleviation, and the economic empowerment of the majority of black (especially African) South Africans, of whom the black working-class is the vanguard.
The failure of the ANC government to implement the Radical Economic Transformation (RET) Resolutions of the 54th National Conference of the ANC, which constitute the official economic policy program of the ANC, is not coincidental or by omission at all, it is a deliberate decision driven by an unholy and exploitative symbiotic alliance between a leadership core in the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC, who have sold out to the mainly white captains of industry, who are the main benefactors of WMC’s continuing control over our economy.
It is correct that the black working class, and their organized formations, as manifested in their trade union federations, are now finally standing up, and take the lead in delivering the message that, enough is enough!
MKMVA fully concurs with COSATU and SAFTU, and all the other workers’ formations that have joined them in a commendable show of unity and strength, that ongoing and deepening class warfare is being directed at workers, by both public and private sector employers.
We furthermore agree that Radical Economic Transformation steps must be taken to avoid an economic collapse that is now threatening the lives of millions of workers and the majority of poor South Africans. The massive job losses during the past couple of years, having driven the official unemployment rate up to a shocking 35%, is the main reason why South Africa is the most unequal society in the world. Furthermore, consumers have been impacted by the astronomical escalation in prices of fuel. A fundamental contributor to this disaster is the deliberately orchestrated crisis that Eskom has been plunged into, as part of a well-orchestrated project to destroy Eskom’s electricity generation capacity, and to decommission it with the intention to privatize it, and as a consequence ever intensifying waves of rotational load-shedding.
MKMVA supports the six demands of the workers’ strike, which inter alia address the deteriorating standard of living and escalating prices of basic food stuffs, with the food basket having increased by a shocking 14 percent only this year, and 49% from a year ago. Most prominent under these demands are that load-shedding, which are putting many companies out of business, must be brought to an urgent end, and that the skyrocketing fuel price must come down. The increasing repossession of the properties of workers, and South Africans in general, due to rising interest rates, must also be addressed.
It is noted that while the majority of South Africans are plunging into an ever deepening spiral of poverty and fundamentally exploitative economic relations, there is simultaneously a boom in the mainly white controlled financial sector. The major banks in South Africa have improved their wealth by 1.7 percent over the very same period that 72 000 jobs were lost. Evidently this is a totally unsustainable situation.
MKMVA hopes that tomorrow’s national workers’ strike will lead in a new era of sustained and increasing mobilization against an uncaring government that has sold out to neo-liberal economic policy programs that betray the historical liberation struggle task of the ANC, and destroy the lives of millions of South Africans.
The national strike is protected under Section 77 of the Labor Relations Act, and MKMVA calls on the state and all employers to support and recognize the legal right of workers to participate in the strike. Any action to impede this hard fought for right, or to intimidate workers not to participate, must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.
As we call on all our members to join the strike, MKMVA also calls that tomorrow’s national strike must not be an isolated, once-off event, but that a continuing program of sustainable increased mobilization and mass action must follow on from hence on. Such persistent and consistent mass mobilization must not seize until we achieve our objective of a fundamental radical economic transformation that will truly empower workers, and positively transform the lives of the majority of black, and especially African, South Africans.
A LUTA CONTINUA!
Issued by Carl Niehaus, MKMVA NEC Member and National Spokesperson of MKMVA, 23 August 2022
