COSATU statement on government Growth Path policy

The Congress of South African Trade Unions welcomes the Cabinet's decision to hold a special meeting to finalise its economic Growth Path policy. We are pleased that, albeit a long 20 months after it was elected, the government will finally reveal the basis for its economic policies.

We hope that the ANC government will grasp the opportunity to put the economy on to a new growth path which will cut the appalling levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality which have marred our country for the last 16 years of democracy.

Despite the huge progress in transforming the political basis of our country in those 16 years, the economic structure we inherited from apartheid has remained virtually unchanged, and in some respects has got even worse. Unemployment remains far higher than in any comparable country and is still rising. Inequality has worsened to the point where it is now the widest in the whole world.

As a result millions of South Africans live in poverty, squalor and disease and 1.875 million households still live in shacks. The majority of people, overwhelmingly black, are denied quality education for their children in our public schools, or decent healthcare in our public hospitals, while a small, mainly while elite can pay for world-class educational and healthcare services.

The ANC's manifesto, which must guide the government's deliberations, spelled out the problem clearly: "Unemployment is unacceptably high among our people. There is a special challenge amongst African women, rural persons and young people. There has been a growth of casualised, low wage and outsourced jobs, contributing to the rise of the working poor.

"Inequality has persisted and increased in our society," said the manifesto, "Workers' share of national income has continued to decline. The rural areas remain divided between well-developed commercial farming areas, peri-urban and impoverished communal areas. The benefits of economic growth have not been broadly and equitably shared."

The roots of this continuing inequality and poverty lie in the failed economic policies adopted in 1996, centred around the misnamed Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy. It led to growth at a snail's pace, higher unemployment and it only redistributed wealth from the poor to the rich! It was a policy based on the misguided free-market, neoliberal policies of the ‘Washington consensus' which led directly to the devastating worldwide economic crisis of 2009.

Now is the moment to make a decisive break with these disastrous policies of the 1996 Class project and go back to policies grounded on the principles of:

• The 1955 Freedom Charter, which said that "the People Shall Share in the Country's Wealth!"
• The 1994 RDP strategy, which pledged "to link growth, development, reconstruction, redistribution and reconciliation into a 'unified program'
• The 2009 ANC Election manifesto, which promised that "The developmental state will play a central and strategic role in the economy," and most recently
• The 2010 dti IPAP2 Document, which, in its own words, "represents a significant step forward in scaling up our efforts to promote long term industrialisation and industrial diversification beyond our current reliance on traditional commodities and non-tradable services."

It would be a tragedy if we missed this historic opportunity to build a developmental state and turn the economy around. It would be a disaster if the government were to be persuaded that we can continue with the status quo. It would mean condemning another generation of living with no jobs, no money and no hope.

COSATU has accepted the challenge to produce its alternative strategy. In "A Growth path Towards Full Employment", we set out a path which will transform our economy into one based on the expansion of manufacturing industry and the creation of decent and sustainable jobs.

But, as the document says, it "will be used as a basis for engagement with government and the Alliance... and we will convene a forum of civil society organisations to engage on our inputs. Government would also be invited to address this forum".

COSATU is proceeding with this engagement process in Boksburg on 27/28 October 2010 at its Civil Society Conference, and we strongly urge government to submit its new Growth path proposals to a similar, extensive process of discussion and debate, within the Alliance, civil society and the whole country.

The future of South African is in the balance. We must as a society ensure that we adopt and speedily implement a new Growth Path that will take us to the goal we set ourselves in the Freedom Charter in 1955, which declared that "the national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people."

Statement issued by Patrick Craven, Congress of South African Trade Unions national spokesperson, October 25 2010

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