NUMSA STATEMENT ON TNS SURVEY CALLING FOR ANC-LED ALLIANCE TO SPLIT

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) rejects the survey outcomes done TNS calling for COSATU and the SACP to split from the ANC-led Alliance and contest the forthcoming local government elections independently from the ANC.

The survey's outcomes done by TNS are not reflective of the political understanding of our membership and the strategic importance of the Alliance. In fact the survey's outcomes feeds to the demagogic politics of the 1996 class project and now of lately the politics of the new tendency which is hell-bent on collapsing and weakening the Alliance as led by the ANC and the vanguard party of the working class, the SACP.

This survey is an attack on Communists and Trade Unionists for their sterling role and contribution in building the ANC as formidable force that address the interests of the working class and the poor. The Alliance, as composed by the ANC, SACP and COSATU is informed by the historical realities and dominant contradictions of our peculiar South African situation of resolving the national, class and gender contradictions as permeated by colonialism of a special type (CST) and liberating Blacks in general and Africans in particular from the yoke of oppression as guided by the Freedom Charter.

Ours is not a romantic Alliance, but an Alliance that was built through the blood and sweat of the workers and the poor of our country. It was this Alliance that was forced into exile by the fascist Nationalist Party regime fighting against a system that was declared a crime against humanity. It was this Alliance that made South Africa ungovernable until it was governed by the people in 1994.

This Alliance will continue to live until the objectives of the Freedom Charter as encapsulated in the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) are attained. It is this Alliance, which enjoys overwhelming and mass support of our people, as the genuine and formidable force that can deliver the aspirations of our people.

The contestation of state power by the vanguard party of the working class, the SACP, with the support of COSATU cannot be relegated into surveys and boardroom punches, but it will be informed by scientific analysis of the material conditions on the ground and continuous mobilisation of the working class to overthrow the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and replace it with the dictatorship of the working class under the leadership of the SACP.

The TNS should stop to be a fable intellectual hub of extreme left and right-wing trying to auction the vanguard party to the highest bidders in the market. The SACP is not going to loot power, but it is going to intensify its struggles for a radical implementation of the NDR geared towards building a favourable ground for Socialism.

The TNS should join and be amongst the forces that advances and propagates progressive thoughts and left ideas in the sea of poverty, mass unemployment and squalor as a result of the continued failures of Capitalism to meet the needs of our people.

Statement issued by Castro Ngobese, National Spokesperson, March 15 2011

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