A RESPONSE TO THE OPEN LETTER TO THE LATE PRESIDENT OF COSATU, CDE ELIJAH BARAYI: JUSTICE PIITSO RESPONSE TO CASTRO NGOBESE

MHLEKAZI

I felt obliged to respond to your open letter dated the 24th of November 2014 to our late President of COSATU, Cde Elijah Barayi. I confess that your open letter is much revealing, to say the least.

I take my response to your open letter as one of the most important tasks of our national democratic revolution. In other words responding to your open letter is a solemn act of any revolutionary.

I borrow the words of our late struggle veteran Cde Lawrence Phokanoka when he says the following about the significance of political education,

'A political education school is like a factory of production, it is like a kitchen where the new is born, and is the most precious task of our revolution. Development of an all round revolutionary cadre is a key to the success of any revolutionary movement'

What remains conspicuous and a food for thought to me, is whether indeed you are the author of this letter which seeks to praise the dead in order to condemn the living. I strongly believe that the contents of your open letter do not resonate with your being as a revolutionary young leader of our movement.

The assumptions made in the open letter for whatever reasons convenient to you suggest a band of fellow travelers, inactive in the ushering of the democratic state and the events of the two decades of our democracy, in essence, passive participants in the creation of a non-racial, democratic, non-sexist society.

I thought you differ from the rest in the omnibus. I thought you belong to the few amongst us who understand the most important question that our political task is to make those who are from within happier before we can attract others.

Without doubt you belong to the category of the few but amongst the best of the young organic revolutionary young leaders of our liberation movement, our vanguard party and the progressive trade union movement. For these reasons, a response to the open letter is well deserved.

In other words not withstanding the conspicuous nature of your open letter, from the bottom of my heart, i am equally conscious that I am responding to an open letter written by one of our young revolutionaries within the ranks of the congress movement, whose its traditions he knows better.

My concern is that in the recent past, you have joined the chorus which has been consistently directing its bestial rage and venomous hatred to our revolutionary movement, its leadership and our national democratic revolution.

A chorus of counter revolution which seeks to climb over the carcass of our national liberation movement, making noise throughout, making noise like a jackal that barks for the whole night at the moon for no apparent reason.

I am clear in my conscience that you are not a foot soldier of imperialism and neo colonial forces. You are one of our own, you belong no where else but within the ranks of the family of our revolution.

You and I are the first to comprehend the most important dialectical proposition that our national democratic revolution is not a high way chase, but the most complex protracted struggle to change society. We are the first to understand that a revolution has its own twists and turns, and ours is no different.

You have again sought to abuse the name of our revolutionary leader, the late President Elijah Barayi, to throw insults and vulgar to the leadership of our national liberation movement. In your open letter, a conversation rather, you have resolved to single out the Secretary General of the ANC Cde Qwede Mantashe and the General Secretary of the SACP Cde Blade Nzimande.

Contrary to the stated views within your ranks condemning the elevation of personalities above organisation, you have resorted to the notion that you despise. It has never been revolutionary in the past to do the same, neither can it be revolutionary now to elevate personalities.

But the truth is that your overall strategy and tactic is to undermine the entire leadership of our revolutionary Alliance and therefore the objectives of our national democratic revolution, again consistent with traditions of a fellow traveler.

I want to remind you of the polemics of our revolutionary leader of the world Communist movement Cde Vladimir Lenin. In 1905 he had to say the following against the leaders of the Second International"

History shows us that after the death of any revolutionary leader who has won popularity with the masses, his enemies will appropriate his name and use it to hoodwink the oppressed classes."

Today, hundred and nine years later, you have joined the chorus of the Mensheviks, to appropriate the name of our revolutionary leader and use it to hoodwink the millions of the working class of our country.

In his thesis of ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACKWARD, as he elucidates the counter revolutionary phenomenon that led to the split of the party in Russia, again Lenin says the following about opportunism"

When we speak of fighting opportunism, we must never forget a characteristic feature of present-day opportunism in every sphere, namely, its vagueness, amorphousness, elusiveness".

I would have assumed that in your conversation of this nature with our late President, whose mortal remains are resting in the world of the departed, you would invite to yourself a sense of moral and revolutionary responsibility, rather than spitting venom and half-truths. Fellow travelers would say to distance themselves, 'we were not there.'

From the deep end of our trenches in struggle, from where we are today, in the land of the living, we should honestly account to the late President of the federation and all other fallen heroes and heroines of our struggle, about the unfolding events of our national democratic revolution. When we do so, we should be honest with ourselves and be objective about the state of the revolution. There are no short-cuts.

More importantly in a conversation with a departed revolutionary leader of the calibre of President Elijah Barayi, i will expect you to pride and assert yourself with the profound revolutionary words of wisdom from our leader Cde Amilcar Cabral, when he said"

Tell no lies, claim no easy victories, and unmask difficulties to the masses...'

During the historic occasion of the founding rally of our federation COSATU in Curries Fountain,in front of delegates from all works of life, in front of dignitaries invited from within and all over the world, to witness the birth of our giant federation, Cde President Elijah Barayi acclaimed the following founding slogan of our Federation"

ONE FEDERATION IN ONE COUNTRY, ONE UNION IN ONE COUNTRY"

This clarion cal was consistent with the revolutionary traditions and principle of the unity and cohesion of our national liberation movement. It was consistent with our traditions that unity is a precondition for the success of any revolution, and in this case, ours.

His clarion call was to all and sundry to recognise the essence of the unity of workers under an umbrella Federation, (COSATU), that will become their shield, and the National Liberation Movement led by the ANC, as their spear.

President Elijah Barayi understood well that the struggle of the workers of our country in particular and our people in general, required a formidable force of a Federation, and from this premise, a call to Botha to resign, reverberated with a call to attain National independence, for the workers could not enjoy democratic rights of representation and trade union rights under a repressive and authotarian regime.

Under the collective leadership of President Barayi, the South African working class understood the dialectical relationship between the national and class struggle. They understood well the interconnedtness between a struggle to attain rights to organise at the workplace, to the rights that can fully be exercised in a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society.

I must remind you today that this revolutionary theoretical formulation never escaped the visionary mind of the collective leadership of President Barayi, in its clarion call for a single trade union Federation, and one industry under the umbrella of COSATU.

We need to remain true to ourselves that in our task to account to our leadership in the world of the departed, we should be honest about the state of our revolution, in that we are traversing the most difficult times in the cause of our noble struggle for national liberation. Again, the ravages of neo-colonialism and exploitation of more than 300 years cannot be reversed in 2 decades.

We need to give a full account of the balance of forces in our country and the whole world. That the collapse of socialism in the Soviet block and East European countries has ushered in a hostile unipolar world dominated by international monopoly capital.

We need to give a full account that the environment we find ourselves in today has tilted the balance of forces against the world revolutionary movement. We are living under difficult circumstances which are not of our own making, but bestowed upon us by history.

We need to give an account that forces of reaction from both within and outside our own ranks are determined the reverse the gains of our national democratic revolution. That there is a world wide orchestrated campaign to erode the gains our national liberation movement.

We need to give our leaders from the land of the departed a full and comprehensive account that a faction from NUMSA has decided to expel itself from the Federation and our revolutionary Alliance led by the ANC. This faction has become the most destructive in the recent history of our liberation struggle. Nothing can be said to be revolutionary with its actions and conduct.

(It) the faction does not understand the theoretical thesis that the participation of the working class in the overall struggle for democracy is not conditional on other strata of our society accepting socialism as the future. This faction has no sense of appreciation of the complexities of our struggle, let alone an understanding of a proper analysis of the balance of forces.

This faction does not understand the most important theoretical formulation that the communist party and the trade union movement are both working class formations. But also that their place and role to the immediate and long term struggles is not and cannot be the same.

The faction cannot understand that a trade union movement cannot assume a political role of a vanguard and political leader of the working class. That a trade union movement is a mass organisation of the working class.

This faction seeks to substitute the political leadership role of the vanguard party of the working class. It has political interests separate from those of the working class and the world communist movement as a whole.

This faction does not understand the multi class character of the ANC as the premier leader of our national democratic revolution. It does not even understand that the task of building a non racial, non sexist, democratic and prosperous society is but the first building block towards our socialist future.

Truth be told, this chorus of a small faction from within NUMSA, is in the forefront to break our revolutionary Alliance led by the ANC. They accuse the ANC of being a neo- liberal organisation.

This chorus of a small faction from NUMSA does not understand that the Freedom Charter is not a dogma, but a guiding programme of the struggle of our people. The Freedom CHARTER has never been a platform for a socialist struggle, but a platform that embraces the aspirations of the South African people as a whole.

Together with counter revolutionary forces from both within our country and the world, this faction is determined to create an alternative to the ANC and the SACP by a fetish notion of a movement for socialism.

Throughout the history of the progressive trade union movement in our country, a revolutionary role to lead a struggle for socialism has been assigned to a vanguard party of the working, in our context, the SACP.

A part of this struggle and an account to the departed, entails an acknowledgement that we have not attained the objective of building a single trade union federation in our country, representative of all components of the organised working class.

The 1994 democratic breakthrough has ushered in better conditions for the establishment of a more stronger and militant trade unions movement which our forebears sacrificed their lifes for. The working class is conducting its own struggle for a better living wage under much improved conditions.

These objective realities of our freedom, have in turn brought about the subjective realities of the global phenomenon of capital, and what we had not fully anticipated, the erosion of the manufacturing sector in our economy, and the spread of the retail sector to many parts of the continent. For these reasons, unions in many of our sectors have lost membership.

To bring matters home to the issues at stake in COSATU, a tradition of the Federation entails that each affiliated union adopts policy positions, and subsequently persuade the rest of the affiliated unions to endorse its policy positions. This has over a period of year's ensured coherence and unity in the Federation.

In this instance a faction in NUMSA has undermine this important fundamental principle of our Federation. To expand and register a new scope of an affiliated union in the Federation entails canvassing the rest of the unions in the Federation to endorse the expansion. To resolve to establish a united front by an affiliate also requires canvassing the rest of the Federation.

The crux of the matter at this juncture, is the inability of the Federation to enforce the policy of, ‘one union in one industry' and therefore causing the disintegration of unity and coherence within the ranks.

The Secretary General of the SACP, Cde Joe Slovo, was instructive in characterizing the nature and role of a trade union, that in essence, a prime organ of working people, and cannot demand more in membership.

Slovo understood the limitations of trade unions, that in their very nature and existence, they are associations of all working people, and cannot demand of their membership other than adherence to the basic ideals, political or ideological affiliation.

For the above reasons, the membership of the trade union federation, (COSATU) has been open to all and sundry irrespective of their political or ideological inclination. This has not precluded the Federation from pronouncing on its political and ideological inclination and the membership has in the context of a majority decision respected these policy pronouncements.

From the founding Congress of the Federation, Cosatu understood that the struggles of the organised section of the working class were linked to the struggle for the creation of a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society.

In this context, the Federation acknowledged that the ANC represented the broad aspirations of all sections of society for the realization of democratic society, a beach head to pursue the broader struggle of a socialist society. The alliance with the SACP is intricately linked to a struggle for an egalitarian and socialist society.

The ANC is its multi-class organisation that represents all those who stand to benefit from a non-racial and democratic society, and for these reasons, a broad church. It is in the battle of ideas and the terrain of struggle that the workers, an organised component of the working class, fight their battles within the ANC to claim their space and agenda.

The leadership role of the working class is to assert its hegemony in this phase as a ‘motive force.' of our revolution. This role cannot be anointed or taken for granted but has got to be fought and earned in theatre of struggle.

The best for you Mhlekazi is to narrate to the leadership in the land of our departed that we are ceased with the task of overcoming these challenges. What we must do is not to abandon our trenches, and for narrow and un-scientific reasons, find shelter elsewhere.

It is not in our interest to have a weak COSATU. A weak COSATU is a weak ANC and SACP and therefore a weakened national democratic revolution. The best for the future of our country is a strong, militant and united Federation, which is part of the revolutionary Alliance led by the ANC.

Phatse Justice Piitso is the former Ambassador to the republic of Cuba and the former provincial secretary of the SACP writing this article on his personal capacity

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