SAFTU calls for a coordinated protest in Alexandra and other working-class townships
8 April 2019
The South African Federation of Trade Unions was created after a number of unions after they came to a realisation that for over two decades, black people in general and black working class in particular had been on the receiving end of failed neoliberal and austerity programmes that has not only led to neglect but also worsened the quadrille crisis of unemployment, poverty, inequalities and corruption.
Instead of implementing the Freedom Charter economic demands, which states that the land and the wealth shall be shared, the ANC government for 25 years now has been doing just the opposite. The neoliberal policies introduced since 1996 has led to redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich through cutting funding to the local government layer of government. Face with the increased levels of de-industrialisation and disinvestments by the light manufacturing industries which led to a massive decline of tax base leading to a situation where local governments had no option but to increase tariffs on rates and used electricity tariffs to cover the resultant shortfall.
The ANC and its allies have as early as 2012, admitted that in economic terms, the main beneficiaries of economy remain the same people who benefitted prior to 1994. In fact the benefits to the white monopoly capital has been far greater under the conditions of so called freedom than they were during apartheid and colonialism. This is evidence by massive growth in profits and executive pay as well as the ability of South African firms to move all over the continent and the township. On the other side, the black working class has witnessed even greater levels of unemployment, poverty, inequalities, corruption and crime.
Apartheid fault lines have largely remained. The spatial apartheid development patterns remain firmly in place. The provision of inferior houses far away from even where the apartheid has placed the black people has worsened the crisis of transport and access to opportunities near economic activities. There has been a phenomenal backyard informal houses that have compounded further the lack of infrastructure and put more on inadequate services including water and sanitation.