Address by Blade Nzimande, General Secretary of the South African Communist Party to NUMSA Congress, Durban, June 4 2012
The Working Class taking responsibility for our revolution: In memory of Phineas Sibiya, Simon Ngubane and Florence Mnikathi
Cde President Gina, the General Secretary Cde Jim and all the national office bearers of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), leadership of our Alliance Partners, international and other invited guests, and comrade delegates.
The SACP wishes to thank you for the invitation to come and address your congress, an important gathering which is also celebrating 25 years of heroic struggle by NUMSA. The SACP is indeed very proud of the role that NUMSA has played in improving the conditions of employment of metalworkers as well as in the struggle for national liberation and socialism in our country.
As a tribute to the struggle of NUMSA in our country, I would like to dedicate this address to the memory of the three SARMCOL workers and members of MAWU - cdes Phineas Sibiya (chief shopsteward), Simon Ngubane and Florence Mnikathi - who were brutally murdered by Inkatha warlords trained in, and newly returned, Caprivi strip trainees in Mpophomeni, near Pietermaritzburg on 6 December 1986.
This was after their strikes in 1985 Sarmcol fired the entire workforce of 970 and replaced them with scab labour drawn largely from Inkatha supporters. The Sarmcol strike was one of the longest and bloodiest strikes ever in the history of our country. This strike was central in the revitalization of mass and workers struggles in Pietermaritzburg. It would indeed be appropriate, as part of the 25th anniversary of NUMSA, that the Howick municipality erects an appropriate monument for these heroes.
Phineas Sibiya and his comrades understood that the struggle of rubber workers in Pietermaritzburg will not be won if not combined with mass and community struggles against the apartheid regime and its apartheid tentacles in the bantustan system. As we celebrate 25 years of NUMSA, we also honour their memory as they were also the forebears in the formation of COSATU and a single metalworkers union.
Twenty five years of NUMSA is also an ocassion to celebrate the role that many communists have played, and continue to play, in building this giant and militant union. Today we remember communist leaders like John Gomomo and Mbuyi Ngwenda for the sterling contribution they made in building a strong NUMSA. South Africa needs a strong and militant NUMSA just as we needed it 25 years ago. However today it is a militancy that whilst directed at the bosses, it must simultaneously seek to deepen and strengthen our democracy in favour of the workers and poor of our country.
The current global capitalist crisis
We are waging our struggles and seeking to deepen our national democratic revolution in the context in which capitalism is facing one of its most severe crises since the depression of 1929. This current capitalist crisis has several interacting dimensions - extensive damage to our environment, the destructions of rural livelihoods, mass urbanization without effective job creation, and above all gambling with workers' lives through a casino type economy in which workers have lost jobs and their shelter.
What is more is that there are no sustainable solutions to this multi-dimensional crisis within the context of capitalism itself. Capitalism has no strategy to resolve its own crises. Instead it seeks to punish workers and now the middle classes with austerity measures as we see in Europe; a further cut-back on social services, and attempts to intensify the exploitation of developing countries to try and cushion itself.
All this goes to prove that our struggle for socialism shall remain relevant for as long as we have a system that is creating crises for humanity and also at great cost to our planet. This also underlines the importance of deepening international working class solidarity and for NUMSA to continue to strengthen its role and relations with metalworkers globally.
The working class as the leading motive force of the National Democratic Revolution
In order to understand the tasks of the working class in any historical period it is important that we go back to the basics. The characterisation of the working class as a leading force of the NDR is not something that is won from some beauty contest or some kind of award.
It is a responsibility that must be won in struggle, not once but daily on the ground. It is a task that must at all times combine mass power and strategic capacity of the working class. No matter how many times we can shout that the working class is a leading motive force, unless this is informed by deep strategic thinking and choices, it will be crushed by its enemies.
Let us remind delegates about what Joe Slovo said about this matter:
"To eventually win the majority of our people for a socialist South Africa, we must spread socialist awareness and socialist consciousness now, mainly among the workers but also among the rural poor and the middle strata. We must also ensure that the working class emerges as the politically-dominant social class in the post-apartheid state. This can only be achieved if the working class wins a place now as the leading social force in the inter-class liberation alliance.
"The working class cannot play the key role by merely leading itself and sloganising about its historic mission. It must win popular acceptance on the ground as the most effective champion of the democratic aspirations of all the racially-oppressed groupings. It must work with, and provide leadership to, our youth, women, intellectuals, small traders, peasants, the rural poor and - yes - even the racially-dominated black bourgeoisie, all of whom are a necessary part of the broad front of our liberation...
But the working class can only act as a leading motive force if it is organized politically. Much as the mass organs of the working class (like trade unions, workers' co-operatives and other such mass organs) are absolutely essential in working class struggles, it is only when the working class is organised as a political force that it can truly act as a motive force for the revolution.
The political organization of the working class is also important so that it develops its capacity to lead other progressive motive forces in society. To think that if we make demands rhetorically amongst ourselves will lead to the realization of those demands is infantile, unless we struggle for those in broader society and seek to win the widest possible sections of society behind them.
It is for these reasons that the communist party is essential as the leading party political organ of the working class. Much as there is (and should be) a very close relationship between the trade union movement and the communist party, however the two are not the same. Let me refer to Slovo again on this matter:
"A trade union is the prime mass organisation of the working class. To fulfil its purpose, it must be as broad as possible and fight to maintain its legal status. It must attempt, in the first place, to unite, on an industrial basis, all workers (at whatever level of political consciousness) who understand the elementary need to come together and defend and advance their economic conditions. It cannot demand more as a condition of membership. But because the state and its political and repressive apparatus is an instrument of the dominant economic classes, it is impossible for trade unions in any part of the world to keep out of the broader political conflicts.
"Unlike a trade union, a worker's vanguard does not, and should not, have the character of a mass movement... An attempt to apply trade union organisational practices to such a vanguard would spell the end of revolutionary political leadership in our conditions. Equally, the trade union movement would be doomed if it attempted to act like a Communist Party".
It is from the above revolutionary perspectives that we should understand the tasks of the working class in the current conditions. I will revert back to this matter later when I specifically address the relationship between NUMSA and the SACP.
The key economic and political challenges in the national democratic revolution
The global capitalist economic crisis is impacting upon and reinforcing the key socio-economic challenges we face in South Africa - racialised poverty, inequality and the crisis-levels of structural unemployment. All of these features of our society are deeply related to the way in which South Africa was incorporated into the global capitalist economy with the mining revolution in the late 19th century.
Over a hundred years of skewed development have left us with a hugely challenging and deeply embedded legacy. That is why for us as the SACP the NDR is not a stage in which capitalism has to be completed. The transition to capitalism long happened in our country, and therefore the NDR is a struggle to overcome deep-seated and persisting racialised inequality and poverty in our society.
Nevertheless these challenges must never make us lose sight of the advances we have made since our democratic breakthrough in 1994. A correct approach for revolutionaries is not to lament about these problems or use them in a populist fashion for short-term political gain or for cheap publicity. The challenge of true revolutionaries is to recognize advances we have made and seek to build on these in order to address existing challenges.
In particular, since the ANC Polokwane conference we have seen some important policy breakthroughs and other achievements that are critical platforms for further revolutionary advances.
Amongst these are the following:
- The development of an overarching industrial policy, within the context of proposals for a new growth path. This new policy emphasizes the need to beneficiate our mineral wealth as part of the industrialization of our economy and taking job creation to higher levels
- A clear move away from emphasis on privatization of the early 2000s to a commitment to a more active role by the state in economic development. It is for this reason that the SACP supports the move for an state-driven but working class led active industrial policy. We agree with NUMSA that it is from this standpoint that we must struggle for a macro-economic policy regime that supports an active industrial policy, also as a platform to strengthen and grow our manufacturing sector.
- A clear commitment by the ANC and government to move away from the ‘willing seller, willing buyer' model of land reform, to a more radical redistribution of land, including expropriation as provided for in our constitution. This has been a call by the SACP since we launched our land campaign some eight years ago. Let us use this campaign to mobilise the workers and the poor behind faster and more equitable land reform, as these shifts are as a direct result of our own struggles.
- The major state-led investment into infrastructure as announced by the President in the 2012 state of the nation address responds to a call that has long been made by the working class for more investment into infrastructure. The key task of the working class in this regard is to ensure that monies invested into infrastructure are not stolen by tenderpreneurs who want a quick buck out of shoddy work whether it is in housing or the building of bridges and other infrastructure. It is also important that we mobilise to ensure that we demand that all companies that win major infrastructure projects from government must not use labour brokers and must also be committed to the training and skilling of workers
- Since Polokwane, government is now embarking on a pilot for the implementation of the National Health Insurance (NHI) a long standing call by the SACP in particular when we launched our campaign on health for all around 2004-5. This is a very important victory of the working class, and the NUM must also make sure that the NHI pilots in the mining industry and communities do indeed become a success
- The ANC and our Alliance has now prioritized education as an apex priority of the five priorities. Government has already embarked on important measures to improve access to education for the poor. For instance now more than 60% of our schools are no-fee schools, and more than 8 millions students benefit from the school nutrition scheme. In addition FET college education has now become free for students who come from poor families if they are study occupation related programmes - a first in the history of our country!
- Government is already undertaking a review of BEE in order to ensure that it is aligned with our overall industrial and growth strategies and that it is indeed truly broadened to benefit the majority of our people.
In the run up to our own 13th Congress in July, the SACP is also calling for other interventions and measures in order to ensure that we deepen economic transformation. These include:
- Deepening and taking forward the struggle for the increasing socialization of the finance sector, through, amongst others, achieving a much greater developmental, working class biased, strategic control over key public and social financial institutions and funds. Efforts to transform the developmental finance institutions like the Land Bank, the Post Bank, the DBSA and the IDC must be supported and strengthened. We are also going to intensify the struggle for workers to make sure that they have an effective say over the investment of their pension and provident funds. For instance, given the trillions of rands of these funds, there is no reason why mineworkers cannot access affordable housing finance for decent housing. We call upon the NUM to support us in these struggles and also take a lead on this front
- The SACP is also calling for effective state support for the co-operative movement, including setting aside certain functions in the state (eg. school nutrition, cleaning services, etc) for cooperatives.
- The SACP is also calling for the strengthening of the key parts of the state to once more play an active productive role, for instance in rebuilding the capacity of the Department of Public Works and municipalities to construct housed and other social infrastructure and limit tenders in this regard
All the above are important policy breakthroughs and advances on which we must seek to build in order to deepen the national democratic revolution. The working class must take responsibility for building on these advances as part of taking responsibility for the national democratic revolution. Taking responsibility for the national democratic revolution means that we must take responsibility for the advances made as well as the challenges facing the revolution. We cannot pick and choose when to partake in the revolution and when not to when it suits us. After all we are not an opposition to our own movement and government, but an integral part of the revolutionary forces that must lead society.
What the President of the ANC is calling for, for workers to join the ANC and also accept leadership positions, is actually part of taking responsibility for our revolution, and is a call we fully support as the SACP. If workers and their leaders run away from leading in the ANC who else are we expecting to do this?
Taking responsibility for the revolution also means supporting the SACP's own Medium Term Vision which calls for building working class influence in all key sites of power, including in the state, the economy, the workplace, the community, ideologically and through international solidarity. This means that we must ensure working class organization in all these key sites of power. This must include organizing both inside and outside the state, so that we effectively use both state and mass power to advance the goals of our revolution. Working class struggle in the current phase of our revolution does not only belong outside the state, but it is also inside the state.
The Unity of the Revolutionary Forces and the Revolutionary Movement
We will not be able to achieve all the above and defend the gains of our revolution if we also do not pay particular attention to the unity of our organisations and the revolutionary movement as a whole. This requires a number of interventions of our part.
It means that we must fight against all foreign tendencies within our organisations. The first target must be what we have referred to as the ‘New Tendency' in our movement - an attempt to corruptly capture our organisations so that they are turned into instruments for self-enrichment or personal and private business opportunities for leaders or people in influential positions. Contrary to what our detractors say, this ‘New Tendency' is not only found in the ANC but across all our organisations. This tendency for instance attempted to derail the congress of the YCL in December 2010, using money and sheer thuggery to try and capture our youth formation.
We are seeing a similar phenomenon in the trade union movement, where tenderpreneurs and even employers are paying some individuals so that they can capture the trade union movement to blunt its militancy and as a platform for accumulation.. But this tendency in the trade union movement also aims to capture the millions of rands in some of the union's coffers as well as corruptly influencing the investment of union provident and pension funds for private accumulation purposes.
This is an example that it is wrong to think that the only place where leaders can be corrupted or co-opted is only in the ANC or government. This is a threat that faces leadership across the board in the trade unions as well as corruption in the private sector. That is why also we must fight against the phenomenon of business unionism where leadership positions in the union are used to access either union funds and business or to enter into business generally.
What the above means is that whilst we need to promote unity, there can be no unity between genuine revolutionaries and all these tendencies. These tendencies of corruption, self-enrichment, buying members and business unionism must be completely flushed out from inside our ranks!
We must always bear in mind that those who seek to buy members or personally benefit from the unions' resources, will tomorrow also sell our organisations and ultimately our country to the highest imperialist bidder. So they must be defeated as a precondition to building the unity of the revolutionary forces.
In building the unity of the revolutionary forces means building the unity of our Alliance. Building the unity of our alliance does not mean that each of the Alliance components must sacrifice its independence. There is no contradiction between independent formations and building an alliance. After all, it is only truly independent organizations that can enter into alliances.
That is why it is important for our working class formations, as independent formations, that they must maintain their independent structures and programmes. But in pursuing working class programmes we must at all times ensure that we do not compromise or damage the standing, image or integrity of the ANC and our government. Our campaigns must be different from those of the DA and other liberal forces, whose goal is not a principled struggle to improve the lives of our people, but is to try and discredit our movement and government. This is called taking responsibility for the revolution!
On the relationship between NUMSA and the SACP
The SACP deeply appreciates and remains deeply committed to the strengthening of the relationship between our two formations. It is a relationship built in blood and in fighting together in the trenches. However as highlighted above, the SACP and NUMSA are not identical organizations. That we have been in the trenches together (and must continue to do so) might have led into a misconception that the SACP and COSATU are the same. The SACP is a political party, not some Marxist-Leninist NGO. We are deeply interested in political power and party political influence in all key sites of power.
In order to strengthen our relationship we need to be frank about challenges and to address issues that might have caused some strains in our relationship. The birth of NUMSA and its relationship to our party was not just a walk in the park. Apart from having shared the trenches, the formation of NUMSA, and COSATU before that, marked an important ideological advance in the consolidation of the relationship between the trade unions, on the one hand, and the ANC and SACP on the other hand.
Towards the formation of both NUMSA and COSATU, there was a big ideological debate and even schisms within the progressive trade union movement itself. The fundamental issue was on the relationship between, on the one hand, the progressive trade union movement, and, on the other hand, the national liberation movement, especially the Congress movement. Related to this was the role of the trade union movement in the broader national liberation and movements.
There was a strong feeling within some of the unions that trade unions should not be part of the liberation movement or the broader community struggles against apartheid. I am also paying tribute to the 3 Sarmcol heroes here because they understood that for instance at the time the Sarmcol struggle in particular, and the metalworkers struggles in general, cannot be won, unless simultaneously waged with the struggle to defeat the counter-revolutionary violence of the apartheid regime and its proxies in the KwaZulu Bantustan.
I do not wish to revisit these debates here other than the fact that in some of the predecessor unions that ultimately formed part of NUMSA there was a strong anti-congress and anti-SACP sentiment. The formation of NUMSA, and COSATU prior to this, was not only an organizational victory in uniting and building a larger trade union movement, but also marked the consolidation of the Congress tradition within the progressive trade union movement.
It was in the crucible of these debates that Numsa was formed, thus taking the relationship between the SACP and metalworkers to higher levels, and overcoming the tensions between the SACP and some of the anti-Congress tendencies in NUMSA. We dare not revert back to these difficult days in our relationship, much as we should not avoid robust, but disciplined, debates amongst ourselves.
Another debate which, strictly speaking, is not a debate between NUMSA and the SACP, is that about the call made by some in the ANCYL for the nationalization of the mines. We stand by our observations that this was not a principled call informed by the vision of the Freedom Charter nor in the interests of the workers and the poor of our country but a call for the state to bail out a struggling BEE element.
That forces not remotely interested in the interests of the working class are using our own language must not confuse us for what we stand for. We asked, nationalization in whose class interests? We must at all times ask these questions as working class revolutionaries, as nationalization in itself is not an inherently progressive action. That is why the SACP believes in socialization, where the means of production are in the hands of the producers themselves. As the SACP we are willing to have an ongoing discussion and principled internal debate on these matters with NUMSA.
A matter that we need to address seriously together is that relating to protocols of interaction between our two formations. I need to make it clear Cdes that decisions of NUMSA are yours and they must be respected as such, whether the SACP likes them or not. If we have issues with your decisions we will at all times raise them internally with you and not through bourgeois media and in public platforms. As the SACP we cannot (and should not) behave as if we are custodians of NUMSA's internal organizational decisions as the SACP.
Similarly, SACP decisions must be respected as SACP decisions. If there are problems you have about our decisions, as an allied formation you have a right to raise these, but internally and not through bourgeois media and public platforms. The SACP has not taken kindly to NUMSA consistently questioning SACP decisions through the media. The question of deployment of SACP cadres is a matter for the SACP alone. If we do not respect these protocols, then we run the risk not only of damaging relations between our two formations, but we run the risk of causing discord within the working class as a whole. We hope this Congress will contribute towards correcting all this.
Over and above the issue of protocols, the most fundamental issue is the necessity of joint programmes with NUMSA, mass campaigns, policy discussions, and joint political schools. For instance the question of driving an industrial policy and rebuilding the manufacturing sector of our economy is one concrete area of co-operation between our two formations. In addition, we need to have joint policy forums on a range of matters relating to the transformation of our economy, including the important area of skills development. These can also form a very solid basis for our joint political schools. It is within this context that we must intensify our struggles for a living and decent social wage, against casualisation and labour brokers.
Taking responsibility for our revolution means disciplined mass and workers' struggles, building a strong alliance and use of state power to drive transformation. In the SACP you have a principled ally and vanguard in this regard.
For the working class, let us escalate our struggles for the radical transformation of South African society, for the wealth of our country to be shared amongst all the people, for our labour to be adequately compensated and for an end to all forms of discrimination in the workplace and in broader society. These are some of the most important struggles we must intensify in order to consolidate and deepen the national democratic revolution as our most direct route to socialism. Let NUMSA take direct responsibility, together with our ANC-led Alliance, for all aspects of the NDR.
Let us deepen our ideological offensive against the anti-majoritarian liberal offensive as an agenda of the elites (often racialised and backed by the media monopolies) to try and discredit our movement. This offensive has also become a refuge for all sorts of racists and their lackeys whose mission is to discredit majority rule.
Listen to what this offensive says. They say we are intimidating the media if we mobilize our people against the violation of our human dignity. They say mass mobilisation is an old 20th century tactic. Yet the same liberals and their media cheer their patrons, the DA, when it undertakes a provocative march against COSATU. When our people are protesting against government these liberals cheer on in glee, yet if we take a decision about what offends us, they say it is intimidation.
You can see that what they mean; it is that any mass mobilisation in support of transformation is illegitimate, yet protests against government are good! They are afraid of people's power precisely because they know that nothing will stop people's power to drive transformation. Yes, the main lessons of the past few weeks are simple, we cannot win on the table what we have not won on the ground and we must therefore intensify mobilisation to defend our gains, our dignity and to consolidate our democracy. The working class must lead in this regard, and that is taking responsibility for our revolution!
To see what kind of hypocrites these liberals are, they are silent when DA corruption is exposed, yet they claim to be fighting against corruption! Let us expose this agenda for what it is.
Next month the SACP will be holding its 13th Congress at the University of Zululand. We invite you to engage with our Draft Programme "The South African Road to Socialism".
We wish you a successful Congress! Thank you!
Issued by the SACP, June 4 2012
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