ADDRESS BY THE GENERAL SECRETARY OF NUMSA, COMRADE IRVIN JIM NUMSA TO THE KZN REGIONAL CONGRESS, 26 - 28 November 2010, ETHEKWINI, November 27 2010

Introduction

The leadership of Numsa in the region,
Leaders of the Alliance formations present,
Government and business leaders and officials present,
Numsa delegates to this Congress,
Invited guest and the media,

I bring you warm revolutionary greetings from national office bearers of NUMSA and from all the nine NUMSA regions in the country.

Your congress takes place against a backdrop of critical moments and serious challenges that still confront our National Democratic Revolution (NDR) led by the Liberation Alliance.

This congress takes place on the year our giant federation - COSATU - is celebrating its 25 years of unbroken struggle, since it was launched in 1985.

Politically, organizationally, economically and culturally, and in a revolutionary context, just like every strike is a political strike, this conference must be a platform to renew and revive our revolutionary credentials.

This must be a platform to rededicate every NUMSA Shopsteward, activist of the union and our officials at all levels of the organization to serve workers.

We must commit to struggle and to pursue the working class struggle as shopstewards, and worker leaders in the interest of our members and the broader society at all levels of our organization in the region.

One is tempted to remind all of us about our place and role as, comrades, the history of all existing societies is a history of class struggle and that the working class is the only class capable of carrying the revolution to its logical conclusion for the following simple reasons:

1. That the working class is the most exploited class because it is robbed its labour surplus value and that the struggle we are pursuing is about ownership and control of the social surplus that the working class produces.

2. Armed with its intellectual weapon in Marxism Leninism the working class becomes the immediate material carrier of the best traditions, acts of valour and heroisms' in the store house of mankind's history.

3. Hence it's conscious, resolute and uncompromising steadfastness in the struggle for the outlawing of the exploitative and inhuman capitalist society.

4. Its exploitation makes it the most militant and consistent fighter under the direct and immediate leadership of the van guard party as its political insurance; constantly raising its political, ideological and organizational combativeness in the conditions of not its own choosing.

5. Without the party being organically linked with both organized and unorganized working class we are running a risk of reducing the working class into a paper tiger in its rightful struggle against the system of capitalism.

6. Political and ideological working class clarity makes it to start to realize that wages are not the solution as a worker is not paid in order to be free but to reproduce himself as a wage slave for the continued maximisation of surplus value beyond his retirement age, the commodity labour power is the only commodity that capital is interested in because it can reproduce and multiply itself (family reproduction).

7. Once the advanced detachment of the working class succeeds to mobilise and raise the levels of working class consciousness among the various destitute sections of the working people both in the urban and in the country side it then thus begins to act as the locomotive of history by taking the destiny of mankind into its own hands.

8. It starts to act as a class in itself and as a class for itself thus creating the fundamental objective conditions for the weathering away of classes and ultimately its own domination.

9. This momentous period calls upon all of us to assess and evaluate our accumulated strength: how do we make use of it in order to position the working class into the commanding heights of our transition phase (NDR)towards socialism as well as what still need to be done in eliminating political, ideological and organizational weaknesses.

All of us must acknowledge that we leaving in serious challenging times within the liberation alliance, despite the advances we made in the pre and post Polokwane periods.

The current tensions in the alliance come as a result of class contestation where the ruling class as a class is contesting for power and hegemony within the African National Congress and in the State. As we all know the ANC is a multi-class formation where the ideas, interest and ideological direction of the ANC are constantly contested.

As we look back at Polokwane we must keep uppermost in our minds the following;

The working class in Polokwane defeated the neo liberal and ideological agenda which sought to become embedded in our revolution. What the working class might not have appreciated is the backwardness of the agenda they defeated given its Africanist, Chauvinistic, Neo-Nationalist and imperialistic character. Its main mission was to turn the ANC into political axis of the ruling class

 The ruling class through the New Tendency, as the frontline of this offensive against a radical and socialist oriented NDR, continues its contest for the heart and soul of the ANC while the alliance is simply about furthering the old aims of 1910, the ANC's stated mission of 1912 and against what the ANC resolved at Morogoro in 1969.

 The ruling class is fighting everyday to ensure that our people continue to be deprived of their due in the country's wealth. They are operating on the basis that the skills of the working class and workers in particular remain suppressed.

 They have no shame that their accumulation strategy reproduces poverty and starvation which continues to be the life experience of the poor every minute of the day.

 The New Tendency in their pursuit for personal wealth does everything in their power to postpone the resolution of centuries of old economic injustices in our country brought about by slavery, colonialism, apartheid and capitalism. This is what is at the core of the realignment of forces championed by individuals that causes instability in the movement that is stubbornly anti Sacp and anti Cosatu posture driven by the profit motive and greed.

Since Polokwane, instead of dealing with urgency the huge backlogs from our past, we have seen stagnation in the economic front which has been about to hold back the wheels of history, by the forces of inertia who are still directly pursuing their agenda within the movement and the state. They have done this in the past to work in their different capacities making sure that there is no change as demanded by the key constituency of the African National Congress: the working class.

They consciously and ruthlessly imposed on us their class political and economic framework in the form of GEAR with all its miseries:

Unemployment, poverty, retrenchments, massive casulization, privatisation, and the collapse of Washington consensus as a result of the global crisis of capitalism where we lost more than 1, 1 million jobs.

Despite Polokwane resolute stance to shift the country from the current right wing macro -economic policy, that include fiscal and monetary policy as a consensus in the alliance with one single view of putting our country on a completely new trajectory in the form of a new job led growth path, the right wing in both government and the alliance are blocking this.

The very same centres of power within the state failed to take decisive measures as demanded by Polokwane instead of acting on such an urgent mandate from our people we witnesses realignment of reactionary forces who have taken a very conservative stance of scaring away any manifestation of the revolutionary initiative by seeking to redefine our historical alliance not as a leaving and continually growing organism but as static and immutable conjectural creature.

The rampant propagation of the politics of rooi gevaar characteristic of the old communist jargon that Cosatu and the SACP are posturing as opposition to the ideals of the National Democratic Revolution as though these are the antithesis of the goals of socialism.

There is a new deliberate agenda to project Cosatu and its leadership as the new threat to our revolution.

The paranoid use of the civil society forum as being about regime change was a well calculated move to isolate the federation from key constituencies of the alliance.

The recent attempt to abuse the interpretation of Rule 25 of the ANC Constitution in order to subdue the independent role of each component of the alliance in order to silence the constructive criticism of any deviation from fundamental positions of the alliance is consistent with the recent new definition of the alliance as not a strategic canter of power.

Conversely this is an attempt to project the ANC as the solely political centre of the current status quo as opposed to revolutionary traditions of seeking to oust the corrupt capitalist mode of production, thus reducing it into a centre of material accumulation by an emerging aggressive, intolerant African aspirant comprador and elitist petty bourgeoisie element.

Both Sactu and Cosatu's 25 years of unbroken struggle openly speak against the negative suggestion made by our African National Congress that it can be plotting a regime change.

Our own history is the direct opposite of this conspiracy theory by our own African National Congress:

1. We went to exile with the African National Congress.

2. We went to Robin Island with the African National Congress.

3. We championed the defiance campaign through consumer and bus boycotts with the ANC.

4. It is the working class of this country that championed the four pillars of our struggle

5. We led the mass mobilization and isolation of South Africa by the outside world.

6. We were the foot soldiers of Umkhonto Wesizwe.

7. It is the working class of South African that together with the African national congress defeated both Bantu education and Verwoerd divide and rule of the apartheid regime.

8. This working class under the banner of the green and gold flag suffered plant closures, mass dismissals, and political ruling class corporate decisions in alliance with the apartheid regime of plant closures to deal with the political uprising of the working class in our country.

What must be done about this tendency?

a) The only solution is that the working class must swell the ranks of all key strategic sites of power, consciously mobilizes our people on an ongoing basis; educate the working class and masses of our people to intensely struggle for their own economic emancipation.

b) What must be categorical in this arduous fight against this notorious group, also called the New Tendency, if we want to defeat their agenda is when those we believe that are revolutionary within the ANC leadership are consciously driving and pushing a coordinated revolutionary agenda within the movement.

c) If we are to defeat these criminals who are about rampant corruption, crass materialism, nepotism and patronage then Numsa shopstewards, Numsa officials and Numsa members must consciously form part of ANC branches, street and area committees, SACP branches and serve in all organs of people's power and formations in civil society.

d) We must provide leadership to the rest of Cosatu affiliates so that they must do the same.

e) Numsa within COSATU must call for the reconstitution of tender boards by government at all levels so that there is much more transparency and oversight of public monies.

f) We must make a call for the review of the PMFA and its impact in killing the capacity of the state and the mainstreaming of consultants to replace the capacity of the state.

g) We must call for state self procurement and state direct delivery of infrastructure, goods and services and once more attract best skills in the state. That's the only way to realize a developmental state and making the state to create employment and become the best employer of choices.

What are working class demands that both Numsa and Cosatu will continue to demand:

1. Cosatu and Numsa firmly believe that through their suggested growth path which is in line with Polokwane resolutions and ANC NGC resolutions the ANC together with the alliance must take decisive measures to deal with overconcentration of wealth that is in the hands of tiny minority.

2. It must ensure that the new growth path address economic distribution.

We must return to the Freedom Charter and ensure that:

3. Let us return to the Freedom Charter:

"The People Shall Share in the Country's Wealth!" This we demand, NOW!

The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people;

The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole;

All other industry and trade shall be controlled and discipline to assist the well being of the people;

All people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions

4. We demand that our government must transform the mineral energy complex and make sure that we diversify and beneficiate our minerals.

5. It must make sure that the structure of the south African economy, its accumulation, its ownership and control return back to the people as a whole as the only way to change power relations in society.

6. We demand that our government must deal with the overvalued currency by simply reversing the relaxation of exchange controls, cut interest rate deeper, and bring back exchange controls.

7. The global crisis of capitalism and the current economic recession in our country constitute solid bases as reasons why our government must increase tariffs to protect our vulnerable sectors and industries.

8. We are calling on government to regulate and introduce standards on products that are destroying our domestic market and that include uniform implementation of homologation at all entry points in our country.

9. Numsa's view is that in a country with no comprehensive social security we will find it difficult to endorse the social accord where there will be wage moderation that will promote class harmony in a class divided society.

10. We demand a ban of labour brokers as demanded democratically by the overwhelming majority of South Africa.

11. Shift the country from the current macro -economic policy which is gear.

12. Shift fundamental from the current fiscal and monetary including dropping inflation targeting.

13. Bring back capital controls, cut interest rate in line with the rest of the world as measures to address our overvalued currency as the current hot pursuit of buying dollars to weaken the currency has a potential to compromised our public spending in the face of high levels of inequalities.

14. Cosatu publicly announced new growth path to deal with relevant key priority sectors that can create quality jobs that should pay a living wage. We demand the implementation of the Cosatu Growth Path!

15. Numsa remains very firm that our government must just ban labour brokers and stop the dodgy call of wage subside.

Building strong organization in the shopfloor:

Numsa shall be remembered in 2010 for having undertaken hard work and greater performance by Numsa members, shopstewards, office bearers and staff who continue to be the bedrock of the organization and indeed a critical layer within our organization.

Since our strategic planning at the end of 2009, Numsa started 2010 with a huge workload and has consistently executed programmes which include;

• The restructuring of our head office both at the level of departments and filling vacant posts,
• Ensuring that departments under the direction of the Numsa NEC hit the ground running in order to implement their programme of action as decided by the November 2009 Numsa strategic planning session
• Numsa's preparation for the 2010 National Bargaining Conference which involved collecting demands from our Numsa organised workplaces up to when we convened the NBC in March 2010
•  Numsa NOB engagement with the Sacp leadership to craft a common program of action for working class power
• Numsa national media strategy to raise the profile of Numsa
• Numsa Health & Safety Campaign
• Numsa preparation for the ANC NGC premised on an assessment of the Polokwane resolutions and the ANC manifesto

Our organisational work comes on the back of the following back to back tasks that we have undertaken in 2009;

• Convening the Numsa National Job Security Conference in March 2009
• Numsa against the South African Reserve Bank
• Numsa's active participation in support of the ANC in the April 2009 elections
• Numsa national conference on the retirement of the transformation of the retirement industry
• Numsa Mini National Congress in May 2009 to finalise the October 2008 8^th National Congress resolutions
• Numsa's national membership cleaning up program
• Establishment of the Numsa Youth Desk at local, regional and national level as directed by the Numsa National Congress
• Numsa retooling workshop for all organisers to fight retrenchments
• Numsa leadership training for office bearers to better manage the union
• Numsa Recruitment campaign
• Numsa preparation for the Cosatu and Sacp Congresses
• Celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution

In Numsa, 2011 will be no different to 2009 and 2010 in terms of Numsa, Cosatu, ANC and SACP working programmes. The following key programmes which are non-negotiable, amongst other things, are things that we would have to execute come 2011;

• Mobilizing for an ANC victory in the 2011 local government elections
• Engineering wage negotiations
• Cosatu Central Committee
• Numsa recruitment campaign
• Completing the cleaning up of Numsa's membership fees and finalising the upgrading of the Numsa electronic membership system
• Numsa shopsteward elections
• Sacp's annual Red October Campaign
• Draft discussion papers and reports for the Numsa 9^th National Congress in 2012.

Numsa's Strategic Plans for 2011 up to 2012:

The 2010 Numsa Strategic planning resolved that we should craft our plans such that we have an 18 month working programme that will take us to the Numsa 9^th National Congress in June 2012.

The Regional Secretary during the course of the this congress will probably present the details of the 2011 - 2012 strategic plans as presented by the DGS on the last day of the Numsa Strategic Planning held on 18 - 20 November 2010.

 My intention here is to give this Congress a brief outline of the ten (10) strategic objectives for 2011 - 2012;

1. We must once more as organizers and shopstewards do everything in our power to improve service to members.

2. Numsa once more must take up the campaign to build a united workforce in the plant behind shopsteward committee, shopsteward committee behind the organizer and an organizer at the rear of regional leadership.

3. We must build a strong shopfloor organization in the shopfloor with capacity to deal with reorganization, challenge lean production process which is about competitiveness.

4. We must be able to ask a very straightforward question is competitiveness for what and for whom?

5. Numsa must be able to negotiate reorganization knowing full well that continues improvement is about taking time out of labour and labour out of time.

6. The direct result are such that if employers get their way they reduce the workforce on continues bases using technology to put out of place workers instead of using technology to make the jobs of workers effortless and generate employment.

7. The most important challenge in the shopfloor if the employer agenda wins the day without being contested workers loses their jobs but production volume continues to double and employers maximise profits without equity.

8. Numsa might have to work very closely with Numsa Investment Corporation to ensure that we have an unambiguous agenda targeting enterprise development which must be about transforming the workplace, ensure equity and continue to win value for workers over and above their wages that should include isops in the form of cooperative.

9. A numsa organizer and shopsteward committee in a plant at the beginning of every year must convene a general meeting to receive all pertinent problems and frustrations of workers in the shopfloor strategies, prioritise how such problems is to be resolved using organizational power.

Comrade this union must build a solid organization in the factory floor and deepen unity and leave no room divisive individuals who stage-manage members and grounds divisions for their selfish individual interest as such act are direct opposite to Numsa Constitution.

We must build an organization with members and shopstewards with high levels of organizational and political consciousness who must be able to sincerely evaluate independently every state of affairs and they must be able to criticise leadership with the sole purpose of building and strengthen the metal workers union both as a shield and a spear in the hands of workers.

This calls for building the revolutionary culture of reading, knowing that workers are our own libraries, we must teach them, they must also teach us back, we must read so that our leadership must always contribute value to the organization and accept that to lead is not a right but a privilege and all of us we are here to serve.

Comrades we must do everything in our power and in our time to improve the political education for our members. There is no substitute to a well organised revolutionary political school, run continuously, to educate ourselves.

Political work required to make local government work for the working class and the poor

Comrades, we as Numsa are determined not to hand over local government to any right wing reactionary forces in our country. Thus we will do everything possible to make sure that not only does the ANC win the majority of local government councils, but that we continue to roll back the power of the racist right wing, especially in the Western Cape.

As an organisation, following our Resolution in the last Numsa National Congress, we will campaign for the victory of the ANC in the forth coming 2011 Local Government Elections.

However, as Numsa we are of the firm view that the following must form the pillars for the minimum demands that COSATU must place before the Alliance for the 2011 elections:

1. In the next term of local government, the Alliance must revisit the Constitution and local government legislation with a view to firming up popular democratic control of budgets and social and economic development planning.

2. The privatisation of local government is unconstitutional as it negates the constitutional provision for a developmental local government. This must stop.

3. Labour broking, outsource of developmental functions of local government must come to an end.

4. The procurement processes must be in line with the strategic objectives of the Polokwane Resolutions: to grow decent jobs.

5. Primitive accumulation at the local level of the state is not a moral issue; it is a class and economic issue. As long as the local state remains the most lucrative and accessible site for primitive accumulation in the absence of a radical developmental programme for the working class and the poor, we will never root out corruption and primitive accumulation at local government level. Thus the Manifesto for the 2011 local government elections must clearly spell out what our new social and economic development goals for the next five years will be.

6. The local state must promote local content in all manufacturing processes within their municipalities.

7. A radical public transport development programme must be part of our developmental goals for the next term of office of councils. Such a programme must aim to modernise public transport for the poor and the working class, be related to creating decent and sustainable integrated human settlements close to economic activities.

8. Massive investments in housing, road, and school and health infrastructure must underpin our struggle to undo the gross inequalities in the racial, gender and class distribution and access to these infrastructures.

9. It is unacceptable that 16 years after 1994, there is no perceptible, visible movement towards real racial, gender, age and class integration of our communities. African women, African youth and African disabled people continue to be confined to the rural hinterlands, margins of our cities and in shacks, and bear the brunt of expensive distances to economic and social opportunities. The ANC Local Government Manifesto must clearly spell out how in the next term of our councils we will deal with this situation.

10. A special infrastructure fund to be established to deal with social and economic infrastructure backlogs in rural municipalities and poor urban municipalities.

11. An urgent need exists to arrest the mushrooming of illegal gated "local governments" for the rich. This amounts to Apartheid by other means, even if sprinklings of black people live in these places. Land use planning processes at the municipality level, provincial and national, must prohibit the growth of gated communities.

12. The insulation of the rich from the mass poverty they have created must be abolished. Municipalities, through their social and economic planning processes must promote racial, gender and class integration.

13. Municipalities through the use of rates and other taxes, must influence rentals to enable the working class to live close to their work places.

14. Within the Alliance, the deployment processes must take full account of the class, gender, age and capacity to perform, in the cadres we choose as councillors.

15. No New Growth Path will be complete without embedding roads, transport, housing, health, cultural and other working class and poor people's infrastructures at the municipal levels.

16. Special measures must be announced in the Manifesto on the development and support of rural enterprises.

17. The rural populations must find clear expression to their development needs in the Local Government Manifesto, and programmes after the elections. The tendency has been to underplay rural municipalities development needs.

18. Relationship between the World Cup and cash-flow problems in municipalities must be addressed.

19. There is need to explore the possibilities between giving more power to the ward committees if we are to improve democratic participation and control of budgets and socio-economic development planning.

20. We need to promote decentralized, participatory democratic planning.

21. Resourcing of municipalities need to be related to their development needs?

The ANC Local Government Manifesto for the 2011 Local Government Elections must pronounce on all these matters.

Conclusion:

We wish your Congress well in your deliberations. Your task is to ensure that we work hand in hand and at the same pace to achieve all our strategic plans. Collective work is better than no effort at all.

During the coming festive season avoid drinking and driving, do not engage in unsafe sex, take care of all women, children, the physically challenged and old people.

Do not overspend your hard earned income on alcohol and other rubbish the capitalist system throws at the working class during this season: think about saving money for the education of your children.

We trust and hope that all of you comrades will enjoy a well deserved holiday and a merry Christmas.

Amandla!

Irvin Jim

General Secretary

Numsa

Issued by NUMSA, November 27 2010

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