Your vote counts!
COSATU's final local government election appeal
Tomorrow, Wednesday 18th May, you, the voters of South Africa, will have the chance to influence the way our country and in particular your local community is run over the next five years.
Whatever you do, don't miss this chance to use your democratic and constitutional right to participate in charting our country's future.
Never forget that many of our comrades suffered prison, exile, torture and even death in the struggle to win the right of all South Africans to vote. Not to vote is a betrayal of those revolutionary heroes and heroines.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions demands that every worker must be allowed to vote, but has heard that some retail companies are planning to force the workers to come to work on Wednesday.
All employers - particularly of the most vulnerable workers, like domestic workers and those employed in farms, shops and hotels - must make sure that no-one is denied their constitutional right to vote.
To prevent workers from voting is a criminal offence!
We urge the IEC to set up a toll-free number for people to phone if they are being prevented from voting by their employer. Officials of COSATU and its affiliates will be monitoring the situation to follow up on any such cases. Even workers who volunteer to work still have the same right to be given time to vote before reporting for work.
We repeat our call for voting days to be declared non-trading public holidays, so that only genuinely essential service workers, including those running the elections, be obliged to work, and that they too must get either special votes or enough time off to reach their polling stations, before rather than after work.
COSATU makes a final appeal to all its members and all South Africans to put their cross next to the name of the African National Congress candidates. Under ANC governments - national, provincial and local - the lives of thousands of South Africans have been improved. We have every reason to celebrate what we have achieved, and to acknowledge that by voting for the party which has delivered those improvements. No other party in these elections deserves your support.
People are of course angry at corruption, waste and the slow delivery of services which are still big problems in many communities, but boycotting elections or worse still voting for pro-business and anti-worker opposition parties will be a huge blunder. It would open a space for the DA, the only serious opponent of the ANC, to implement its pro-rich and anti-poor policies!
The struggle to build a new and better South Africa cannot be won by DA leaders who benefitted from the unequal and unjust apartheid dictatorship, which is responsible for the high levels of unemployment, poverty, inequality and lack of service delivery which still affect our communities today. If the DA make any gains tomorrow they will make these problems even worse in those communities where they win seats.
Yes, the ANC has its problems, but unlike other parties it is open and honest about them. We must not abandon the movement which led our liberation struggle but swell its ranks and campaign to keep it in line with its traditions of service to the people and the transformation of the lives of all South Africans, with a bias to the working class and the poor.
We further call on workers to be active in our communities and get involved in local government not just on election days but every day. Let us swell the ranks of school governing bodies, community policing forums, ward committees and hospital boards. We must be more in touch on matters that directly affect the working class.
Victory to the ANC on 18 May!
Statement issued by Patrick Craven, COSATU national spokesperson, May 16 2011
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