Cde Karl Cloete, Numsa Deputy General Secretary’s talk on the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Charter
10 November 2015
When the late Harry Gwala responded to Joe Slovo’s “what room for compromise” document, he made to two critical important points in his reply;
1. “We are living at a time far different from the 40's and 50's. We are dealing with very articulate masses today, who are enriched by their own experiences in the struggle and guided by the experiences of other struggling masses throughout the world. As early as the 50's our people were talking about freedom in our lifetime and had slogans reflecting this freedom. The very Freedom Charter is a reflection of what the people understood by freedom.”
2. “Comrade Slovo talks of pre-empting the objectives of the counter-revolution and reducing its base. When Allende in Chile won his popular democracy he advanced the same reasoning but it was that right wing with the aid of big capital which kicked his government out of power. In Portugal, while the people won a political vote, power remained in the hands of big capital and the army. The people were faced with the situation where they had constitutional power, while the actual economic and military power remained in the hands of the ruling class. Hence an empty democracy”
In answer to the request for Numsa to talk to the significance of the 60th Anniversary of the Freedom Charter, we wish to make the following key points;
(a) Trade union debates since the formation of Cosatu
(b) The deviation from the Freedom Charter by the 1994 and subsequent ANC Administrations
(c) Relevance of the Freedom Charter today and the struggle for a Socialist South Africa
Limited time available in this discussion, may only allow for limited reflections to answer the complex question related to significance of the 60th Anniversary of the Freedom Charter.
(a) Trade union debates since the formation of Cosatu
- NUM’s and Cosatu’s adoption of the Freedom Charter
- Sactwu’s call for a Workers Charter
- Numsa’s argument for the development of a Working Class Program which would lay the basis for a struggle against Capitalism and advancing/transitioning to a Socialist South Africa
- Numsa’s call for a Reconstruction Accord by which the new democratic government would deal with radical redistribution of the land, taking ownership and control of the commanding heights of the economy, etc.
- The ANC-led Alliance lack of appetite to confront the logic of Capital as espoused by the Numsa Reconstruction Accord proposal AND THUS the watered down Reconstruction and Development Accord (which got dumped under the Mbeki Regime and replaced with neo-Liberal GEAR macro-economic and finally with the twin sister of GEAR called the National Development Plan.
(b) The deviation from the Freedom Charter by the 1994 and subsequent ANC Administrations
- Abandoning of the Freedom Charter in real terms would have occurred during the secret talks of senior ANC leaders and the National Party facilitated by Anglo American in the late 80’s – resulting in one person one vote every 5 years but with economic power and control of the land, mines and banks residing in the hands of white monopoly capital and trans national corporations
- Quoting the Freedom Charter, Sloganeering about the Freedom Charter and celebrating 60 years of the Freedom Charter by the African National Congress has not just become hollow BUT has exposed the ANC for its failure to radically implement the Freedom Charter as can be seen by;
- Daily service delivery protests by the working class and rural poor demanding decent housing, safe drinking water, decent sanitation, access to affordable public transport, free education, etc. as opposed to police brutalizing and jailing students and workers who are demanding free education and insourcing of work at institutions of higher learning
- Workers who are fighting for a living wage, banning of labour brokers, paid maternity leave – as opposed to workers being massacred in Marikana by the repressive arms of the state
- Communities demanding safety and security and not the brutality of the army and police
These are all the things promised in the Freedom Charter and yet, despite many changes to the lives of our people since 1994, the Freedom Charter objectives evades and escapes political and economic emancipation of the working class and rural poor.
(c) Relevance of the Freedom Charter today and the struggle for a Socialist South Africa
- For Numsa the Freedom Charter remains a transitionary program which could lay the basis to develop and advance a working class program towards a Socialist South Africa
- In this regard, Numsa has put forward a Socialist Manifesto as but one contribution to a working class program that must open up the space and forward march to a Socialist South Africa with the working class at the head of this revolutionary path/journey
- The instruments to achieve this, in Numsa’s view lay in the following alternative working class formations;
1. Building of a new independent, militant, democratic, worker controlled, anti-imperialist and socialist oriented labour federation
2. Building a United Front combining worker and community struggles against neo-liberal policy and demanding the most radical and resolute implementation of the Freedom Charter
3. Building a South African Revolutionary Working Class Party (whatever name it eventually assumes) with the objective of building a Socialist Republic of South Africa
In conclusion:
1. The extreme left argument which suggest that the Freedom Charter does not form the basis for fundamental transformation of the country’s social relations, or that the Freedom Charter is not “socialist enough”, is a false view, it is incorrect.
2. The Freedom Charter calls for profound changes in both relations of production in the narrow sense and social relations more broadly. In a revolution led by the working class, the Freedom Charter is a transitional programme that, upon seizure of power by a working class led political party, will necessitate deeper inroads into capitalist property relations. Anyone who does not see this forgets the basics of Marxism and Leninism.
Is the Freedom Charter inadequate?
3. “Of course”, Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto says, in the beginning the proletariat will wrest by decree, all capital from the bourgeoisie “by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production”.
4. As such, we harbor no illusions about the status of the Freedom Charter in our conceptualization of the concrete path towards socialism, from the current colonialism. We know the Charter is insufficient, it may be untenable to socialist puritans, Marx and Engels already told us this. But we are clear that this is a transitional programme led by the working class.
5. In relation to gender issues, the Freedom Charter is also not silent. In fact it says: “Every man and woman shall have the right to vote for and to stand as a candidate for all bodies which make laws…The rights of the people shall be the same, regardless of race, colour or sex…Men and women of all races shall receive equal pay for equal work…There shall be a forty-hour working week, a national minimum wage, paid annual leave, and sick leave for all workers, and maternity leave on full pay for all working mothers”.
6. To say the “Communist Manifesto” and the “Freedom Charter” are outdated because they do not respond to a crisis that is caused by the bourgeois relations, is to do exactly what Marxism-Leninism warns us against: to pull back the working class into endless debates that were settled centuries ago, to divert working class energies away from implementing the basic transitional programme to socialism, and entrap the working class into narrow sectarian and sectoral struggles.
7. In Numsa, we see clearly, the link between the Freedom Charter, Colonialism, Imperialism and the struggle for a Socialist South Africa.
Amandla!
Issued by NUMSA Deputy General Secretary Karl Cloete, 11 November 2015
