Address of COSATU General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, to the SACBC Justice and Peace AGM held on 26 February 2011
Is there any hope at all for the poor?
Thank you very much for your kind invitation to address this important meeting. COSATU and the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference are life time allies. We were side-by-side and shoulder-to-shoulder in the trenches in the fight against apartheid and for justice. We have remained close to the SACBC for the past 17 years most recently at the very representative Civil Society Conference last October and I am sure that we shall work together even more closely in the future.
We are naturally allies not only because the faith-based organisations and the trade union movement are the biggest civil society formations but because we naturally share the same constituency of the poor and marginalised communities. Our concerns are the same and our demands about what needs to be done are the same.
My coming to address this august AGM seeks to cement that privileged and historic relationship between COSATU and the SACBC. Believe me we need each other more than any time in the past today.
Some might argue that the struggle for Justice and Peace in South Africa was won in 1994. That was of course an historic breakthrough. It saw the end of a racist and grotesquely unjust system which denied the big majority of our people any of the basic human rights which must underpin justice and peace.
We are your natural allies because unlike others if things go wrong in our country we will suffer the most. The rich can purchase first-class air tickets and go to stay in their holiday resorts in France and elsewhere; we will be trapped here. This is the reason why we will always be the first to ring the alarm bells when there is an abuse of power. That is why we hate corruption, nepotism and inefficiency. We will always support good governance and total commitment to the goals of equity and fairness.
We will always stand together against moral degeneration and demand that people return to ubuntu.
It is for this reason all dictators target unions and the church when they unleash repression of their people. And when we get targeted by them we never go underground for we know the hazard of speaking truth to power.
Returning to the topic you asked me to speak to I want to recall first the tremendous progress we have registered.
Over the past 17 years we have registered an impressive record on all the areas led by the government, which underpin the important role of the state and the need for a developmental state. We are proud that 1600 clinics have been built and 400 hospitals refurbished. We are pleased that this government is now treating 1.2 million South African living with HIV/AIDS and is aiming to treat 15 million by June next year. An impressive 74% of South African households live in brick structures, flats and townhouses though there are still a staggering 1.875 million households still living in shacks.
Access to water has improved from just 66% in 1994 to 96% in 2009. Sanitation also improved from 50% to 77% and today 73% of our people have electricity, up from 51% in 1994. Nearly 15 million or a quarter of South Africans depends on grants provided by the government.
We live in a democracy with institutions that are entrenched in the constitution. These institutions play a critical role in protecting the rights of the citizens.
This is the progress we must celebrate every day lest we take that for granted
In the intervening 17 years we have lived under the protection of a democratic constitution and many laws which entrench our human rights and provide the foundations for a society in which citizens live in peace and justice.
Yet almost every week we read reports of violent community protests over service delivery. Workers are very often forced to take to the streets and go on strike to win a modest wage increase. Clearly we still do not live in a society where everyone is happily living in peace. And the underlying reason is the continuation of poverty and inequality, which brings me to my topic tonight - the poor.
That Civil Society Conference summed up the problem very well and it is worth quoting a section of its final declaration:
"South African citizens have a constitution and laws which give better guarantees of social justice, human rights and equality than almost anywhere else in the world. Yet in practice millions are denied these rights, especially socio-economic rights, in what has become the most unequal nation in the world.
"The rich elite earn millions by exploiting the labour of the working class. A minority, including some of our own former comrades in public office, make their millions by corruptly manipulating opportunities to win tenders, bribing officials or using political connections
"Meanwhile the mainly black poor majority suffer from deep and widespread poverty, huge levels of unemployment, pathetic levels of service delivery in healthcare and education, housing and transport, and little hope of escaping from a life of struggling to survive from day to day. We are one of the most unequal countries in the world, and unless we mobilise for change, the levels of inequality will become entrenched."
There is no official poverty line for South Africa, yet even the Minister of Finance has acknowledged that 50% of the population lives on 8% of national income in South Africa.
In 1995, the Gini coefficient, which measures inequality, stood at 0.64 but it increased to 0.68 in 2008. The workers' share of national income was 56% in 1995 but by 2009 it had declined to 51%.
On the other hand the number of South African billionaires nearly doubled, from 16 in 2009 to 31 in 2010 and the country's 20 richest men enjoyed a 45% increase in wealth.
Pine Pienaar, CEO of Mvelaphanda Resources, made R63 million in 2009, which means he earns 1875 times as much as the average worker, and 1278 times the wages of the lowest paid worker at one of his own companies, Bauba Platinum.
On average the poorest 10% of earners get R1275 a month, which is 0.57% of total earnings, while the top 10% get R111 733, which is 49.2% of the total! South African remains the most unequal society in the world.
Again the Civil Society Conference summed it up well:
"The apartheid fault lines remain in place in employment, healthcare, education, housing, transport, and across the spectrum. A rich, mainly white, minority gets the lion's share of wealth and economic power, access to world class services in the private sector and a lifestyle amongst the most luxurious in the world."
Just a few days ago the COSATU Central Executive Committee was addressed by two Cabinet ministers, who illustrated this problem of the knock-on effects of poverty and inequality very graphically.
Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande, quoted a 2007 survey that showed that a staggering 2 812 471 out of 6.7 million young people between 18 and 24 were neither employed nor receiving any form of education.
12-year olds in South Africa perform three times less than 11-year olds in Russia in reading and 16-year olds in South Africa perform three times less than 14-year olds in Cyprus in mathematics. Nevertheless, white learners perform in line with the international average in both science and mathematics, which is twice the score of African learners.
Only 3% of the children who enter the schooling system eventually complete with higher grade mathematics, 15% of grade 3 learners pass both numeracy and literacy. 70% of our schools do not have libraries and 60% do not have laboratories, 60% of children are pushed out of the schooling system before they reach grade 12.
Minister of Health, Comrade Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, reported the horrific facts that South Africa has less than 1% of the world's population, but 17% of people living with HIV/Aids, the highest incidence in the world. In one year four French mothers infected their babies with HIV; in the same period 70 000 South African mothers infected their babies with HIV!
South Africa has the highest levels of foetal alcohol syndrome in the world, with 104 babies out of 1000 affected in the town of De Aar alone! We are one of only 12 countries in the world where the level of child mortality is rising. Life expectancy rates are falling and now stand at 56 for women and 51 for men. The death rate has doubled in nine years!
Yet spending on health care in South Africa is higher than in many countries which have far better records of health care provision.
I could have quoted many more examples to show what unequal society we are. And inequality makes poverty feel even worse. Many African countries have worse levels of poverty, but none have poverty in such close proximity to such ostentatious wealth. Families living in shacks in Diepsloot with no running water or electricity, no jobs, pathetic or non-existent service delivery, live just a few kilometres from families in Sandton in mansions with big gardens and swimming pools, with well-funded private schools for their children and world-class healthcare in private hospitals.
But I certainly do not agree that there is no hope for the poor. On the contrary there is no way that such an unequal society can survive indefinitely. We have seen recently how the people in Tunisia and Egypt have risen up to fight for democracy and human rights. And they have won!
If people's power can bring down a dictator like Mubarak, how much more should we, living in a democracy, be able to transform the lives of the poor of South Africa. But that begs the obvious question - why have we not already solved these problems, or at least taken major steps on the road to a solution?
There is no simple answer, but the key to a solution must be job creation. By far the biggest reason for the extent of poverty is the level of unemployment.
Unemployment among Africans was estimated to be 38% in 1995 and it was up to 45% in 2005. Overall, the unemployment rate in the South African economy was 31% in 1995 and is today 36%, by the more realistic statistic which includes people who have given up looking for work.
The creation of decent jobs must be central to any strategy to get rid of poverty. To the individual employment not only brings an income but self-respect, self-confidence and personal dignity. To society lower unemployment brings more people into the market economy as they spend their wages on goods and services, which in turn creates more new jobs to meet the growing demand.
The main reason why we have failed to create such jobs, and on the contrary have been losing jobs, is that that we have remained trapped in an economic structure which we inherited from the days of colonialism and apartheid. Like so many other former colonies it was over-dependent on the export of raw materials, in South Africa's case its gold, platinum, coal and diamonds.
What we needed in 1994 was a rapid move on to a new growth path towards an economy based primarily on manufacturing industry, which is the only basis for a modern, developed economy which can create jobs at the rate we need to achieve the government's bold target of five million new jobs by 2020 and start to bring down our levels of poverty and give the poor some hope.
Some government ministers have announced programmes to set this in motion, notably in the Industrial Policy Action Plan 2 and also in parts of the New Growth Path. The problem is that other ministers, notably Finance, are simultaneously pursuing the very same failed, conservative monetary policies which have landed us in the economic and social crisis we see today and both policy approaches contradicting each other in the NGP document.
Yes there is hope for the poor but they will not be handed wealth on a silver platter. No real, lasting improvements in the lives of the poor will be won without a struggle. We had to fight for our political emancipation in 1994. 17 years later we must revive those same traditions of selfless struggle to in our economic emancipation, justice and peace.
On behalf of all our now over 2 million members we wish you the best of luck in this AGM as you endeavour to find a voice for the church.
Issued by COSATU, February 27 2011
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