COSATU May Day 2012 Statement
Today on the first day of May we join workers all over the world who are coming together in their millions to celebrate the special day in the year when we demonstrate our solidarity as workers, commemorate our victories, honour our fallen heroes and rededicate ourselves to the struggle for a new socialist world order.
May Day is recognized in every country except, ironically, the United States and Canada, the countries where it all started - in the fight for an eight-hour working day in the 1880s and in memory of the Haymarket martyrs - workers' leaders from Chicago who were framed and executed for allegedly throwing a bomb which killed police officers, during one of the mass demonstrations.
In South Africa workers fought for decades for May Day to be recognised. In 1986 the five-month-old Congress of South African trade Unions staged one of the biggest-ever stayaways to demand that May Day be declared as an official paid public holiday.
P.W. Botha responded to the massive expression of workers' militancy by declaring the first Friday in May as a paid public day. COSATU announced that it would stop work on both the first Friday and the first day of the month, the real May Day. The apartheid regime backed down and in 1987 recognised 1st May as a public holiday. It is one of the 12 public holidays, which we celebrate in a thriving democracy.
For decades before COSATU and SACTU upheld the traditions which were manifested in that huge 1986 rally. COSATU has always been a militant and fighting trade union federation and a force for national liberation and socialism.
In 2012 and forever our political posture must continue to reflect our political mandate and organisational traditions. We must steadfastly advance a progressive agenda, together with, and in support of, our Alliance partners, through engagement with government, and other sites of power, be outspoken and firm on issues of principle, but flexible in using a range of instruments and approaches to advance workers interests, including through social dialogue, building social coalitions, engaging in court battles, etc., militantly mobilising our members to defend their interests, being constructive, yet critical and independent; accountable to our membership.
COSATU's approach of mobilisation and engagement has clearly had an impact on certain issues. It has played a key role in helping to break the political paralysis, both on policy questions, including economic policy, NHI etc, and combating corrupt elements and tenderpreneurs in the movement and the state.
This, the 122th May Day celebration coincides with another historic event - the 100th anniversary of our trusted and reliable ally, the African National Congress which was born on the 12 January 2012. We are celebrating a torchbearer of the African liberation struggles a movement that inspired not only Africans but all those who hated oppression and colonialism. We are saluting a fountain of hope to millions of the oppressed and exploited masses of our people, a colossal giant with an unparalleled track record in the struggle against apartheid and colonialism.
As we wish the ANC another century of existence, we are at the same time remembering our own contributions to the struggle for liberation under our 2012 May Day theme - "Celebrating workers' contribution to the liberation struggle".
The history of the struggle of the working class is at the heart of the history of the ANC. Similarly, the history of workers' struggles in South Africa would be extremely incomplete without the leadership role of the ANC.
COSATU pays tribute to all who have made our alliance what it is today. We have shared victories and setbacks. We have shared heroes and martyrs. We were in unison with ANC and SACP when we forged the masses of our people - workers, peasants, revolutionaries, youth and intelligentsia - into an organised force, the political army of our revolution without whom victory was impossible.
Throughout the month of May - the workers' month - we shall celebrate our joint and collective triumph against oppression, enforced segregation, forced removals, police brutality and killings, countless massacres spreading over many decades.
We shall recall countless tricks to force us off our land to go and work in the mines and farms. We remember the hut tax, the dog tax, and also the filthy flee-ridden single-sex hostels and the active promotion of divisions by the employers who collaborated with the minority regime. We recall the humiliating queues of older and younger men standing absolutely naked for inspection by a white madam using a pen to inspect our private parts in the mines.
It is important to underline the fact that as the working class grew from strength to strength, so did the ANC. Indeed, as the ANC grew from strength to strength, organisationally and ideologically, the working class got increasingly fortified in its struggles.
In addition, we should note that the history of this great movement would be extremely incomplete, without the gallant role that was played by the South African Communist Party, which fashioned us with the tools of analysis and provided the much needed light when days were extremely dark.
We are celebrating the fact that the ANC is one of the liberation movements that came to understand that our revolution must defeat three interrelated and antagonistic contradictions - of national oppression, class exploitation and gender oppression. The ANC is one of very few liberation movements that understands that black people's oppression was not only based on their colour, but was equally a function of the inherent exploitative nature of the colonial capitalist system. The ANC understood that African women faced triple oppression in their homes, in society and in the workplace. The National Democratic Revolution therefore seeks to resolve the three inter-related contradictions.
The rich texture in the balance of class, national and gender perspectives is the rock and cornerstone on which the Alliance rests. The Tripartite Alliance of ANC, SACP and COSATU, with historic relationships with SANCO, do not exist anywhere else in the world. It is unique only to the conditions of the South African revolution.
This May as part of celebrating the centenary of the ANC we are also celebrating and remembering the heroes and heroines of the working class who made immeasurable contributions in our liberation movement. We remember Elijah Barayi, John Gomomo, Chris Dlamini, JB Marks, Moses Kotane, Moses Mabhida, Thozamile Gqwetha, John Gaetsiwe, Gert Sibande, Lilian Ngoyi, Elizabeth Mofokeng, Wilton Mkwayi, Harry Gwala, Raymond Mhlaba, Ray Alexander Simons, Lizzy Abrahams, Billy Nair and countless more.
We recognise the major advances our country has registered under the ANC government. It destroyed the apartheid dictatorship, enabled the oppressed masses to live under the protection of the democratic constitution and enacted numerous laws, which have given South Africans basic human rights to freedom, dignity and equality.
The ANC has raised the number of households with access to piped water to 89%, electricity and lighting to 80% as well as sanitation to 68%. The people's movement has provided 1.6 million subsidised houses. It had meant millions more having access to housing, water, electricity, education and healthcare.
Long Live ANC - the ANC Lives - the ANC Leads!!
This year we celebrate May Day in the in the midst of some gigantic battles, particularly against labour brokers, labour law amendments which would cripple trade union rights and the e-tolling of Gauteng highways.
No-one who was there on 7th March on the streets of more than 30 towns and cities could doubt the strength of feeling against labour broking - this modern-day slavery and e-tolling.
We are encouraged however by the prompt response from our allies in the ANC who met us in a bilateral and agreed to set up two task teams to look into these serious issues, and, as we shall see, they have already yielded some positive results.
COSATU demands that labour brokers must be completely banned! They are nothing more than human traffickers, making huge profits by hiring out workers to their client companies as if we are no more than commodities like office furniture or stationery.
Atypical forms of employment have increased tremendously with over 30% of the work force being casualised. As a result the rate of exploitation is increasing as business is raking even more profits than ever. Government and the ANC still insist that there should be a role for the labour brokers for the six months of employment but for us this is six months too long.
We have however made some gains in the talks with the ANC. These include:
- Equal pay for work of equal value
- Workers will now be made permanent after six months which will eliminate the syndrome where workers were made permanent temps for years
- The ANC leadership has agreed that government's amendments now before parliament that threaten the right to strike should be withdrawn.
- The draft Bill forcing us back to the apartheid days where we were forced to hold a compulsory ballot before a strike can commence has been withdrawn.
- The proposal that pickets must be limited to workers on strike only and that all others should not join the picket line has also been withdrawn.
- The outrageous proposal that "all workers exercising authority in the name of the state" which could include all teachers, health workers, customs officials and other state employees should be called ‘essential service workers' and therefore banned from striking has also been withdrawn even though we still have to finalise this area in further discussions.
The other big issue on 7 March was the e-tolling of Gauteng highways, which was scheduled to come into force yesterday, 24 hours before May Day.
Tolling forces drivers to pay huge amounts of extra money just to travel on the province's previously free highways. Workers face having to pay out hundreds of extra rands every month just to travel to and from work, not from choice but because in the absence of reliable public transport, their car is their only way to get to work.
Consumers face massive price increases as a result of the extra cost of transporting goods to the shops being passed on to the shoppers - quite possibly adding on a little more. These increases which were to be come on top of those already imposed this month in the form of higher electricity tariffs and petrol prices.
We are happy to announce that in our discussions with the ANC we agreed that we must postpone the implementation of the e-tolls in Gauteng for a month whilst we work on alternative funding methods.
This is a direct product of the workers power and sacrifices. We thank the millions who stayed away on the 7 March and the hundreds of thousands who joined the marches to demand a total banning and total scrapping of e-toll gats in Gauteng.
We call upon government rather to prioritise the roll-out of efficient, reliable, affordable and safe public transport for all the people of South Africa. Our campaign goes on until these tolls have been finally scrapped. Secondly we will take up issues about the existing toll gates whose prices are forever on the rise. Already people around Zeerust pay R71 for driving through the Swartruggens toll gate and R40 paid for only travelling 80km in the Middleburg area.
What has made workers so angry about labour brokering and road tolling, is that they are symptomatic of the desperate crisis facing workers and the poor.
Most of the gains workers made in the past 18 years of democracy have been undermined by the slow pace of transformation in the economy and the rampant commodification of essential public services through privatisation and other neoliberal programmes based on the ‘user-pay' principle.
Today, South Africa is the most unequal society in the world. The richest 10% of the population share earnings of R381 billion, about 94 times more than the poorest 10% of the population who share R1, 1 billion.
And the inequalities are still racialised. Africans, who constitute 79, 4% of the population, account for 41, 2% of the household income from work and social grants, whereas whites, who account only for 9, 2% of the population, receive 45, 3% of income.
One of the foremost indicators of the inequality characterising or society is unemployment, which discriminates according to race, gender and geographical location. Unemployment, in terms of the expanded definition, is currently at 35.4%.
A 2002 study found that being African reduces the odds of being employed by 90%, in comparison to being white. The data used in the study also shows that despite similar qualifications, whites are on average 30% more likely to be employed than Africans. Being female reduces the chances of being employed by 60% compared to being male; 68% of the increase in unemployment among Africans between 1995 and 2003 could be explained purely by race.
Income inequality in South Africa is the highest in the world and half of our population survives on 8% of national income while the other half enjoys 92%.
In 2007 approximately 71% of African female-headed households earned less than R800 a month and 59% of these in fact had no income, while 58% of African male-headed households earned less than R800 with 48% with no income.
Almost 25% of South African household experience hunger on a daily basis. An average member of a working class household lives on R18 a day, but many actually live on less. 44% of workers - 6 million workers - live on less than R10 a day.
The educational profile of the unemployed reflects that over 60% of the unemployed have not completed matric level education.
The federation has launched several important campaigns, under the umbrella of an overarching campaign for a new economic growth path to roll back neoliberal economic policies, and intensify the fight against the triple crisis of unemployment, poverty, and inequality.
COSATU's Growth Path for Full Employment document advocates an alternative development policy that seeks a way out of the colonial economy which we inherited, based on the export of our raw materials towards a modern, manufacturing-based economy.
The Living Wage Campaign demands the cutting of executive pay to close the wage gap, legislated minimum wages across the board, decent employment and affordable basic services.
We continue to demand quality health care and support the launch of National Health Insurance. We are calling for speeding up the building of new houses, transforming education, and repealing the Constitution's property clause to speed up land reform
A creation of green jobs and the eradication of Acid Mine Drainage for a healthy and a sustainable environment is a must to society of the world and South Africa. Climate Change campaign did not end in Durban in COP 17.
Another crucial campaign is to combat the scourge of corruption. The widespread looting of public resources by a minority of people in both the public and private sectors is undermining the foundations of our constitutional democracy.
We welcome the excellent work being done by government departments, the Special Investigation Unit, the Public Protector, the Auditor-General and of course our own creation, Corruption Watch.
It is a campaign in which trade union members have already played a major role as whistle-blowers, and all other members of the public need to be encouraged to follow suit.
One of our concerns about the Protection of State Information Bill is that whistle-blowers could be silenced by finding that the evidence of corruption they have uncovered has been classified as ‘secret' and they, not the corrupt offenders, land in court with the threat of prison for revealing secret information.
That is why the Bill must be amended so that exposing information about corruption, crime, misuse of public money or incompetence, in the public interest, can never be a criminal offence.
COSATU will consistently, as determined through its structural resolutions, strengthen its solidarity support to the oppressed peoples of the world, including the brave people of Palestine. We support the campaign, led by the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions for the following:
- An end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
- The immediate dismantling of the Apartheid Wall
- The right of return of the Palestinian people
- A boycott of Israeli goods and its total isolation
COSATU will also continue our solidarity effort to support the campaign of the people of Swaziland for human rights and multi party democracy. Through the Swaziland Democracy Campaign and the newly launched trade union federation TUCOSWA, we undertake to expose and isolate the Swaziland regime for the brutal dictatorship it is.
We salute workers of Cuba and support their call for the end to the illegal blockade by the USA government and the release of the Cuban five heroes who are languishing in the American prisons for defending their countries sovereignty and hard won freedoms. We salute workers of Western Sahara under the leadership of UGTSARIO.
We salute all workers all over the world battling against austerity measures including in the heart of capitalism in the USA. We pledge solidarity with these masses of workers in Spain, Greece, Britain and elsewhere defending their living standards and hard won gains. We reject that workers must be made to pay for a capitalist crisis and its greed.
Trade unions are under constant attack by employers' organisations and right-wing opposition parties. They will always hate and fear forces, which threaten their wealth, power and privileges. But workers always understand that attacks on the unions are attacks on themselves and will never be intimidated into abandoning their only protection against even more brutal exploitation
Viva COSATU, ANC, SACP!
Long Live international worker solidarity
Phambili ngo mbimbi!
Amandla!
Solidarity forever!
Workers of the world unite!
The workers united will never be defeated!
Down with capitalist barbarism and forward to a socialist future!
Statement issued by Patrick Craven, COSATU national spokesperson, April 30 2012
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