NUMSA General Secretary Irvin Jim's Speaking Notes at the NUMSA 25th Anniversary Celebrations, KZN, June 3 2012
"The realisation of the basic guidelines set out in the Freedom Charter and their ongoing consolidation after the seizure of power, will be determined by a number of factors. Among the major ones are: the correlation of class forces within the liberation alliance, the strength of this alliance relative to the overthrown classes, and the international balance of forces. In the final analysis, this depends on the extent to which the working class, the landless rural masses and progressive sections of the middle strata assume decisive positions within the democratic alliance. Among these forces - which are objectively interested in thorough-going revolutionary transformation - the working class is the leading force."
(The Path to Power, SACP, 1989)
National Office Bearers of Numsa
All Numsa Leaders present
Leaders of the ANC LED Alliance Present
Members of Numsa
Invited Guests
Media
1. The Numsa Congress coincided with the 25 years of both our existence and the ANC 100 year's celebrations.
2. Numsa a union that was born in the mist of the brutality of the apartheid regime in 1987 a system of racist capitalism is today celebrating 25 years of its own existence.
3. A system that was declared by the whole world as a crime against humanity, is celebrating 25 years of is own existence but consciously even with all our dissatisfaction and complaints in many fronts of the lives of black and Africans labour in particular we remain convinced that it's important to continue to celebrate the ANC centenary especially it's 1994 political break-through where for the first time in the history of more than 350' years colonization black people Africans in particular secured both the right to vote and political power .
4. We are celebrating because our revolution went through various epochs that were extremely painful: in 1910 the union between English and Afrikaner capital was formed in our country which was really about to loot blacks and Africans ownership and control of the economy, but such was made more real and brutal by the land Act of 1913 which forcefully took away our land through a barrel of a gun.
5. These two Acts became solid bases that ensured that South African capitalism was based out of exploitation of black and African labour that is why the African National Congress was formed in 1912. This was a movement that was formed to transfer power from minority to majority'.
6. The origins of our country's colonization and exploitation of black and African labour can further be traced from the arrival on our shores of the Duct East India Company.
7. All of this gave birth to colonial capitalism, monopoly capitalism, the use of apartheid system as an accumulation strategy to further loot black and African labour such was exacerbated by the coming into power of the Nationalist Party in 1948 a real political axis whose mission was to further use race as an accumulation strategy what South African communist party called colonization of a special type.
8. Land dispossession, the discovery of gold and diamonds, the importation of capital goods and finance, the colonial exploitation of African and Black labour all became the basis upon which white South Africa was built.
9. All the battles that our liberation alliance had to fight were about to undo this colonization of a special type, and this became popularly known as the national democratic revolution. Central to it was to address the national question and champion the struggle to build a non racial, non sexist, democratic South Africa, but in order to address all these objectives, it was fundamental to address the class question.
10. That is why for our revolution implementation of Morogoro Conference resolution of 1969 which became the bases for strategy and tactics of the ANC and implementation of all the clauses of the Freedom Charter remain very crucial if we are to succeed to change the structure of South African economy in the interest of the majority who are black and African and for the future of all south Africans black and white.
11. The past 18 years despite our characterization of 1994 as a political democratic break through which we must continue to celebrate, today it has become very clear to everybody that political power without economic power is an empty shell.
12. The ruling class, the property owning class, the exploiters of black and African labour through super exploitation which is made up in our country by a white complex constituted by 12 % of the population understood something very well at Codesa negotiations that race can no longer be use as bases to loot black and African labour and the only best way was to further their racist aims was to entrench in the constitution the property clause section 25 which basically maintain their status ownership and control of South African economy.
13. 87% of our land, mineral wealth, banks and monopoly industries are still owned and control by the white complex, further, our minerals and all key strategic sectors of the economy are foreign owned and controlled.
14. The Mineral/Energy/Finance Complex in our country, dominated by finances capital,remain untransformed. In fact in our country finance capital is privileged more than industrial capital.
15. In the past 18 years in our country we have witnessed the dictatorship of white monopoly capital in our country led by finance capital in particular by the minerals energy oligarchy, and we have witness global arrogance of imperialism through globalization presented as a panacea that cannot be engaged the results
16. Adoption of the a macro -economic framework called gear championed by national Treasury in the interest of finance capital, supported by right -wing ideological priest located within our own movement supported by capitalist orthodox.
17. Champion the agenda of Bretton Woods's institutions the IMF And World Bank that government doesn't not have business in business, they champion a minimalist state, whilst confirming the market that is why all key strategic sectors and strategic companies in our country are in private hands.
18. Gear has failed to meet all its targets.
19. Gear didn't care about building South Africa's domestic economy. It pined it's illusions and what could be defined as a mirage on attracting foreign direct investment instead of foreign direct investments to come, South African companies left the country to list in the London Stock Exchange and in Melbourne using capital flights to maximize profits destroying jobs in South Africa ,those who came take over South African companies through mergers and acquisitions .
20. Gear has championed a toxic combination:
a. Inflation targeting.
b. High interest rate.
c. Liberalized trade.
d. Remove capital controls allowing money to leave the country into casino economy of financial speculation.
21. Such a policy stance maintain by national Treasury through the reserve bank that is privately owned and controlled in the interest of monetary capital is directly responsible for capital flights about 20% of our GDP leave the country leave the country.
22. We are the only country that exports scrap metal.
23. We are the only country that extracts minerals without beneficiation and diversification for both upstream and downs stream industries.
24. ArcelorMittal, Sasol, all strategic minerals are in the hands of Mine bosses and they are all foreign owned, we are just custodians of mineral rights we celebrate allocation of those mineral rights.
25. In the point of production companies in the past 18 years have consistently launched an attack to the working class under these conditions.
26. They champion new management techniques of lean competitive production through restructuring.
27. They have been upfront that theirs is not to focus on what they call non-core production but core production.
28. As a result all critical jobs have been outsourced under the slogan of competitiveness;this meant that all workers' gains, benefits and conditions some won during the dark days of apartheid have been under severer attack.
29. They imposed all forms of precarious work such as labour brokers, temporary work,casualisation, contract work; they used technology to displace workers instead of bringing technology to make the jobs of workers easy.
30. The overall strategy is to continuously reduce the cost of production and labour is seen as a cost to be reduced. The fundamental question is if all these companies embarked on such a strategy that increase volumes of production but at the same timehaemorrhage or destroy jobs meaning ,destroy buying power, who is to buy the very same production that they produced?
31. All of this destroy jobs, and all the gains of the working class and this basically in South Africa we have remain with super exploitation of Black and African labour as if this was not enough DA the political Axis of the exploiting class is delivering the youth sons and daughters of the working class for exploitation supported by Our own ANC minster Pravin Gordon.
32. He is very busy instead of taking ownership of Mass poverty, mass unemployment,the fact that South Africa has become number one in terms of inequalities in the world today as a result of right wing policies that have been championed and are directly responsible for this national crisis no our Minister has no time to ask that's despite the Anc having sad at Polokwane all macro -economic policy must be revisited to create decent jobs instead of doing that he is busy working very hard to privatize roads ,and the cabinet instead of creating decent jobs by banning labour brokers they remain ambivalent defending exploitation .
33. Numsa in this Congress will be calling on the alliance to review South Africa's constitution in particular the property clause. It must be dumped so that we can take back the land and key strategic sectors of the economy without compensation and in our view it's time for thorough going national democratic revolution that takes theclass alliance led by the ANC back to its true revolutionary character.
34. Numsa in this Congress will be demanding from our movement and the liberation alliance
a. A new macro -economic framework.
b. A new redistributive industrial strategy.
c. Numsa will be demanding implementation of the freedom charter.
d. Numsa will be seeking to make things very clear that the freedom charter can only be implemented through nationalization of mines, and all key strategic and commanding heights of the economy that include the Reserve bank, Sasol, Arcellor-Mittal.
35. Numsa will basically be calling for ownership and control of strategic sectors of the economy by the state so that the state must meaningfully champion manufacturing and industrialization of South Africa but also change ownership patterns as the only mechanism to deal with power relations in society.
36. Numsa, comrades is very clear that implementation of the Freedom Charter is not Socialism but a solid reasonable step to equalize access to the economy as the only guarantee for peace, stability and security of both black and white people in our country as the Freedom Charter says that transference of South Africa's wealth must be done in the interests of the people as a whole and not for manipulation by individuals be they white or black.
37. Yes Numsa's vision is to end exploitation, we firmly believe we can champion a society free of greed and exploitation and, because it is our belief that the fundamental contradiction in society is about who owns and controls social surplus that is a direct product of sweat and toil of the working class.
38. We are clear that for that struggle the working class must organize itself as a class for itself, it must see itself as a conquering force and we know that the Sacp our van guard will work with us to realize an NDR which will be the most direct route to a Socialist South Africa.
39. This in our view calls for principled revolutionary unity of our class alliance, this calls for sacrosanct unity of metalworkers, sacrosanct unity of the alliance, sacrosanct unity between the working class and the youth of our country found in the ANCYL, YCL,and Sasco, and all revolutionary formations of the mass democratic movement around a revolutionary agenda that can only be led by the working class and not theleadership of finance capital and the bosses.
Amanda!
Issued by NUMSA, June 3 2012
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