THE ENEMY IS IN THE OPEN - OCCUPY THE STREETS - DEFEND COSATU - EXPOSE DA AS THE REAL MOUTHPIECE OF AGENT PROVACATEURS!
14 May 2012
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU), Communication Workers Union (CWU) members joined by the members of the Progressive Youth Alliance (PYA), namely African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), Young Communist League (YCL) and South African Students' Congress (SASCO) will occupy or swamp the streets outside COSATU House, 110 Jorrisson (Cnr Simmonds Streets), Braamfontein, Johannesburg, tomorrow Tuesday 15 May 2012, starting at 10h00am.
The gathering of these formations drawn from the ranks of the National Liberation Movement (NLM), as led by the African National Congress (ANC), the vanguard party of the working class, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the shield and spear of workers, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) will be unprecedented in the history of our country since the 1994 democratic breakthrough.
This mass gathering is informed by the provocative, deceitful and cheap political blackmail from the chief representatives of white monopoly capital and apartheid apologists the Democratic Alliance (DA) who are marching to COSATU House to hand-over a Memorandum of Demands meant to coerce the ANC-led government, particularly COSATU, to agree to the neoliberal proposal of a Youth Wage Subsidy as part of resolving what we have characterized a ticking time bomb - the crisis of youth unemployment engulfing the urban and rural youth of our country.
The Youth Wage Subsidy was firstly mooted by the 1996 class project that was at the helm of our movement and the state, and it was rejected during the watershed 2005 National Policy Conference of the ANC by overwhelming majority of the delegates. The rejection of the Youth Wage Subsidy was informed by the following three realities; the Youth Wage Subsidy will create a two-tier labour system, flood of retrenchments will ensue in major factories in favour Youth Wage Subsidy new workforce entrants and our taxes should not be used to bribe white monopoly capital to exploit young and desperate young job-seekers.
The DA has assumed an opportunistic posture of being the voice of the unemployed youth of our country for electioneering purposes and also try to isolate the ANC-led Alliance from its core constituency base, the working class and the poor of our country. if truth be told, the DA is fighting for a subsidy for the Capitalist Bosses through the Youth Wage Subsidy. It is not interested in ending youth unemployment.
We fully know that the DA represents the opposite of what the ANC-led Alliance stands in relation to the plight of the poor and the working class. The Youth Wage Subsidy is not the fundamental solution to the triple crisis of unemployment, poverty and deepening inequalities. What we need as a country is a break from the current neoliberal economic trajectory and financial speculation measures as pursued by the National Treasury.
The political leaders of the NUMSA, SACCAWU, CWU and the Progressive Youth Alliance (ANCYL, SASCO and YCL) will address the workers and the youth that will be gathering outside COSATU House. The political leadership will address at 11h00am. The revolutionary and class conscious artists from popular Umzini Wezinsizwa, namely CHAWE,MOFOKENG and CHIRWARI will render a mock play on Labour Brokers and E-tolling.
Members of the media are hereby invited to attend and report.
Statement issued by Castro Ngobese, NUMSA National Spokesperson and Magdalene Moonsamy, ANCYL National Spokesperson, May 14 2012
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