COSATU Message of Support to the ANC 2016 Local Government Election Manifesto rally, 16 April 2016, delivered by COSATU President Sidumo Dlamini

18 April 2016

The President of the ANC, comrade Jacob Zuma,

The entire leadership of the ANC present from all levels

The entire leadership of the Alliance present here today

Our people who have come from across the length and breadth of our country.

As COSATU, we have come to instruct the ANC leadership to unite the ANC!

Workers said we must tell you that, as a leadership collective you must remain united and that you must work to unite the ANC!

As COSATU, we have come to communicate a message that as the Alliance we must be more united today than we were at any other time in the history of our struggle.

The enemy wants to remove the ANC government from power. 

What the enemy is doing here in South Africa, it is also doing in Brazil and Venezuela and in all other BRICS countries. 

The fact of the matter is that BRICS countries have broken the coherent international chain of USA led imperialism.

The current political challenges in our movement can only be confronted through conscious action and decisive action against our real and common enemy; monopoly capital

Our real enemy owns wealth and is not prepared to have it shared amongst the people.

Our enemy benefited from colonial and apartheid order and is prepared to protect the ill begotten benefits and privileges.

Our enemy has power and influence and control over the media and is using the same media as an instrument to deepen the crisis in our ranks. 

We must all develop the capacity to focus our energies more on fighting monopoly capital and the parasitic bourgeoisie, who seek to steal our movement away from being at the service of the people, to being at the service of capital.

We must develop capacity to identify our enemies even if they hide underneath our own colours, our slogans and even if they come carrying bags of money to blind us of their real agenda which is to steal and reverse our revolutionary gains.

We must be clear that at the centre of our challenges is the institutionalization of the culture of accumulation by all means and at all cost by many in our ranks, and this has opened us up to abuse by capital as seen in the new tendency to display opulence in the pool of poverty in our country.

All this gives evidence to the hegemony of capital in our structures and in influencing the content and direction of our revolution.

This must never be allowed to happen if the ANC is to remain a disciplined force of the left that is biased to the working class.

Many of our comrades have gotten use to disrespecting our people and our communities in the name of our movement and our government.

This has opened us up to attacks by the opposition and all sorts of political demagogues and economic opportunists.

We must reclaim our revolutionary morality, not just in words but through our actions!

Whatever our differences, whatever the challenges but we must never allow the enemy to use our challenges to reverse our revolutionary gains.

Our enemies are celebrating when we go out to the media and play out our differences.

Let us resolve our differences inside the organisation and not in the streets and in the media.

When we are divided and when we speak and act as individuals and not as a united force, the enemy will elevate some amongst us as heroes when in reality they are deepening divisions in our ranks.

It is only when the ANC and the Alliance are united that the enemy can be dislodged.

And enemy knows this un-disputed truth!

As COSATU, we talk from experience and as workers; we know the value of Unity!

The enemy is desperately looking for anything which can take the glory away from the ANC-led liberation movement. 

They exploit our mistakes; they confuse our people with half truths, including using lies. 

Our task is to go to the masses and humble ourselves, including accepting to make corrections where we have committed mistakes.

Let us repeat that our people want to see all of us united and they continue to believe in the strength of the Alliance. Our people know that the Alliance is their liberator.

We must take forward the Mangaung commitments that the state should increase its own capacity to deliver on its core obligations, including the provision of social infrastructure, where appropriate.

This will require eliminating an over-reliance on tenders. In this context, outsourcing must come to a stop and all workers employed in municipalities must be employed on a permanent basis.

We must make sure that effective labour relations mechanism are put in place in municipalities to ensure that all labour disputes are addressed timeously and resolved amicably in order to avoid prolonged strike action caused by intransigent management as we have recently seen in the five-month long #Pikitup labour protest action.

Workers, mainly from the most vulnerable sectors such as domestic workers, farm workers, continues to be denied their constitutional right to vote during election times.

COSATU demands that August 3 must be declared a non-trading, public holiday to afforded all workers and their families to exercise their right to choose their public representatives from the political parties of their choice.

COSATU demands that all municipalities must make a commitment to create decent jobs.

Comrades after this Manifesto launch, we will be going to our May Day celebrations on May 1 and we call on the ANC to mobilize all its Branches to participate in all May Day rallies.

The presence of the alliance and the movement as a whole must be felt in every space around the country.

Without the unity of the Alliance and the presence of our organisations on the ground, the enemy will grow in confidence.

Without our ability to transfer wealth and ownership of the economy back in the hands of the majority of our people, the enemy will be emboldened.

As COSATU, we will be mobilising for the victory of the ANC and we have every reason to do so.

We have seen our families getting free RDP houses. We have seen more tap water connections in our houses; we have seen even more electricity connection in our houses.

We have seen the building of road infrastructure; we have seen the construction of dams; we have seen new schools being built.

We have seen free nutrition programmes in schools; we have seen no-fee schools. We have seen free school transport for our children in rural areas.

We know that we have the potential to do more as a movement.

All we need are committed Cadres!

COSATU knows that as a movement, we have the capacity to deepen our fight heighten our fight against crime and corruption.

The most effective deterrent to crime and corruption is consistent and decisive action. 

Where we must arrest, let’s do so! 

Where we must dismiss, let’s do so decisively!

There is a direct relation between poverty and wages. 

And our local government must ensure that poverty eradication programmes are linked to a living wage.

In this regard, we are pleased that the government has responded to our demand for a comprehensive social security discussion paper and recently the matter is on the agenda at NEDLAC. And we look forward to engage.

Local economies cannot develop without infrastructural investment aimed at responding directly to the need for an affordable, reliable, efficient, safe, accessible and an integrated public transport. 

We know that the ANC government listens and we therefore know that ultimately E -tolls will be scrapped.

As workers, we know that the ANC can listen because when we said no the Taxation Laws Amendment Act, the ANC government listened and postponed its implementation.

We are now working towards addressing all the issues which led us to demand the total scrapping of the law. 

As workers, we know that for many years we have been on the streets demanding the National Minimum Wage, today the discussion is no longer about whether it will be implemented but how it should be realised.

We want to warn business not to stand on our way towards this dream of the Freedom Charter, to realise the legislated National minimum Wage.

For many years we have demanded the National Health Insurance [NHI] and today there are processes in place towards its implementation and it has been piloted in some provinces.

We want to warn that those who must make it to the list must be those who have been democratically elected by their own communities. Those who must be mayors and councillors must be the most trusted by their communities.

We are going out of this rally to talk to our communities and humble ourselves before them.

We will win these local government elections but it will require that we all work harder and we should do so as a united force!

Amandla!

Issued by COSATU, 18 April 2016