Address by SACP General Secretary Cde Blade Nzimande to the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) Special National Congress, Boksburg, Gauteng Province, Friday, June 6 2014
National Office Bearers of Nehawu;
Leaders of Nehawu from all levels, and delegates of this important Nehawu Special National Congress from across the country;
Cosatu President Cde Sdumo Dlamini and leaders from Cosatu affiliates present
Distinguished guests present;
Dear comrades,
The SACP held its first Central Committee Plenary Session over the past weekend, form 30 May to 1 June following the fifth democratic general election held on 7 May. This congress is an important opportunity for us to share our perspectives arising out of the Central Committee on recent and unfolding developments, as well as on the tasks that lie ahead in our national democratic revolution and the struggle for socialism.
Being the first Plenary Session following the general election, the Central Committee assessed the election campaign and outcomes, and discussed the key strategic priorities facing the national democratic revolution and the struggle for socialism both in the unfolding historical period and in the next five years of the fifth ANC-led democratic administration. This, the Special National Congress of your union, Nehawu presents an opportunity both as an alliance and public platform for us as the SACP to share our perspectives. In particular, this congress is in many ways one of the direct outcomes of the Fifth democratic general election and the disciplined implementation by your union, of Cosatu's strategies in relation to our alliance, the national democratic revolution and the struggle for socialism.
The SACP would like to congratulate you for your achievements in swelling the ranks and developing working class leadership for the SACP, ANC and for our people as a whole. This is reflected in the presence of leaders from your union in our Central Committee and lower executive and working committees of the Party, the National Executive Committee and lower executive committees of the ANC, and, following the Fifth democratic general election, also in Parliament and provincial legislatures. This is not a loss; it is rather a vote of confidence in you! It is a contribution of leadership in and to our broader political struggle in line with the strategy, nature and character of our alliance.
As the revered leader of the ANC and our former General Secretary and National Chairperson who simultaneously served in government as the first Minister of Housing of our democratically elected government, Joe Slovo says in his seminal work ‘The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution', trade unions cannot bury their heads in and narrow their focus on workplace struggles as if the workplace was disconnected from the universally surrounding political environment which constitutes one of the key determinants of what happens at the very workplace. In his own words, Slovo had this to say:
"But because the state and its political and repressive apparatus is an instrument of the dominant economic classes, it is impossible for trade unions in any part of the world to keep out of the broader political conflict."
The SACP pledges its revolutionary solidarity and support to your union in facilitating a smooth leadership transition; continuing to advance and deepen our shared perspectives on the strategic importance of our alliance; and on the ever relevant need to deepen, advance, defend and take responsibility for the national democratic revolution and the struggle for socialism.
The SACP salutes the ANC-led alliance electoral victory. This victory was secured with a popular mandate of 62% despite the severe impact of the worst international economic crisis since the late 1920s' Great Depression and the unremitting, anti-ANC alliance hostility of most of the commercial print and electronic media, with some few exceptions.
In this election the opposition as one whole had gained new characteristics which we must closely keep in check. There is a new tendency which, while not directly or openly contesting elections on the ballot against or not yet doing so, but was consistently attacking the ANC, the SACP and our alliance in its entirety. To sum up the essence and effect of its political programme, this new section of the opposition directly campaigned against and de-campaigned the ANC-led alliance to the advantage of existing opposition parties.
The serious challenges that faced the unity of Cosatu were also located in this context within which our Fifth democratic general election took place. In addition, there was an emergence of a right-wing, demagogic formation characteristic to the periods of capitalist economic crisis, the EFF, posing as left-wing and mobilising opportunistically on the basis of genuine youth grievances. The ANC-led alliance electoral victory constituted a decisive blow to all of these, thus also showing that large sections of our media is generally out of touch with the sentiment of the overwhelming majority of our people.
Post-elections, some of the forces that we defeated engaged in spin-doctoring, portraying the ANC-led alliance as if it has lost and those who have lost as if they have won - a new bogus type of South African mathematics. The bottom line is that the ANC-led alliance has won the Fifth general election with an overwhelming vote of confidence and majority. This victory is a decisive popular mandate to advance boldly with a second, more radical phase of the democratic transformation of our country.
Let us now cement our ANC-led alliance election victory with an uninterrupted, decisive advance to our second, more radical phase of the national democratic revolution!
What does this mean?
This is not the time to become hesitant. The great majority of the working class and poor have once more placed their trust in the ANC-led alliance to lead the struggle against the persisting crisis levels of poverty, inequality, and unemployment cannot be taken for granted indefinitely. Neither can we become hesitant in the face of threats from the side of monopoly capital.
For the SACP, the content of the second, more radical phase of our transition must be understood in the context of the dialectical relationship between the national democratic revolution and socialism. This means advancing, deepening, defending and taking responsibility for the national democratic revolution as a foundation for and as the most direct route to building socialism in the concrete conditions of our country. Conversely, this means intensifying the struggle, building momentum towards, capacity for and elements of socialism as the most consistent means for advancing, deepening, defending and taking responsibility for the national democratic revolution. These two dimensions of our Party's long-standing strategic perspective, the national democratic and the socialist revolution, are not contradictory but mutually reinforcing.
In the period preceding the ANC's 52nd National Conference there was an intensive and extensive debate about the national democratic revolution. In combat with revisionism, which sought to disconnect the perspective of the national democratic revolution from its roots in the struggle for socialism, it was the SACP and Cosatu that correctly argued that the national democratic revolution had to be radical, radicalised and radicalising. Today this correct perspective is shared by our entire alliance. This perspective is now at the centre of the programme of our government, the Fifth democratically elected administration.
In his inauguration speech, President Zuma unambiguously announced a radical new turn as the key priority of his second presidential term. The fundamental content of such a second phase of our transition, whilst consistently deepening democratisation in all spheres of societal activity, would be radical socio-economic transformation. This must transform the key structural features of our economy that reproduce poverty, inequality and unemployment. These structural features that must be transformed include the fact that our economy is still semi colonial, relying more on mining rather than manufacturing and other services.
The result has been a devastating process of de-industrialisation, job losses and the throttling of small and medium enterprises. In the past five years of President Zuma ANC-led alliance administration, key state-led initiatives - notably the New Growth Path policy, the Industrial Policy Action Plan, the trillion rand infrastructure build programme - have begun to reverse the tide. These state-led initiatives must be accelerated and consolidated together with long-range planning, now institutionalised more firmly within government; a major focus on continued expansion of access to education and skills training; and the more effective leveraging of our key Development Finance Institutions.
The second, more radical phase of the national democratic revolution must advance the strategic transformation of the ownership and control function of key commanding heights of the economy. This has always been one of the main goals of our struggle. In this regard, narrow BEE cannot be an option. For an overwhelming majority of our people who are excluded from narrow BEE, the broadening and transformation of the ownership function must lead to socialisation. This would necessarily require building a strong public sector in the context of our shared perspective in the ANC-led alliance election manifesto - building a democratic developmental state. Similarly, we need to foster an extensive and vibrant co-operative sector and generally more effective worker control of among others social capital like pension and provident funds. Investments from these funds must be channelled to transformative, productive activity and interventions in the conditions facing workers.
Similarly, we must advance and consolidate popular participatory democracy within communities and break away from the notion of a top-down government delivering to a passive citizenry. Popular forces must become active protagonists in the struggle for transformation, reinforced by and reinforcing the popular mandate of the democratic developmental state that we seek to build.
This, the second, more radical phase of the national democratic revolution must accelerate and complete land reform in both rural and urban areas, focused on food production and security, sustainable livelihoods and integrated urbanisation. In particular, creative ways must be established to implement support including necessary means and capacity in line with the Freedom Charter for those who work the land. This must form part of the central pillars of our land reform and agrarian transformation policy, learning from the setbacks encountered in the first phase of the transition.
The SACP calls on government to convene a multi-stakeholder Mining Indaba
Our Central Committee took place and indeed this Nehawu Special National Congress takes place against the backdrop of a strike in the platinum sector which started in January. The strike has had a disastrous impact on the lives of mine-workers, their families and communities both around the mines and in the rural areas from which contract labourers are drawn. There is ongoing intimidation, violence and killings associated with the strike and risks on the jobs of the workers are on an increase.
It is our view as the SACP that the crisis in the Rustenburg platinum belt must be resolved as soon as possible with jobs defended. But we are worried that the danger is that any settlement will focus narrowly, if understandably, on remuneration while the critical and wider transformational challenges in the platinum (and even broader mining) sector will be side-lined. This will leave initiatives for and direction of restructuring in the hands of the mining monopolies. The mining houses are looking to further disinvest, to close many shafts and operations, to retrench, and to move to greater capital intensity at the cost of labour in the more profitable operations. Not only will this impact upon employment and economic growth, but it will also have a grave impact upon our downstream industrialisation objectives.
It is for this reason that our Central Committee called on government to convene a major mining indaba. This indaba must be used as a key platform for driving the radical second phase of our democratic transition.
On the agenda of this indaba must be:
- taking forward the resolutions of the ANC-mandated "State Intervention in the Mining Sector" (SIMS) policy package;
- moving towards centralised bargaining for all mining sectors;
- changes to the grading system in mining. Grading currently fails to sufficiently recognise the dangers and difficulties of certain work categories, notably underground rock-drilling;
- the role of contract labour in mining;
- a range of social and economic problems impacting upon many mining communities - housing, the role of mashonisas, the failure of the SAPs to provide community safety and security.
- driving the strategic alignment of the mining sector with our critical re-industrialisation priorities. This alignment is and will be resisted by the mining houses and we must be prepared to face them down.
The role of public sector unions
We have elsewhere asked whether public sector unions, as opposed to private sector ones, might be having different or additional responsibilities in relation to the agenda of consolidating and deepening the national democratic revolution, and in building a capable and effective democratic developmental state. There can be no doubt that all progressive unions in have a role to play in building a capable and effective democratic developmental state which can only be embedded in the working class and buttressed by consistent working class mobilisation.
For the private sector unions this means intensifying the struggle to roll back economic exploitation and the corrupting influence of private capital, while for public sector unions. In addition, this means building the capacity of the public service to effectively deliver services to the needs of the population, especially working class communities. This necessarily raises a question, whether the attitude of public sector unions in a national democratic revolution and in an alliance with the governing party through their federation should be the same as the attitude of private sector unions towards private capital which exploits workers. How this question is settled will be of great importance to our revolution and society, especially the working class and the poor who depend on state delivery, programmes, and services.
By their very existence and structural location, public sector unions are in the state, and are part of the immediate struggles that are taking part within the state organisation. When we talk about a capable and effective state delivery of services we are not only referring to systems (or things) but in many ways to people - the work by members of public sector unions. Certainly this suggests public sector unions have an additional responsibility in the national democratic revolution where we seek to build a capable and effective democratic developmental state. The question is whether we as progressive public sector unions have conceptualised this and codified it in a strategic perspective and our tasks in deepening, advancing, defending and taking responsibility for the national democratic revolution.
It is the view of the SACP that it is time to elaborate the strategy and tactics of playing this role, without sacrificing the independence of public sector unions, whilst at the same time not adopting a posture as if the ANC-led alliance government is an enemy government. This should start at important gatherings like this congress and, as one of your previous resolutions suggests on other but related issues, this requires engagements among public sector unions and unions in state owned enterprises facilitated by the federation Cosatu.
To pose these questions about the role of public sector workers is described by some of our detractors as asking for sweetheart unions. There is no truth in this. But similarly to argue for unguided, populist and sometimes workerist posture from our unions can equally weaken both government and the unions.
Wage a principled and holistic fight against corruption!
One of the critical and most important tasks of the trade union movement in particular and the working class in General is that of intensifying the struggle against corruption in society as a whole. Intensifying the struggle against corruption is a critical component and dimension in driving the second phase of our transition. In order to do this we must expose and disabuse ourselves from some of the myths being peddled about the nature of corruption in South African society.
This includes:
1. That the most dangerous corruption is that taking place in the public sector. Therefore you notice that most of media's so-called investigative units focus on public sector corruption and doing very little, if at all about corruption in the private sector. That is why public sector corruption make headlines for months on end, but absolute silence about corruption in the private sector or the connection between public-private sector corruption, absolute silence for instance about construction companies fleecing the state of billions of rands.
2. That only those in government are corrupt, and those outside government especially in something called 'civil society' are clean and therefore have an inherent right to police government on matters of corruption.
Issued by the SACP, June 6 2014
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