SACP Statement on the necessity of unity to the NUM, Cosatu and all its affiliates
National Statement, 9 June 2015
The SACP once more wishes the new National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) leadership all the best in its tasks and challenges to rebuild a strong NUM. The SACP also wishes to thank the collective leadership of the NUM that steered the ship and navigated in troubled waters to deliver the union relatively intact at its 15th National Congress held last week.
Moving forward, the single most important challenge of the new NUM leadership is that of cementing the unity of the union, its organisational coherence and regaining the lost ground in the mining industry, as eloquently articulated by our solidarity message delivered by our First Deputy General Secretary, Comrade Jeremy Cronin last week at the union’s Congress. The SACP wishes to pledge its wholehearted support towards unifying the NUM to, once more, become a strong workers' voice and choice in the mining industry and other sectors in its scope of organising.
As the SACP we wish to condemn in the strongest possible terms the factionalist, divisive and opportunistic posturing by the former General Secretary of Cosatu, Zwelinzima Vavi, on the outcomes of the NUM Congress. Such factionalist behaviour can only serve to divide and further weaken the NUM as the genuine representative of energy, construction and mineworkers in our country (see EWN report).
Given the challenges facing the NUM in particular, and the trade union movement in general, it is irresponsible in the extreme for Vavi to be celebrating the election of a section of the NUM leadership, instead of encouraging the unity of its entire leadership and membership as a whole. This opportunistic behaviour by Vavi is narrowly informed by his personal and egotistic interests rather than the interests of workers, and goes to prove that he had long ceased to be a unifying force in Cosatu.
Democracy consist not just in election outcomes but processes towards decision-making and the content of the way forward as concretised in the decisions taken. In this regard the SACP also wishes to congratulate the NUM for electing the majority of its new leadership uncontested. As we have said in our solidarity message to the NUM at its Congress, the SACP did not have any preferences or favour one candidate over another in terms of the positions which were contested.
The Party left the entire question of leadership election in the goods hands of the respected NUM members and delegates and called for, and reiterates its call to, all NUM members, leaders and officials to rally behind the unity of the union.
Democracy is a way of life. According to our ally, Cosatu, Vavi was expelled from the federation for acting against democracy and so was Numsa. In a unifying democratic process conducted in good faith there are no losers or winners and no individual but the organisation stands above all else and advances forward coherently in terms of the democratic outcome of both the leadership elected and the decisions made at a Congress.
The SACP calls upon the leadership of the NUM at all levels and the entire membership of both the union and Cosatu to ignore the narrow and divisive posturing of the likes of Vavi and focus on the bigger picture, the unity of the NUM, Cosatu and the rest of its affiliates.
The SACP, as in the past, wishes to recommit itself to working with the NUM, Cosatu and all its affiliates to build an even stronger federation and promote working class unity to drive the national democratic revolution to its logical conclusion, that of laying the indispensable basis for advancing to a socialist South Africa.
An important part of this task is to prioritise the unity of workers, organisational cohesion, isolate and defeat factionalism and the cult of personality based on but not exclusively egotistic interests.
Statement issued by the SACP, June 9 2015
