Remarks by NUMSA general secretary Irvin Jim to NUMSA Political Commission, NUMSA Head Office, Johannesburg, February 23 2012

 "...........unless the ANC makes rapid progress in the transformation of our economy and society to benefit the majority it will be unable to withstand the prevailing logic of colonialism of a special type." - Statement of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress on the occasion of the Centenary Celebration of the ANC January 8th 2012)

"In our country - more than in any other part of the oppressed world - it is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without a return of the wealth of the land to the people as a whole. It is therefore a fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy. To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the root of racial supremacy and does not represent even the shadow of liberation." - Morogoro Conference of the ANC, meeting at Morogoro, Tanzania, 25 April - 1 May 1969

Comrade President of the ANC and the Republic of South Africa,
National Office Bearers of Numsa,
National Office Bearers of the formations of the Liberation Movement present,
Leadership of Cosatu present,
Former Office Bearers of Numsa,
All Numsa leadership from all our structures present,
Invited guests and the media.

Allow me to join our President, the President of Numsa, in welcoming our two important guests - Comrade Zwelinzima Vavi of Cosatu and Comrade Jacob Zuma, our Republican President and President of the ANC.

Numsa is indeed humbled and very pleased that these two extremely busy and critical leaders of our revolutionary movement have seen it fit, and found time, to be with us in our inaugural Numsa National Political Commission.

I want to promise the two leaders that Numsa will not waste their time, that Numsa is very certain this Political Commission will benefit greatly from their inputs and presence. These our leaders must know that they are not wasting their time, by spending it with Numsa.

Allow me then, Comrades, to proceed to my remarks!

1. Comrade Jacob Zuma, please accept on behalf of the South African, African and world family of members and friends of the ANC, Numsa's sincere and heartfelt congratulations for the glorious 100 revolutionary fighting years of the ANC.

2. Starting as a small formation of Africa's kings and queens and elites in 1912, gathering to itself evolutionary youths, women, men, the working class, communists, progressive organisations of the people including from religious formations, the ANC today in 2012 is indeed a "parliament of the people" in the real sense of the word!

3. Numsa is proud to have joined in the family of organisations that fought side by side with the ANC during the struggle against Apartheid capitalist domination.

4. We congratulate the ANC for leading the negotiations that ushered in a democratic South Arica.

5. We congratulate the ANC and its government for the massive improvements in the living conditions of millions of our people who, by and large, are Black and African working class and poor.

6. In particular, we note the great strides made, since 1994, in the provision of millions of houses, modern sanitation, water, clinics and hospitals, electricity, a single unified public education system and many such similar good things for the majority of our people.

7. Numsa salutes the ANC for continuing to mobilise the broad masses of our people in their various classes and from all the races found in South Africa, behind the goal of achieving the objectives of the National Democratic Revolution - the foundation of a united, non sexist, democratic and prosperous South Africa.

8. As leader of a multi class alliance of forces determined to pursue the goals of the Freedom Charter, we congratulate the ANC for never yielding to the premature temptation to break the alliance of class forces that it leads.

9. The Statement of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress on the occasion of the Centenary Celebration of the ANC on January 8th 2012, read by our President Comrade Jacob Zuma in Bloemfontein, says the following about the most pressing and fundamental challenge facing South Africa today:

"During this year, 2012, our nation must renew our determination to build a South Africa founded on the principles of the Freedom Charter and our democratic Constitution.

We must bring new energy and new ideas into the kind of society we want to build over the next few decades.

As the ANC prepares for its Policy Conference in June and its 53rd National Conference in December 2012, we call on all South Africans to join a national dialogue on the future of the country.

This debate should be based on our common commitment to build a caring society that is truly non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, prosperous and united in its diversity.

With regards to the way forward, we have identified the triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality as needing attention.

Principally, Africans, women and youth continue to carry a disproportionate burden of the challenges.

Over the next decade, both the ANC and all organs of state, shall pay a single-minded and undivided attention in order to overcome these triple challenges."

10. Comrade President Zuma, Numsa is convinced that the call by the ANC to all South Africans is a genuine one, and demands the positive response from all politically conscious South Africans.

11. Further, Numsa is happy that over the past 100 years, the ANC and its family of allied organisations have developed some of the most profound theories and understanding of the history and situation of the colonially and racially oppressed and exploited masses of South Africa.

12. Thus we want to insist that the ANC call for popular participation in a dialogue by all South Africans and indeed friends of South Africa to craft a truly democratic future for South Africa does not constitute an abandonment of the powerful insights, intelligent theories, and popular democratic ideologies worked over a period of a 100 years!

13. In this regard, we want to argue in defence of the Freedom Charter as the basic revolutionary Programme of the ANC and the significance of all the important seminal policy and strategy and tactics documents of the ANC to the national debate the ANC is inviting the country.

14. Thus, at Numsa, we will be looking to see how the country can move beyond the revolutionary reforms implemented since 1994, important as these may be, to placing the country on a evolutionary footing capable of translating the Freedom Charter into concrete deliverables on behalf of the people of South Africa.

15. In fact, if there are any lessons to be learnt in the past 18 years of democracy in South Africa, it is that:

"In our country - more than in any other part of the oppressed world - it is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without a return of the wealth of the land to the people as a whole. It is therefore a fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy. To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the root of racial supremacy and does not represent even the shadow of liberation."- Morogoro Conferenceof the ANC, meeting at Morogoro, Tanzania, 25 April - 1 May 1969

16. As a member of prime formations of the working class, Numsa as a trade union, is fully aware of the history of South African racial and patriarchal capitalism, and recognises that while every reform that improves the quality of life of the working class is to be supported, reforms in themselves will not make a meaningful dent in the conditions of the overwhelming majority of the people of South Africa who are largely black and African working class and rural poor.

17. Numsa fully agrees with the ANC that, for example, to leave the current economic interests intact - to sustain the South African white dominated Minerals/Energy/Finance Complex intact - is in fact indeed to feed the root of South Africa racial capitalism.

18. Numsa will thus be releasing for public information and debate its own draft positions on a range of policy matters, before its June 2012 National Conference.

19. Numsa fully agrees with the ANC in its January 2012 Statement when it says:

"........unless the ANC makes rapid progress in transforming the economy and society to benefit the majority, it (the ANC) will be unable to withstand the prevailing logic of colonialism of a special type."

20. Going forward, Numsa will continue to champion, among others, the following:

a. All the people of South Africa must share in the wealth of the country, thus socialisation and democratisation of ownership and control of the economy is inevitable, post 1994.

b. The basic wealth of the country must be transferred into the hands of the people as a whole, as a precondition for attaining democracy and peace in South Africa. In this regard, there is no alternative to popular nationalisation of the strategic economic sectors.

c. South Africa needs a truly new and revolutionary redistributive, job led growth path.

d. South Africa needs to break the dominance of the Minerals/Energy/Finance Complex and the white community it supports in South Africa, for a truly equal and democratic South Africa to begin to emerge. Only this can uproot racism in South Africa.

e. The country needs to urgently attend to the matter of rapid industrialisation on a foundation of quality mass education, skilling and health programmes on a scale hitherto never embarked upon. Without this, South Africa will never win the war on mass poverty and hunger.

f. It is time to take charge of monetary policy on behalf of all the majority of the people of this country who are working class and rural poor.

g. It is time to nationalise the Reserve Bank.

h. It is time to put in place a revolutionary rural development strategy and programme that will change the economies and societies of the countryside on behalf of the majority of the people of this country. This demands revolutionary land redistribution and agrarian programmes.

i. We must destroy shacks and the rural/urban divide, as the Freedom Charter demands.

j. The country needs to move beyond reform rhetoric into a revolutionary mode, and truly begin to undo the capitalist and Apartheid economic foundations of South African society which continue to reproduce Apartheid capitalist social relations in spite of the revolutionary reforms implemented since 1994.

20. Comrade President, these and others are the positions Numsa will be looking to engage with South Africans in general and the family of the revolutionary liberation movement and its formations. For the working class, many of these demands are clearly non negotiables.

Irvin Jim

Numsa General Secretary

Issued by NUMSA, February 23 2012

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