HELEN ZILLE AND SMUTS NGONYAMA ARE RENTED AGENTS OF ANTI-WORKING CLASS AGENDA
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) hopes all its members and the broader society a joyous and blissful Easter Weekend.
We take this opportunity to make a revolutionary call to our members and all our communities in our country that in this forthcoming local government elections happening on the 18 May 2011, they should all vote for the African National Congress (ANC).
We are adamant that the working class that is daily exploited in the factories by the bosses and perpetually living in abject poverty such as apartheid created slums and townships compounded by extreme inequalities in our country cannot vote for political parties that are real allies of the capitalist class that is exploiting working people in our country and who are real political axis of the ruling class in particular UDM , COPE and DA .
When NUMSA and COSATU takes up a revolutionary campaign demanding a change in the structure of our South African economy, such as change in the accumulation and ownership patterns; when we call for land redistribution and economic redistribution of wealth that is concentrated in the hands of a tinny minority in our country which is still dominated by white males; when we call for nationalization of mines, banks and monopoly industries; when we call for beneficiation of our minerals through imposition of an Export Tax.
When NUMSA and COSATU with the support of our communities spoke openly calling for the ban of labour brokers, it was these right-wing political parties led by DA, COPE and UDM which opposed this fundamental demand of the working class.
Our country is now stacked in poverty with deep-seated high levels of unemployment and has since surpassed Brazil with extreme levels of inequalities. The neo-liberal policies that reproduce this social malice they are forever being defend in the interest of maximizing profits and greed of the bosses are directly responsible for the miseries faced by our people. These pitfalls cannot be resolved unless we fundamentally restructure our economy, as opposed to the right-wing economic proposals by the DA and COPE which are setting-up our country for failure.
This extreme right-wing agenda led by DA and COPE without taking full responsibility of their backward policy and ideological stances which has not only failed the people of our country, but the global community as a whole. Its these very same policies that have directly caused global crisis of capitalism, but they still have all the guts to come and demand that our people in Port Elizabeth and Cape Town must vote for them. This constitutes a serious insult if not provocation against the working class.
The mouthpiece of monopoly capital and apartheid privileges proponents in South Africa today, the DA, is on record opposing the growth, power and influence of trade unions. The DA advocates for the so called "flexible market" in which individual workers are pitted against the power and might of the bosses, and thus left to be slaughtered by the bosses without trade unions to defend them.
NUMSA joins COSATU and calls on our communities to reject in the ballot box both COPE and DA simply because they are political parties that are pro-big business and pro-rich; and they are anti-poor and anti-workers. The struggle to build a new and better South Africa cannot be led by working class exploiters and collaborators who are directly responsible from taking away workers social surplus causing direct inequalities, poverty, oppression, and continue pursuing policies that entrench these injustices.
The DA claims to manage a ‘well run' province of the Western Cape, but the Western Cape possibly remains the most backward province in South Africa when it comes to reversing the colonial social and economic legacy.
A simple drive from Cape Town International Airport to the city centre shows us what would befall the whole of South Africa if the DA can ascend to power, abject poverty and neglect for the majority living in shacks and depressed communities, alongside wealth and privilege for the small minority.
What does the DA and COPE stands for? The DA made the following commitments to its rich and mainly big business constituency in its 2009 elections manifesto.
This is what it said about how it will create jobs:
1. We will reduce corporate taxes- i.e. make the poor pay more, so the rich can pay less;
2. We will reduce the labour laws to make it easy for employers to hire and fire workers - i.e. take us back to apartheid super-exploitation;
3. We will introduce a six-month probation period in which employers will easily dismiss workers without any recourse;
4. We will demarcate the country into Export Processing Zones and turn all the current Industrial Development Zones into Export Processing Zones where employers will be attracted to invest on the basis of not paying taxes and where workers will not enjoy any rights!
Yes, the ANC has committed serious mistakes and some individuals have betrayed its historic mission. We have a far greater chance of correcting ANC mistakes than we have of correcting the DA's and Funny organizations like COPE who are subsumed by internal fight overwhelmed by being power mongers and above all an organization that is anti-workers and pro-business.
This is what poor communities of Port Elizabeth and Cape Town must completely understand by moving and acting in unison to vote ANC into power during the forthcoming local government elections because it is the only organization they can influence and control.
NUMSA completely rejects with contempt the extreme bias proposition statement carried by the embedded profit circulation margins Sunday Times insinuations that just like Cape Town, the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality (Port Elizabeth) is likely to be lost by the ANC to opposition parties in the country led by DA.
NUMSA having analyzed with an eagle-eye all 150 registered political parties taking part in the local government elections next month, we have resolved consciously to call and persuade all our members including those who belong to other political parties other than the ANC that is in alliance with COSATU and SACP to vote for the ANC-led Alliance on the 18 May 2011.
NUMSA's reasons are very concrete:
The ANC is in an alliance with the South African Communist Party (SACP), our vanguard party, and with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), our labour federation.
The ANC is a disciplined force of the left. Only the ANC is openly and courageously in an alliance with both communists and the working class of this country.
Thus it is the duty of class-conscious workers in the ANC who may be members of COSATU unions and/or communists to openly defend and advance our working-class political, economic, social and cultural interests. All the other parties are openly hostile to the communists and the organised working class.
ANC members who are workers and communists have full opportunities to advance the interests of the working class and the rural poor. When this does not happen, it simply means the workers and communists have lost the class fight!
The ANC is the largest and leading political party in South Africa. The ANC is a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and multi-class political formation best suited to advance the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) - a phase in our struggle towards full human emancipation;
While the ANC like any other political formation has problems, it has almost 100 years of internal democratic culture which none of the existing parties can claim to be anywhere near it; and
A vote for any other party will simply dilute the power and influence of the working class and communists in the ANC!
We are calling on all our members not to waste their important votes in the coming local government elections, but to do the right thing by voting ANC-led Alliance.
We must remember that the DA and COPE ideology hatred what comrade Chris Hani stood for and they equal hate the Communist Party in particular its relationship with COSATU and the ANC; and basically the DA and COPE has no business for workers except to make sure that they are thoroughly exploited and fired and they ideological orientation equal stands for what AfriForum stands for when they took Julius Malema to court pretending to be fighting a song when in essence they are opportunistically fighting our people's revolutionary agenda .
That historical mission of the movement that of fundamental change and transforming all commanding heights of the economy and restore them back to the people as a whole.
NUMSA and COSATU understand that there are dissatisfaction about the list process however we firmly calling all our members including those who are aggrieved to vote for the ANC. Immediately after the elections the ANC together with its Alliance partners must create a space to correct whatever that went wrong internally in the organization.
NUMSA wants to warn the working class that both Helen Zille and Smuts Ngonyama are same. Zille humiliated our people's dignity by building open-air toilets and Smuts Ngonyama insulted the working class with his bile by saying to the public that he did not join the struggle to be poor and suddenly he wants to be a Mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality.
NUMSA calls on its Shopstewards and members to go all out door by door, street by street and yard by yard and ward to ward to defeat both Smuts Ngonyama and Zille as they have always been about destroying the ANC of Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani, Joe Slovo and Nelson Mandela.
The formation of COPE was a tipping point that exposed the levels of infiltration of our movement by hyenas and we can understand NOW why Chris Hani had to die.
Statement issued by NUMSA General Secretary Cde Irvin Jim, April 23 2011
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