Delegates at the South African Communist Party (SACP) Congress held in July 2012., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
1 May 2013
Today we join workers all over the world in celebrating May Day. We are now into the sixth year of the most serious global economic crisis of capitalism since the 1930s. It is a crisis that has struck at the very heartlands of capitalism - North America, Europe and Japan. Of course, for the working class and poor, for the landless, for the hungry, for the homeless, for the casualised, for pensioners, for the retrenched, for the colonised and the neo-colonised - in boom years and in bust years, capitalism is ALWAYS a crisis.
But when capitalist profits are down, when capitalist growth stalls, when Britain is faced with a triple-dip recession as it is now, when German banks are worried about getting back their own unwise lending to Greece or Spain, when the mining corporations here in SA are facing declining demand for gold, or platinum on the world capitalist markets - then everywhere the class struggle intensifies. Everywhere the capitalists seek to hold on to their profits, their bonuses, their excessive life-styles. Everywhere they seek to displace their OWN crisis onto the backs of workers, pensioners, and the youth. They seek to roll back social security, to cut education and health budgets, to reverse working class gains on the labour market, to casualise and to retrench.
Above all, they direct their fire and bitter hatred against the organised ranks of the working class - against the Trade Union movement.
This is exactly what is happening right now here in SA. There is a massive onslaught against the trade union movement and against our labour legislation advances. Of course, in some ways this is not new. The response of capital in SA to the Labour Relations Act, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, to the Extension of Security of Tenure Act for farm-labourers and their families is to under-cut these progressive advances. From the very beginning they have sought to move their operations below the radar screen of these progressive measures. This is why there has been the gigantic mush-rooming of casualization, of the scourge of labour-brokers.
PHANTSI LABOUR-BROKERS, PHANTSI!!
But now, with capitalist growth and profits slowing, the offensive has intensified.
A key element of this offensive is the old colonial strategy - DIVIDE and RULE. One element of this strategy is the fostering of VIGILANTE UNIONISM to break the strength of COSATU. In the 1980s and early 90s this was the agenda with UWUSA, linked to Inkatha warlordism and the apartheid security apparatus.
This was the strategy with Turning Wheels. This was the strategy on the platinum belt in the early 2000s with the Five Madoda and the so-called Workers` Mouthpiece. And this is the strategy that has been unleashed with horrific and tragic consequences with AMCU, the next chapter in the violent history of vigilante unionism. Let`s remember where AMCU comes from. This so-called union was launched in 1999 in Mpumalanga by renegades dismissed from NUM. They were then suckled at the breast of BHP Billiton - in order to provide an upstart rival to NUM. They then found space around Rustenburg when the mining bosses at Impala Platinum and then Lonmin opportunistically tore up collective bargaining agreements with the recognised unions.
In some cases, these vigilante forces pose as being "more militant", "more radical", even "more left-wing" - but always at the end of the day they deploy the same set of shameless tactics - ethnic mobilisation, not working class solidarity; and violence against fellow-workers and particularly against COSATU shop-stewards and organisers. Everywhere their agendas end up in the same tragedies - pseudo-militancy that excites some workers, only to lead them into the trap of mass dismissals.
In Parliament, led by the DA and ably supported by the commercial media, the opposition parties also focus all of their hatred and venom against COSATU and its affiliates. In its official economic policy paper the DA describes what it calls "Big Government" and "Big Labour" as the twin enemies of growth and profitability.
This is why the DA has been leading a campaign for a "youth-wage subsidy". What they are talking about is not really a youth-wage subsidy - it`s a subsidy to capital, it`s an incentive to the bosses to hire young temporary workers, it`s an incentive to the capitalists to displace older workers. It`s not about the youth - it`s about profits.
Let`s therefore salute the outcome of last month`s NEDLAC-facilitated National Youth Accord, which completely side-lined the DA and their misnamed "youth-wage subsidy". Driven jointly by the ANC-led government, COSATU, and the Progressive Youth Alliance - the National Youth Accord places emphasis on training and on skilling, on investment in youth empowerment, and on work placement. Instead of making it easier to fire workers, the Accord places emphasis on making it easier for young workers to FIND work. What is also significant about the Accord is that, although it was driven by the Alliance, all the other critical stakeholders have also endorsed it.
The DA has, of course, come out guns blazing against the accord, accusing the accord of abandoning its beloved "youth-wage subsidy". But there is an irony here - what the DA`s Tim Harris (who styles himself a shadow minister of finance) didn`t know was that the DA Youth were themselves signatories to the Accord!! The DA`s "shadow minister of finance" was so busy defending the interests of big capital in the name of the "youth" that he didn`t even bother to ask what his OWN youth wing was thinking and doing!!
Where we are united - as COSATU and its affiliates, as the ANC-SACP-COSATU alliance, as progressive forces - then we can score victories like this.
And this is why the SACP has a simple message on this May Day 2013 - Unity, Unity, Unity. Close ranks in the face of the intensified class offensive. We need a militant and unified COSATU, capable of leading the working class. We need COSATU affiliates that are well-organised on the shop-floor, that service their members, that practice worker democracy. A toothless COSATU that is simply a conveyor belt for the ANC-led government is no use even to the ANC-led government. It will simply be bypassed and outflanked by pseudo-militants. We need a principled unity across our Alliance, a unity in action based on a common struggle against unemployment, against poverty, against inequality, and against corruption.
There is only one way of countering the offensive and of marching together in action. It is through unity of the people`s camp. But this unity, at the very time that we most need it, is threatened by divisions within our own ranks. As the SACP we are deeply concerned at the reports we read about divisions within COSATU and between affiliates. We call on COSATU to get its house in order. It is COSATU itself that must do it. Any factional interference from outside, whether it be from the ANC or the SACP, will simply mess things up further. But the same applies to all those NGO personalities who go around telling the commercial media that COSATU is divided into this faction and that faction. They accuse the SACP of doing exactly what THEY are doing - backing one group of COSATU comrades and slandering another. We say: HANDS OFF COSATU! We say COSATU must be given the time, space and respect by ALL of US outside of the federation to deal with its own internal issues.
As the SACP we believe that one of the underlying causes of divisions within our movement, including COSATU, is business interests. Let`s be clear - we are not pointing fingers at any individuals in COSATU, we are not singling out any affiliates. We are saying this is an objective challenge, and a cross-cutting problem. One of the historic victories of the labour movement in SA is the amassing of huge, multi-billion rand pension funds. This is workers` money - but who administers it? Who controls it? Is there democratic worker control over these multi-billions? How are investment decisions made? Are they made in terms of developmental objectives - or are they made on purely capitalist-based profit maximisation? How are the pension fund administrator`s incentivised? Do they receive millions of rands in bonuses for profit maximisation? What is the relationship between corrupt tenderpreneurs, narrow BEE interests and your pension funds?
We can talk about the nationalisation (or better the socialisation) of the financial sector, but are your own investment houses taking us closer or further away from our socialist values - the principle of "to each according to their needs", the principle of working class and human solidarity, the principle of "an injury to one, is an injury to all". Are our pension funds operating according to these principles - or are they corrupting capitalist Trojan Horses wheeled into the very heart of our trade union movement, sowing division, rivalry and corruption? This is a debate we believe COSATU and its affiliates should take forward, responsibly, without factional intent…but urgently.
PHANTSI BUSINESS UNIONISM - PHANTSI!!
With 2014 elections approaching, the DA is desperately trying to re-define itself. They dig up a photo of cde Madiba generously embracing Helen Suzman. They tell us (20-years later) that cde Chris Hani was actually a "man of integrity". Not only are they trying to bleach their own very white history, but they are trying to appropriate our struggle. They are wanting to claim that they are the rightful inheritors of the principles embodied in our legendary heroes - Hani, Slovo, Tambo. They are saying that the living leaders of the Alliance have betrayed those who have passed on. They are now the "real owners" of this history. The colonisers stole our land. They dispossessed our people of their cattle. And now, these latter-day anti-majoritarians, want to steal our history too.
Our history belongs to all South Africans, and so the DA is welcome to share it. But let them not distort it!! As cde Joe Slovo put is so well many years ago: "Yes, Helen Suzman opposed apartheid - but she NEVER fought for liberation."
The branding and the content
As a capitalist party, the DA believes that politics is all about "market branding". How you brand yourself is their obsession. But if we didn`t know before, then once again recently the people of SA have learnt a lesson about capitalist branding.
The packaging might say one thing - but what`s inside the packaging? In their desperate search for profit maximisation, the global capitalist logistic chains will do anything. Our meat is labelled "beef" or "lamb" - but inside it can be anything: donkey, water buffalo, kangaroo.
Taste it. That`s the taste of capitalism. That`s the taste of the capitalist crisis.
The NDP
But it is not just inside the history of our struggle that the DA is scurrying around in order to find the occasional photograph of Helen Suzman with cde Madiba in order to re-brand itself from donkey to prime beef.
It is the same strategy they have been deploying with the National Development Plan - the NDP. Ever since its unveiling the DA has been selectively picking up one or two NDP recommendations (the "youth wage subsidy"), holding them aloft and proclaiming ownership of the entire 20-year so-called "plan".
Using the NDP, they are trying to drive a wedge between ANC-led government policies and between communists in government and non-communist ministers. Likewise they quote the authority of the NDP in order to drive a wedge between government and COSATU. They will fail in these games.
Unfortunately, however, some in COSATU have fallen headlong into the DA agenda. They have simply given away, for free, the NDP to the DA. These comrades end up playing directly into the DA agenda by driving the same factional wedges (but just coming at them from the other side), using the NDP as football and playing government against COSATU, ANC against the federation, COSATU affiliate against COSATU affiliate.
Again we say UNITY, UNITY, UNITY. But let`s be clear - comradely debate is fine, democratic processes in which we manage our difference is essential…factional wedge-driving is an entirely different matter.
But equally guilty of this danger are some ANC comrades who proclaim that all 484 pages of the NDP are perfect. That the "NDP is the new Freedom Charter". That we musn`t debate the NDP or we will frighten off investors. This kind of bullying is unacceptable and it is equally divisive.
Comrades, we must not allow the NDP to become a political football. Above all, we must not treat the NDP as a monument carved in stone. It is not a statue before which we should kneel in worship. Nor is it a statue like that of Saddam Hussein in central Bagdad to be pulled down. The SACP says NO to rubber stamps. No to the rubber stamp that just says "Accept". No to the rubber stamp that says "Reject".
Let`s engage critically and robustly with the NDP - but let`s engage it. There are many problems with the NDP. The SACP fully agrees with COSATU`s draft critique, for instance, of much of the economics chapter.
On jobs, for instance, the NDP envisages creating mostly low-quality, precarious jobs outside the core productive sectors - relying mostly on SMMEs and service sector jobs. Actually, as COSATU notes, SMMEs have shown net job losses over the past period in SA. This makes the NDP`s expectation of 9,9million new jobs highly unrealistic.
On worker rights - and related to the above - the NDP will erode worker rights through its emphasis on job creation in this low-skill, low-paid work in the SMME and service sectors, and through proposed legislative measures to make dismissals easier.
At the heart of these problems is the fact that the NDP is extremely weak on the critical dimension of placing the economy onto a new growth path - namely through re-industrialisation. The NDP envisages a shrinkage of the manufacturing sector from 12% in 2010 to 9,6% in 2030. Of the 11 million new jobs envisaged in the NDP, nearly two-thirds will come from services, domestic work and the informal sector.
These criticisms are correct. As the SACP, and in line with government`s Industrial Policy Action Plan, we should add to COSATU`s concerns around SMMEs and the service sector by noting that the quality and sustainability of job-creation in these sectors is critically dependent on whether they are actively linked into a growing industrial sector (as in China, for instance). By contrast, where the SMME and service sectors are largely dependent on speculative financial capital (as in Cyprus), or marginalised into township informality - they will tend to be vulnerable and low-paid. The majority of jobs in SA in the future may well come from the SMME and service sector - but if they are to involve decent work and be sustainable then they need to be symbiotically linked into industrialisation, including agro-industry.
Apart from the weaknesses in the NDP`s job creation approach, COSATU`s draft analysis of the NDP further (and correctly) points out that in regard to the other two big challenges of our society (inequality and poverty), the NDP is exceedingly unambitious.
For instance, although the NDP pays lip service to addressing inequality, its GINI co-efficient target for 2030 is unacceptably modest. It aims to reduce the GINI co-efficient from its 2009 figure of 0,70 to 0,60 by 2030. That would leave SA still as one of the most unequal societies in the world! (In fact, illustrating just how unambitious this NDP target is - by 2010/11, in less than two years, we had already got half-way to the NDP`s 20-year, long-term GINI target! By 2010/11 the Gini coefficient was at 0,65.)
There are serious weaknesses like these in the NDP - but there are also important positive features, including the fact that the NDP has at least put onto the map the importance of NATIONAL LONG-RANGE PLANNING. In truth, what we have in the NDP is not a "plan" but rather a broad 20-year vision. Within this 20-year vision there are both problematic and progressive proposals.
Among the progressive proposals is support for the NHI, strong recommendations on dealing with corruption, important proposals on overcoming apartheid spatial patterns in our towns and cities and, above all, the recognition that transformation is critically dependent on a strategically disciplined, developmental state.
As we thank the National Planning Commission and say good-bye, we need to build upon these lessons. The main lesson is, of course, that we cannot have a serious 20-year implementable plan that is drawn up by 26 independent and part-time planning commissioners - academics, business-people, NGO activists. Some of them are good researchers with much to offer. But we don`t need an outsourced planning capacity.
The ANC is the ruling party with over 60% of the vote. For goodness sake let`s be more decisive about grounding our long-range planning in our Freedom Charter vision. We need a state planning commission whose planning functions are organically linked to the many planning functions and responsibilities of the state - from local Integrated Development Plans, through provincial Growth and Development Strategies, to key national plans like the New Growth Path, the Industrial Policy Plan, and the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission`s long-term infrastructure plan.
Let`s not get distracted by a scholarly debate on the NDP. Let`s focus on the critical agreement that unites us as an Alliance. The ANC`s Mangaung National Conference has, quite correctly, called for a second more radical phase of the National Democratic Revolution. We all agree that we need this radical shift, a shift that places our economy on to a new job-creating growth path, through reindustrialisation and a major state-led infrastructure build programme.
Again we say: UNITY, UNITY, UNITY.
Phantsi Wedge-drivers, Phantsi!!
Financial Sector Campaign
10 years ago the SACP, together with our Alliance partners and over 50 other progressive formations, mobilised a highly successful Financial Sector Campaign. In particular, we exposed the role of those vultures - the Credit Bureaux. This laid the basis for the present Consumer Protection Act and other important gains. The time has come to re-vitalise the financial sector campaign.
In particular, millions of working class and poor South Africans are caught in a dangerous debt trap. Much of this debt trap is as a result of the unscrupulous behaviour of the commercial banks. This week figures were released showing the banks are now holding over R400bn worth of unsecured loans. The Reserve Bank said this is not a problem. But the Reserve Bank is looking at the world from the perspective of Standard Bank, FNB, ABSA, Nedbank, Capitec, etc. R400bn in unsecured loans might not be a problem for the private banks - especially if government bails them out if they encounter problems. But what about the millions of South Africans - workers, pensioners, unemployed youth, labour-brokered casuals who have, collectively, been loaned R40bn? These are South Africans whose lives and earning prospects are extremely precarious.
More and more our big commercial banks are behaving like mashonisas. Easy-in and impossible to get out, with blood-sucking interest payments. We are not sure if the loan-sharks, big and small, in Marikana will be summonsed to the Farlam Commission of Inquiry. But they should be. Immediately after the August 16 tragedy, the Department of Trade and Industry found that there were no fewer than 11 mashonisa operations just in the Marikana area. 10 out of the 11 were flagrantly breaking the law. The rock-drill operators wages were not coming to them directly, but were going to the mashonisas. This was a major factor in the desperation felt by many of those workers, and a major factor in rendering them vulnerable to the demagogic promises of the vigilante unionists.
Just in the recent period, working with community organisations in Gauteng, the SACP has helped to expose unscrupulous lawyers working with corrupt clerks of the Court, who have been issuing illegal garnishee orders against those who are defaulting on loans, on rents, and other problems. This is also why it is absolutely important that proposals to swallow the National Credit Regulator into the Financial Services Board must be resisted with determination.
Comrades, the intensified offensive of the capitalists against workers, against unions and against popular forces must be met with iron determination, with mobilisation, and above all with unity in action. Which is why we say:
AN INJURY TO ONE, IS AN INJURY TO ALL!!
LONG LIVE WORKING CLASS SOLIDARITY, LONG LIVE!!
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