American Aid Worker Exposed to Ebola at NIH

Nurse working to halt the Ebola virus.

By Susan Levine
September 27, 2014 07:16 PM EDT

An American physician exposed to Ebola while caring for patients in West Africa has arrived at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

The Associated Press reported Sunday that the NIH confirmed the doctor’s arrival.

NIH said Saturday that the physician had been volunteering services at an Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone. The individual was to be admitted to the NIH Clinical Center for observation, as well as enrolled in a research study.

“Out of an abundance of caution,” the NIH announcement noted, the patient will be admitted to a “special clinical studies unit that is specifically designed to provide high-level isolation capabilities and is staffed by infectious diseases and critical care specialists.”

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, stressed Saturday that just because a person is exposed to the virus does not mean he or she will become infected with it.

Two U.S. hospitals have treated medical missionaries who fell ill with Ebola from West Africa, where the Ebola outbreak has now claimed nearly 3,100 lives. Physician Kent Brantly and aid worker Nancy Writebol recovered at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and were discharged in August. Physician Rick Sacra was just released from Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. All three were infected while stationed in Liberia.

Another patient, who news reports have suggested could be a physician with the World Health Organization, remains a patient at the Emory hospital.

Earlier this month, NIH launched one of the first clinical trials on an experimental Ebola vaccine. Fauci said on Sept. 17 that half of the expected 20 volunteers had already received a dose with “no red flags” raised.

Leaving Ebola Fighters Behind to Die

Dr. Nkosazana Dlami-Zuma African Union Commission Chair
with Margaret Chan Director General of the World Health Organization
at a United Nations General Assembly debate on the Ebola crisis.

By Karen Attiah September 28 at 1:10 PM
Washington Post

I had a chance to attend Thursday’s high level emergency meeting at the United Nations on the Ebola outbreak. For two hours, world leader after world leader pledged solidarity with the countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three West African countries hardest hit by the Ebola virus. From Japan to France, Cuba to the United Kingdom, many speakers used the opportunity to announce their government’s intentions to ramp up their donations to the disease-stricken countries and to urge their fellow world leaders to do the same.

The United Nations established the U.N. Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), based in Accra, Ghana, to spearhead the efforts to manage the outbreak, which has to date claimed more than 3,000 lives across West Africa.

Almost every world leader noted the bravery of first responders to the Ebola crisis, calling them ‘heroes’. Despite all of the rhetoric seemingly laced with care and concern for the the victims, the fact remains that no African doctors or health workers have been evacuated as of yet to Western facilities for treatment.  No Western leaders announced specific frameworks to evacuate African doctors or other health personnel who contract Ebola, which, at this stage of the outbreak, is indefensible.

Very recently, Dr. Olivet Buck, a Sierra Leonean doctor, died after the World Health Organization denied a request that he be transported to Germany for treatment. In July, Dr. Sheik Humaar Khan, an eminent physician that headed up Sierra Leone’s Ebola response, died after negotiations for his evacuation. On Sunday, health officials reported that Liberia’s chief medical officer, Dr. Bernice T. Dahn, has been placed under a  quarantine after her assistant died from Ebola on Thursday. Sierra Leone officials have criticized the WHO for its sluggishness on decisions to evacuate their country’s infected doctors.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said during the meeting on Thursday that the Ebola virus in Liberia had killed over 1,700, including “85 trained to save lives.” She added that the projected losses from the virus threatens to “reverse our gains in malaria control and child and maternal mortality.”

“Partners and friends,” Sirleaf said, “based on understandable fears, have ostracized us; shipping and airline services have sanctioned us; and the world has taken some time to fully appreciate and adequately respond to the enormity of our tragedy.” If the grim projections for Ebola fatalities come to pass, West Africa’s hard fought economic and development gains of the past decade are at serious risk. The world cannot allow this to happen.

The European Commission President José Manuel Barroso announced during the high level meeting that the European Union would set up a hub to facilitate air transport for medical evacuation of health workers from Ebola-affected countries. It is not immediately clear whether this plan is for foreign workers or African workers. The U.S. Agency for International Development came under fire briefly after it was reported that the field hospital it was setting up in Monrovia was intended to treat only foreign workers. The agency now says that the facility will treat health workers of all nationalities.

Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone simply cannot afford to lose a single doctor. According to World Bank data, Guinea had just one health-care worker per 10,000 people in 2010, with Liberia and Guinea employing even fewer health-care workers than that. (To put these numbers in perspective, the United States has 122 health-care workers per 10,000 and the United Kingdom has almost 130.) After 2003 in Liberia, after the country signed a peace accord to end its disastrous civil war, only 30 physicians remained to care for 3 million people.  Many sub-Saharan African doctors and health-care workers who stay in their countries to help their compatriots face supply shortages, low pay and a lack of government spending on health-care outcomes even in situations that are not following a conflict.

None of this is to say that doctors or nurses deserve to live or die more than anyone else who falls victim to the virus. But these African nations were already operating under severe shortages of health-care workers. With the influx of attention, pledges of hundreds of millions of dollars of support and resources, one hopes that the new efforts by the U.N. and its partners will help prevent Ebola from claiming more lives of African doctors and researches.

To accomplish this, travel and air service bans must be lifted. Bureaucracy must be replaced with compassionate decisiveness.  Health workers must be provided with adequate protective gear. We cannot allow “medical apartheid” to characterize the international treatment of the African medical personnel and health workers from Europe or the United States. After all, the African doctors will be the ones to be on the front lines to help their countries against malaria, child mortality, malnutrition and other diseases that threaten African nations but not foreign workers.

The African doctors fighting Ebola are heroes, just as much as any foreign volunteers. We cannot leave them behind to die.

Karen Attiah is the Washington Post's Opinions Deputy Digital Editor.

Ebola Outbreak: Clinics Still Short on Doctors, Supplies Six Months Later

Medical clinic in Sierra Leone.

Bulk of promised global aid has yet to materialize on the ground

The Associated Press
Sep 28, 2014 9:34 AM ET

Ebola clinics like this one in  Kenema, Sierra Leone, have been packed with patients and are short on medical supplies and personnel. The bulk of the aid Western nations have promised to help West African countries contain the epidemic has not yet materialized even though it has been six months since the outbreak of the vitus began.

Doctors are in short supply. So are beds for patients. Six months after the Ebola outbreak emerged for the first time in an unprepared West Africa and eventually became the worst-ever outbreak, the gap between what has been sent by other countries and private groups and what is needed is huge.

Even as countries try to marshal more resources, those needs threaten to become much greater, and possibly even insurmountable.

Fourteen-year-old D.J. Mulbah was taken by his mother and grandmother on Saturday in desperate pursuit of a coveted bed at the Ebola clinic run by Doctors Without Borders in Monrovia, Liberia's capital. Too weak to stand, he was put into a taxi with his backpack and a bucket for vomit. Now he lay on the dirt beside the worried women.

"He's been sick for a week with a runny stomach," said his mother, wiping the sweat off the boy's brow with her bare hands. "We tried calling an ambulance days ago, but nobody ever came."

Beds are filling up as fast as clinics can be built. Ambulance sirens blare through standstill traffic. Often, there is nowhere to take the sick except to "holding centres" where they await a bed at an Ebola treatment facility.

The virus has killed almost 3,000 people and infected more than 6,200 in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal.

Global response inadequate

By 8 a.m., a dozen people who likely have Ebola are crouching and sitting on the ground outside the padlocked metal gates of a facility with a capacity of 160 patients. Soon, a triage nurse approaches, her voice muffled through a surgical mask covered by a plastic face shield. The clinic will take the boy. D.J. manages a faint smile. Seven of the 30 beds made available Saturday morning were vacated by survivors. The rest had died.

Statistics reviewed by The Associated Press and interviews with experts and those on the scene of one of the worst health disasters in modern history show how great the needs are and how little the world has done in response. Some foreign medical workers have bravely fought on, a few even contracting Ebola themselves as they cared for patients.

Experts warn that the window of opportunity to snuff out the dreaded disease may close unless promises of additional assistance immediately become reality.

The existing bed capacity for Ebola patients in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria is about 820, well short of the 2,900 beds that are currently needed, according to the World Health Organization. Recently, 737 beds were pledged by countries. Yet even after the promised treatment facilities are built, they will still be at least 2,100 beds short.

The shortage of health workers is also great. The WHO has estimated that 1,000 to 2,000 international health workers are needed in West Africa. More than 200 local health workers have died of Ebola trying to save patients, complicating recruitment efforts.

Doctors Without Borders, which has more Ebola clinics than anyone, currently has 248 foreign aid workers in the region.

On Saturday, Liberia's chief medical officer, Bernice Dahn, placed herself under quarantine after her assistant died of Ebola.

Among other promises of global assistance:

The African Union has said it will deploy 100 health workers to assist the West African countries affected by Ebola. The first batch of an AU Ebola taskforce, totaling 30 people, left for Liberia on Sept. 18. Taskforce members are expected to arrive in Sierra Leone on Oct. 5 and in Guinea by the end of October.

Canada promised an additional $30 million in aid last week to go to prevention and treatment efforts.
Dr. Joanne Liu, international president of Doctors Without Borders, urged world leaders this week to take "immediate action."

"The reality on the ground today is this: The promised surge has not yet delivered," she said.

MSF and other aid workers are distributing home-care kits with gloves and surgical gowns to try and keep those awaiting hospital beds from infecting relatives at home, though only several thousand kits are being distributed in Monrovia, a city of 1.6 million.

"We have been working furiously trying to set up treatment centres, but (incoming patients) have been outpacing our ability to set them up," said Dr. Frank Mahoney, co-lead of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control team in Liberia.

Meanwhile, the National Institutes of Healthsaid Sunday it is preparing to care for an American doctor who was exposed to the Ebola virus while volunteering in Sierra Leone.

Out of what the agency called "an abundance of caution," the physician is expected to be admitted to the special isolation unit at the NIH's hospital near the nation's capital for observation. No other details were divulged.

Outbreak will get harder to contain

Unless the situation is put under control, the outbreak may infect as many as 1.4 million people by the end of the year and nearly half of those people could die, the CDC estimated this week. More than 3,000 are currently believed to have died from Ebola, which is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of the sick.

If more people get sick than those who recover or die, the needs will grow even more pronounced.

"If this outbreak continues, the sheer caseload will make it much more difficult to contain," said Dr. Bruce Aylward, assistant-director general in charge of emergencies at WHO. "We will need more health workers to take care of them, more PPE (protective suits), more hospitals, more of everything."

Why Canada must approach Ebola outbreak like a natural A top priority is sending enough protective equipment, including gloves, gowns, masks and boots. WHO is shipping about 240,000 protective suits a month in addition to supplies sent by other agencies. Under-sourced clinics are reportedly washing and reusing protective gear that is meant to be worn once and burned.

"We still do have gaps in the supply, which are quite significant," said Antonio Vigilante, the deputy special representative of the UN secretary-general in Liberia. "Nobody expected that the requirements of protective gear would go in the order of millions." Liberia now requires an estimated 1.3 million protective suits, Vigilante said.

One of the world's top makers of the suits, DuPont, says it has more than doubled production but would not say who has placed orders. Officials are also looking into whether protective clothing can be locally produced.

"The situation on the ground is just disastrous," said Dr. Heinz Feldmann, chief of virology at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who recently returned from Liberia.

"The idea of having hundreds of people in tent structures for Ebola management is unbelievable but the way this is spreading, we need to find a solution now."

U.S. Troops Battling Ebola Get Off to Slow Start in Africa

Body of Ebola victim being removed.

Rare Military Effort Comes as Concerns Mount Over Epidemic's Expansion

By DREW HINSHAW in Robertsville, Liberia, and BETSY MCKAY in Atlanta
Sept. 28, 2014 8:06 p.m. ET

The American military effort against history's deadliest Ebola outbreak is taking shape in West Africa, but concerns are mounting that the pace isn't fast enough to check a virus that is spreading at a terrifying clip.

On Saturday, a handful of troops from the Navy's 133rd Mobile Construction Battalion led a bulldozer through thigh-high grass outside Liberia's main airport, bottles of hand sanitizer dangling from their belt loops.

They had been digging a parking lot in the East African nation of Djibouti this month when they received a call to build the first of a dozen or more tent hospitals the U.S intends to construct in this region. The soldiers started by giving the land a downward slope for water runoff—"to keep out any unwanted reptiles," said Petty Officer Second Class Justin Holsinger.

While this team levels the earth, superiors hash out the still-uncertain details of the American intervention here.

The epidemic is showing signs of gaining speed—6,574 cases had been reported officially as of Sept. 23, with 3,091 deaths. Those fatalities are more than double the number of both a month ago. The actual number of cases is believed to be three or four times as high. Had no international aid come, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, the number of cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone might have soared to 1.4 million by mid-January.

On Sunday, meanwhile, the National Institutes of Health said it is preparing to care for an American doctor who was exposed to the Ebola virus while volunteering in Sierra Leone.

"There is no argument the disease is out in front of the response," said Ken Isaacs, vice president of programs and government relations for Samaritan's Purse, who as an expert in humanitarian assistance is leading who is leading the relief organization's Ebola efforts in Liberia. In terms of response, he added, "where we are today is where we should have been 60 to 90 days ago."


A local health official checks the temperature of a newly arrived U.S. soldier at the airport in Robertsfield, Liberia, as other troops disembark. Glenna Gordon for The Wall Street Journal
Now, some help has arrived, partly in the form of a rare—if not unprecedented—U.S. effort. They will level swampy grassland, unload supplies and build tents, then train thousands of nurses from Sierra Leone and Liberia to treat Ebola.

The epidemic in Liberia and Sierra Leone will likely worsen until 70% of Ebola patients can find room in a treatment center or other setting where they can't transmit the disease to others, the CDC said. Currently, just 18% do so, it said.

On Sept. 16, President Barack Obama ordered 3,000 U.S. soldiers into West Africa. In a speech at the United Nations on Thursday, Mr. Obama criticized the international response thus far and said other donors—governments and organizations—need to step up quickly with aid.

"Right now, everybody has the best of intentions, but people are not putting in the kinds of resources that are necessary to put a stop to this epidemic," he said. More nations urgently need to contribute goods and services like health-care workers, equipment and air transport, he said.

Several countries and organizations have donated money and technical assistance, from the World Bank to Cuba, which is sending 165 doctors, nurses and other health specialists to the region. But more is needed, particularly because the health systems in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea have been overwhelmed.

Other help is beginning to arrive. On Sunday morning, a privately contracted 747 cargo plane landed with 2,016 rolls of plastic sheeting from the U.S. government, one of the materials needed to build an Ebola clinic.

It would take hours to unload the plane, the crew said. Liberia's airport, built in 1942, had just three small forklifts. U.S. Air Force personnel will also have to repair the runway, or for the time being, just paint it so planes don't land on parts in disrepair.

"Some companies would rather go to Afghanistan than come here," said the plane's loadmaster, Felix Curtis.

In the cockpit, a nervous first officer was wearing surgical gloves, a medical mask on his seat. He shared a pen with a Liberian, then darted to the bathroom to wash his hands: "Am I going to be OK?" he asked.

The files on most of Liberia's Ebola cases are stored in three-ring binders on a shelf in an abandoned World War II-era chimpanzee testing lab, filled with bats. That is where the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases conducts blood tests for Ebola. A small three-ring binder holds all the case files from April 15 to Aug. 12. A binder twice that size holds the files from just five days in late September.

"Well," said Alec Hail, the doctor who supervises the testing. "That's remarkable."

Even with the U.S. response, the CDC fears thousands more lives may still be lost. New centers are filling up as quickly as they are built. On Sept. 21, the World Health Organization opened its second clinic in Monrovia, Liberia's capital. By evening, every bed was taken.

"I don't think we can open them any faster," said head clinician Anne Deborah Omoruto Atai. Near the doctor's office, a fierce rainstorm was flooding part of the clinic.

Meanwhile, the embattled Liberian government is struggling to manage a response to the disease. Last week, an official at the health ministry—the focal point for the Ebola effort—died of Ebola.

Other workers abandoned the building, which on Thursday was being sprayed with chlorine. The next morning, the chief medical officer placed herself under 21-day quarantine, on concerns that she had been exposed.

That situation has created a desperate groundswell of support for the U.S. military mission here. "We want the U.S. Army to take over this entire situation," said Sarka Weah, among a group of men watching the naval unit bulldoze the field.

"Yes!" screamed the others.

The clinic will only hold 25 beds, and not for ordinary Liberians: just health workers. U.S. officials hope it will entice other countries to send their own nurses and doctors.

"It's hard to know where all they'll come from," said Frank Mahoney, who heads the CDC's Ebola response in Liberia.

This month, the U.S. Agency for International Development helped Liberia's government convert an unused conference room in a telecommunications building into a war room. The U.S. aid agency had 12 tables wooden built, helped restore running water to the toilets and brought in filing cabinets from the U.S. Embassy, said people involved that effort.

Last Tuesday evening, James Dorbah Jallah, the national coordinator of Liberia's Ebola Task Force, sat in the war room trying to get bottled water delivered to an Ebola clinic that had run out.

"It's not possible," said the supervisor of the government's motor pool over speakerphone. "Everybody's gone home."

Write to Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com and Betsy McKay at betsy.mckay@wsj.com

Ferguson Officer Shot; Two Suspects Wanted

By JIM SALTER, Associated Press
11:24 pm, Saturday, September 27, 2014

FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — A Ferguson police officer was shot in the arm Saturday night after encountering two men at a community center who ran from him and then opened fire during a foot chase, authorities said.

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said at a media briefing early Sunday that the officer approached the men around 9:10 p.m. because the community center was closed. As the officer approached, the men ran away. When the officer gave chase, "one of the men turned and shot," Belmar said.

The officer was shot in the arm and is expected to survive, he said. Belmar did not identify the officer or give further details about his condition. He said the officer returned fire but said police have "no indication" that either suspect was shot.

A search was underway for the suspects early Sunday in Ferguson, the St. Louis suburb that's been the scene of racial unrest in the wake of the August shooting death of an unarmed black 18-year-old by a white police officer.

Belmar said he did not think the officer's shooting was related to two separate protests about Michael Brown's shooting that were going on Saturday night around the same time.

Around midnight at the police station, approximately two dozen officers stood near a group of about 100 protesters who mingled on a street corner, occasionally shouting, "No justice; no peace."

Nearby, part of a road was closed in town as police conducted a search for the suspects. Numerous law enforcement agencies were responding, and police helicopters were canvassing the area.

The officer's shooting comes after Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson issued a videotaped apology to Brown's family earlier in the week and attempted to march with protesters, an effort that led to a clash with activists and several arrests on Thursday.

A county grand jury is weighing whether to indict Ferguson officer Darren Wilson in Brown's shooting.

The Justice Department, which is investigating whether Brown's civil rights were violated, is conducting a broader probe into Ferguson police. On Friday, it urged Jackson to ban his officers from wearing bracelets supporting Wilson while on duty and from covering up their name plates with black tape.

Ferguson residents complained about the bracelets, which are black with "I am Darren Wilson" in white lettering, at a meeting with federal officials this week.

Brown's shooting has also focused attention on the lack of diversity in many police departments across the country. In Ferguson, of 53 officers in a community that is two-thirds black, only three are African-American.

SACP Statement at Communications Workers Union, National Congress, 23-25 September 2014 as Presented by Second Deputy General Secretary, Comrade Solly Mapaila

Solly Mapaila is the Second Deputy Secretary General of the
South African Communist Party (SACP).

25 September 2014

Comrade President of the CWU and All National Office Bearers;
Leaders and delegates from the various levels of the union;
Leaders from the Alliance partners, ANC, COSATU and SANCO present here today;
Distinguished Guests,

Allow me for and on behalf of the entire membership of the South African Communist Party to convey warm revolutionary greetings from our Central Committee. The SACP looks forward to fruitful discussions from this Congress and wishes it all the successes it needs to move the Communications Workers Union forward to greater heights.

Technological revolution and restructuring in the communications industry

This Congress convenes at the time when the communications industry has restructured almost fundamentally in the last 2-3 decades.

The restructuring in the communications industry has occurred through a technological revolution and the transcending of new information and communications technologies in the industry and the household. The development and evolution of computer technology and software applications used in desktops, laptops, tablets and smart phones represent the latest, cutting edge advances in this regard.

These, coupled with new capabilities such as flexibility and adaptability to ever growing software applications, together with the constant restructuring of the internet through a robust growth in social network facilities and multi-media platforms, have enormously restructured the communications industry, the methods and avenues of communication, as well as both the structures of production and employment.

In the midst of this restructuring there is a further process of change that is taking place in the print media.

As people shift their decisions on sources of information and news, and even get involved in directly publishing and broadcasting news through online platforms, newspapers and magazines are experiencing new challenges to circulation volumes. In fact there are increasing questions about whether the figures on newspaper sales and circulations that are reported to be still high represent the true reflection of reality for some publications.

In addition, in South Africa there are newspapers that survive, and not by a small measure, on state advertisements. The Sunday Times falls in this category. In fact it could as well be that it is state advertisement that sells more than the hostile news content that some of the newspapers are pushing against the government, while at the same time the state is spending millions of Rand on a daily or weekly or monthly basis in sustaining or keeping such papers to stay afloat.

This backs the questions:

Why is the state not considering alternatives to directly reap the benefits of the sale of its advertisements by such newspapers and cut the cost if not the waste of spending millions of Rand in supporting their hostile news propaganda? Why is the state not considering the demand for its advertisements as a strategic lever of power to achieve transformation, not only in terms of ownership and control, but also decent work, fair, accurate, balanced and objective reporting?

These are some of the vexing questions that must not be avoided as we discuss the restructuring in the communications industry and the need for transformation in the media. We must take these and other transformational questions seriously and press ahead with change to benefit the people as a whole, the majority of who are the workers and poor. This is important for the second radical phase of our democratic transition as headed by, and under the leadership of, the National Democratic Revolution (NDR).

There can also be no that foreign intelligence forces have extensively infiltrated the media. But the way they go about it shows that they have lost their covert basis. Their agenda is overtly clear: anti-liberation movement and pro-anything that opposes our revolution. They are sustained by a leaking intelligence service.

It is critical for unions organising in, and in particular the Communications Workers Union as a progressive union to constantly study the changes that are taking place in the communications industry and the media. This is because, as you now know from your lived experience, restructuring has serious implications and consequences for employment, trade union organisation and numerical strength.

As the old, traditional communications industry was negated and the new one that we have briefly described developed many workers were retrenched from traditional communications industry jobs. The number of workers, for instance who were previously employed both by the Post Office and Telkom, has been reduced drastically. A few months ago as you were making preparations for this Congress, Telkom was contemplating further reductions of its workforce by thousands, all for profit maximisation linked with its previous partial privatisation and full commercialisation.

The cell phone sector has introduced new structures and relationships of employment as compared to the traditional landline telephone sector. This has affected mainly the jobs that were and remain important in the landline telephone sector, but which have been cut off in the cell phone sector given the differences in the structure of production, including signal distribution and related maintenance requirements.

Computer, internet, and cell phone technologies and new end-user applications have obviously also had serious consequences for employment at the Post Office as well.

As neoliberal restructuring entrenched, at both the Post Office and Telkom a phenomenon of labour brokers has taken root. The Communications Workers Union has been fighting against it, and the Communist Party fully supports the fight.

Labour brokers must be abolished once and for all. We have given sufficient reasons for this just cause and have written volumes of materials; it is therefore not necessary to replay our reasons here today because this would amount to preaching to the converted.

What we can say about this ‘Proletarian Slave Traders`, the parasitic labour brokers who deepen the exploitation of labour and its subordination to capital, is that we must fight them everywhere; we must intensify the fight against the system. The private sector which dominates the cell phone market through big corporations such as Vodacom, MTN, Cell C and Virgin Mobile is also using labour brokers, and cannot be left to run away with murder or with the blood of the workers on its hands.

In addition, the Communications Workers Union will have to look at its own organising and collective bargaining strategy on a constant basis, this in order to keep pace with the times with an effectively responsive posture.

The cell phone sector for example has many small and outsourced outlets which trade in cell phone, laptop, tablet and broadband products, technologies and associated services. There is a difference between organising in this context and organising in a big firm such as Telkom, for example.

The articulation of collective bargaining towards the achievement of COSATU`s objectives of centralised sectoral and industry bargaining will equally require increased efforts, new strategies and tactics.

In the recent past Vodacom announced the takeover of Neotel. The Communications Workers Union, based on its structural location in this sector, should help us develop clarity on what the implications of this transaction are or would be going forward. In its inception, Neotel was reportedly introduced as the second landline operator after Telkom which is partly owned of the state. It will be fruitful for us and all to know how the union has engaged with this process of concentration.

In the broadcasting industry, both radio and television, an agenda has been forged that is anti-ANC, anti-ANC led government, anti-Alliance, and indeed anti-NDR. More and more there are radio stations and television channels that are being used and have effectively joined the hostile press content that is all bent against our democratic revolutionary movement.

In fact a tendency has emerged among some radio and television broadcasters, including at the public broadcaster - SABC through some radio stations or even television channels to be an appendage, content-wise, of the hostile conservative and liberal press and even imperialist news agents. In addition, we are being bombarded on international developments with news content sourced from the all biased Western Imperialist News Agencies.

We would appreciate how the Communications Workers Unions views these developments, and what its organisational and political strategies are to turn the tables.

Your views on the posture of the SABC and radio stations such as SA FM will be of great importance for our consideration.

Also importantly, for a while now our country could not advance from analogue to digital television broadcasting migration. Taking advantage of your structural location in this sector, we are looking forward to hearing from this Congress what caused the delay and what the dynamics and the way forward are to meet the 2015 digital migration deadline. We are aware that there has been competition to privately accumulate as much capital as possible from the analogue to digital migration. Your analysis of the forces involved and the way forward for change will be valuable for consideration to us.

The digital broadcasting platform will bring about a wide range of opportunities. It is of great interest to us to know how the union has prepared itself for the analogue to digital migration organisationally and politically. What are the union`s plans to seize the opportunities that will come with the digital migration? In particular, how will the union use this opportunity to build itself stronger than even before?

Following the May 7th, Fifth Democratic General Election the government was restructured. This included two separate Ministries of Communications, Telecommunications and Postal Services. One of the reasons for this restructuring was that the telecommunication and information technology sector has become an important area with potential growth.

In addition, in his State of the Nation Address following inauguration after the election President Jacob Zuma outlined an infrastructural development plan to drive manufacturing and industrialisation and press our second, more radical phase of transition forward. This infrastructure programme includes telecommunication and information technology.

The SACP is looking forward to your reflections on these pertinent issues, and more particularly on how, as a progressive union, you believe these programmes should benefit the workers and poor economically and socially, as well as trade union organising.

The hooliganisation of Parliament

Following the Fifth Democratic General Election we are increasingly observing the hooliganisation of Parliament. This occurs through provocative, childish and theatrical disruptions, un-Parliamentary conduct of a lumpen and rascal type in character displayed by a proto-fascist party that is led by the most corrupt tenderpreneur. Ironically, there are sections of the media and so-called independent analysts who have dubbed this shameful conduct "robust" and "vibrant".

This occurs at a time when there is a well-co-ordinated destabilisation campaign being waged by an axis of external and internal forces in our country, the latter often being turned into the agents of imperialist agendas. External forces provide support and funding to some political and so-called civil society organisations, and to some media houses which have been turned into opposition and regime change media in action. A part of this funding is given under a false pretext alleging that there is either no freedom of speech or there are threats to freedom of speech in South Africa.

This is the context in which some of the so-called civil society organisations are involved in manufacturing a propaganda that reinforces the false pretext regarding freedom of speech in our country.

It is in this context that reports such as the "Right 2 Know`s" "Secret State of the Nation Report 2014" are being fabricated and prominently publicised; as we have seen, the Mail & Guardian newspaper has widely given prominence to the report, and, ironically, even the public broadcaster through SA FM.

It is in this context that we have seen the Public Protector`s Nkandla report being pushed through short-cuts, disregarding the due process that is unfolding in Parliament, the role of Parliament, its powers and functions as vested upon it by our Constitution.

All this happens when by the way there is no finding in the report that the President is corrupt; when, at the same time, we hear nothing about two of Public Protector`s reports concerning the leader of the proto-fascist party, the plunderer of Limpopo. In a Report titled "On the Point of Tenders", the Public Protector found that this corrupt tenderpreneur benefited money through his private, Ratanang Family Trust and equal interest in Guilder Investment, from fraudulent, corrupt and unlawful activities.

This is the context in which there is a new right-wing alliance that has emerged under the leadership of the DA, a party of apartheid white privilege with a double agenda that combines such conservatism and liberalism. This new right-wing alliance comprises of the EFF, that proto-fascist party led by the most corrupt tenderpreneur, and COPE, UDM and the FF Plus.

It is in this context that the same media that vilified the leader of the EFF when he was a member of the ANC is now putting him on the front page - "a hero on the same level as Verwoerd", as highlighted in the Umsebenzi Online published 19 September 2014.

This is the context in which the right-wing alliance of reactionary parties in Parliament, after seeing their EFF storm-troopers disrupt the institution, have now wasted more valuable parliamentary time by bringing the so-called motion of no confidence against the Speaker, Comrade Baleka Mbete. Having no real arguments that can make South Africa a better place, these right-wing reactionary parties are bent on making the hooliganisation of Parliament acceptable, and making South Africa a better place only for the richest 1% and their imperialist backers. In the process, they are being profiled through media coverage.

From the sterile arguments they presented in Parliament on the failed "motion of no confidence" it is obvious that our Constitution is under attack. In addition, these reactionary parties are pushing for an undemocratic parliamentary regime where the Speaker would be an unelected person.

All of these point to vehement opposition to our second, more radical second phase of transition.

Defeat reactionary forces, defeat imperialist backed forces!

Advance, deepen and defend the second radical phase of our transition and intensify the struggle for socialism!

In the next few weeks the SACP will be launching a discussion paper for consideration by our entire democratic revolutionary movement and the people as a whole on the basic content of and taking forward this second phase of the NDR.

As the SACP we believe that the NDR is not a detour; we believe that it is neither a stage in which capitalism still has to be "completed"; on the contrary, we believe that the NDR is the shortest, more direct and most suited route to socialism in the specific conditions of our country and its historical context. As our Party Programme correctly asserts that the NDR is the South African Road to Socialism!

The radicalisation and radicalising effect of the NDR must propel our march to the completion of the NDR and the achievement of the goals of the ‘Freedom Charter`. The SACP believes this will lay the indispensable basis for an advance to socialism. Conversely, by advancing and deepening the struggle through building the elements of, capacity for, momentum towards, in the here and now, socialism, and through taking responsibility for, we will actually be radicalising the NDR and propelling it to its logical conclusion.

That is why as the SACP we say:

Socialism is the Future; Build it now; With and for the Workers and the Poor!

Let us defend the unity and cohesion of our movement!

As part of advancing, deepening and defending the NDR and the struggle for socialism, in their interrelatedness, we must do all in our capacity to defend the unity of the progressive and democratic revolutionary forces of change. This is why as the SACP we support the efforts that are underway in our Alliance to defend COSATU from disunity, to restore and develop its unity and cohesion.

Holding together united a National Liberation Movement that is leading the government in the context of the economy that is controlled by hostile class forces and in the context where imperialist forces have become more aggressive as they seek recovery from multiple interacting crises is not a simple task. However, we must do everything in our capacity to emerge united. As COSATU says in its slogan: ‘An injury to one is an injury to all`.

The victory of division and disunity among the ranks of the workers and our National Liberation Movement and within COSATU is the victory of hostile class forces. Such a victory can only benefit the exploiters of the workers and postpone the universal social emancipation that they need, encompassing complete political freedom and economic and social emancipation.

Let us therefore remember and be guided by the wise revolutionary words from the longest serving ANC President, Comrade OR about returning the ANC back home intact after 30 years of illegality, exile and underground existence when he said:

"…we did not tear ourselves apart because of lack of progress at times. We were always ready to accept our mistakes and to correct them. Above all we succeeded to foster and defend the unity of the ANC and the unity of our people in general. Even in bleak moments, we were never in doubt regarding the winning of freedom. We have never been in doubt that the people`s cause shall triumph." (Opening address to the ANC`s 48th National Conference, Durban, 2 JULY 1991).

Naivety is the game of fools and those who hide behind insults and ignorance!

Who are the defenders of the CIA in South Africa?

If you analyse and look at all those who condemned Comrade Kebby Maphatsoe, none of them have ever spoken against the CIA. We should never deny the existence of foreign intelligence agencies and, even, their legal collaboration with their counterparts in various countries, including ours. This part of relations is allowed

This does not take away the fact they will use their legal position together with infiltration to obtain unofficial information and to pursue their own agenda.

They will play around with institutions that deal with strategic information for economic development and research, defence, security and nuclear and energy, as well as mass organisations such as trade unions. Hence our people should be taught to protect national assets and information; for instance it should be standard practice for anyone not to talk loosely about the security of the country especially to any foreigner as this may unwittingly compromise national security, which is your security.

In defence of the Public Protector, let us not throw away our vigilance and create impressions that the CIA has no agents in our country and security system. The CIA recruits judges and members of the judiciary, army and police generals, commissioners and officers, professors and academics, editors and Journalists, politicians and trade unionists, youth leaders and technicians, businessmen and women; they actually recruit all sectors of society relevant to what they want or are pursuing at the time. This is how Dr Wouter Basson was recruited to work with the apartheid regime in the biological warfare unit.

In fact, in the book, Inside British Intelligence: 100 Years of MI5 and MI6 by Gordon Thomas he asserts that indeed the recruitment included "people with a deep cover protected though their daily jobs such as school teachers, college professors, doctors, nurses, shopkeepers and salespeople".

So it is absolute nonsense to defend the CIA in the name of Thuli Madonsela. We need to separate these two matters, the allegation and the institution - CIA that is notorious for orchestrating the killings of many people world-wide.

It is clear some have cast their banner on the mast. They have chosen the CIA over one of their own. Shame on all those South Africans who never condemned the CIA and its role in Africa and the world over whilst condemning the mistake of a freedom fighter!

Oh well! Naivety is the game of fools and those who hide behind insults and ignorance.

As the late Comrade Tshepo Semudi would recite in his revolutionary poem ‘Give the enemy no quarter`, this is the clarion call to all our people and the working class who have nothing to lose but their CIA imperialist chains of slavery. Free yourself!

The shocking defence of the CIA by various sectors of our society in particular the media is not surprising but reveals a lot. What is shocking is the tacit support expressed in different quarters of our society for the CIA. This is one of the most disturbing revelations since the beginning of our democracy 20 years ago. In the language of management scholars, this should surely rank as a major game changer in the way we, or should, look at our revolution.

The danger of denouncing and demeaning any statement about the existence of CIA agents in our country, as a blind ploy to "defend" the Public Protector, is dangerous, misleading and plays into the insatiable desire of the CIA to strike even harder and infiltrate its agents within our society.

They will finish our revolution, like they did with the revolutions of many Latin American and African countries.

Who killed Patrice Lumumba?

Who killed Thomas Sankara?

Who killed Che Guevara?

Who killed Salvador Allende?

They are interested in ruling other countries by political and economic remote control to meet their insatiable appetite for resources, consumerism and most of all, private capital accumulation and world domination.

Beware of these forces. They will divide us, scatter us, and then rule us. Let us keep our eyes on the ball and remain vigilant; let us defend the Office of the Public Protector and equally condemn the CIA.

In the first instance we must investigate any alleged connection between the CIA and any South African state institutions rather than simply be dismissive and in denial. These is a serious matter, and will also be in the interest of anyone who is allegedly implicated to clear their name and remove lingering suspicion and mistrust.

The SACP wishes this Congress unity, cohesion, and once more all the successes it needs to achieve its objectives!

Amandla!

Forward to a full-fledged National Democratic Society, Forward!

Forward to Socialism, Forward!

Address by Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary of COSATU, to the National Congress of the Communication Workers Union

Zwelinzima Vavi is the secretary general of COSATU.

23 September 2014

I bring comradely greetings from the National Office Bearers and 2.2 million members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and best wishes for a successful National Congress.

You are meeting just a few weeks before COSATU’s 2014 Central Committee, our second highest democratic structure, which will meet from 10-12 November 2014. Its role, laid down in the Constitution, is to “adopt general and specific policy measures which further the aims and objects of the Federation by means of resolution between meetings of National Congresses”. I shall return later to some of the key questions the Central Committee must resolve.

Your members work in one of the world’s fastest growing sectors - information and communications technology (ICT) - which is developing at an astonishing rate. Worldwide spending on ICT is forecast to reach R40.3 trillion by 2018. South Africa`s cell phone market has been the fourth fastest-growing mobile phone market in the world. The internet is revolutionising the way in which we communicate.

Logically therefore it ought to be a sector creating lots of new jobs and rising prosperity for all. Sadly, but not surprisingly however, the reality is that it is an industry with all the worst features of older capitalist businesses. It generates vast profits for a few super-rich big multi-national monopolies, while leaving workers, especially in the developing world, with a few crumbs.

A letter signed from the ITUC and 163 other trade union and civil society organisations in 2013 expressed its concerns about a new Information Technology Agreement (ITA-II) which, if agreed, will remove protective tariffs from more ICT products than those already covered by the earlier ITA-I.

ITUC warn that this “will likely benefit mainly multinational enterprises that control patent monopolies and impede technology transfer. It could further harm workers, particularly in developing countries, that have yet not benefited from the previous agreement, and possibly deteriorate the developmental prospects for those which participate”.

“The information and communication technology (ICT) sector, said the letter, “has enormous capacity to contribute to domestic industry creation, employment generation, and technological development. Unfortunately, claims of the ITA’s potential benefits have failed to materialize for the majority of workers in participating countries.

“Instead of promoting industrial capacity, job creation, and technological diffusion, the ITA has eroded policy space for the majority of developing country participants. Experiences with the ITA indicate that from the point of view of developing and Least Developed Countries (LDCs), irreversible and binding commitments under the potential ITA-II could likely damage their present and future growth potential.”

Your members have experienced exactly what the ITUC was warning against. Far from sharing in the wealth being created in your industry, you have been embroiled in bitter battles to stop retrenchments and fight against the exploitation of the workers.

This is to be expected with private cell-phone companies, whose role it to make profits. But we face exactly the same problems with state-owned enterprises - the Post Office, Telkom, and the SABC - whose mandates are to serve the wider interests of the country and development, but which are run as badly, or even worse than, private companies as they struggle to maximise profits at the expense of both their workers and the community.

What is even worse is that the resulting crises of maladministration and labour disputes are then used as propaganda by business to support their call for privatisation, which we must keep fighting to stop, especially as the private sector is already gaining ground in all the sectors in which your members work, with the increasing dominance of cell-phone companies, courier services, and private TV and radio stations.

Telkom

We totally agree with your statement on Telkom in May, which “noted with disgust the ill-informed and extremely insensitive intention to retrench close to 1000 employees in managerial and specialist ranks beginning with 700 managers in the first phase... [which] defeats and goes against the grain of government’s objectives of job creation and job retention.” We could not have put it better.

As you say, Telkom “has already shed thousands of jobs during earlier rounds of restructuring and cannot afford another major jobs bloodbath... Our country still lags behind in terms of telecommunications infrastructure and resources which are so crucial for a growing modern economy”.

Rather than seizing the opportunity to recruit more workers and expand into this mushrooming sector, in line with the government’s, and Telkom’s own, developmental policies and targets, they are acting as we would expect a private company to act, with policies dictated purely by the need to maximise profits.

Let us remember what the RDP said Telkom should provide: “universal affordable access for all as rapidly as possible within a sustainable and viable telecommunications system; to develop a modern and integrated telecommunications and information technology system that is capable of enhancing, cheapening and facilitating education, health care, business information, public administration and rural development.”

How well has Telkom complied? These are some of the damning quotes from a 2012 Presidency Green paper on Compliance of State-Owned Entities to the Government’s Transformation Agenda (my emphasis):

- On management control: “All the SOEs with the exception of Telkom have achieved a good score”

- On employment equity compliance: “The SOEs that scored badly (below 10%) are Armscor, CSIR, PetroSA, SAFCOL and Telkom”

- On skills development compliance: “SOEs that have scored badly (under 10%) include Armscor, City Power, SAA, SABC, and Telkom”

- On enterprise development compliance: “Telkom performed worst in this element”.

SA Post office

At the Post Office, you rightly say that you were “flabbergasted” at SAPO’s intransigence and arrogance. Here again we have a publicly owned body acting like the worst kind of private, profit-orientated outfit, even going to court to interdict your legitimate and justified action to raise your poverty pay.

As you said, this was “a desperate effort on the part of the company to frustrate and thwart the united action of an organized working class which is resolute in pursuit of their right to better working conditions and a better life for them and their dependants.”

SABC

On the SABC, our fight is broader than defending jobs, better pay and outstanding bonuses, but to save our public broadcaster from collapsing completely into the corrupt, bankrupt and factional institution, towards which it is already sliding.

While the SABC still puts out some good programmes, it is failing to comply with the mandate to reflect all aspects of the lives and concerns of the people of South Africa, and is drowning in a succession of scandals.

That is why we welcome the statement you put out with BEMAWU, that “The SABC is in a sorry state, with repeats being broadcast, even on news, and millions of rands are pushed into new projects like the 24-hour news channel broadcast on a not free to air channel and only accessible to the few privileged who can afford DSTV subscription.”

We are fully behind your demand that the Minister of Communications urgently order a proper investigation and decisive action into the allegations made by the Public Protector in "When governance and ethics fail" which has implicated members of the board, executives of the SABC and senior management in maladministration and abuse of power.”

We are planning an Alliance march to the SABC, on the demand to reinstate the Generations 16 and all the other issues you raise in your statement.

My comrades

All these issues we are raising constitute a summary of the central challenges facing the working class, which is rampant neoliberalism that works to commodify the provision of basic services through commercialisation, outsourcing and use of labour brokers, whilst destroying quality jobs and replacing them with precarious employment. This is at the centre of the strike by labour brokered Post Office workers.

Our central message to this congress, comrades, is this. Workers have heard us a million times articulating their plight. They have heard us talking about the triple crisis of unemployment, poverty and inequalities. They know that our employment at 36.5% is a ticking bomb. They know that 23 million South Africans live below poverty line and that 13 million can`t afford to put food on the table every night.

They have heard us before speaking about corruption and crime. They have heard us before complaining about the dysfunctional tripartite alliance which runs only one campaign - elections - and nothing more.

Every time they hear us the question they ask is - what are you doing about our plight? This is the challenge we face comrades. Failure to answer effectively the central question may result in our irrelevance. Already you know that you facing splinter groupings in both Telkom and the Post Office. You know your union has not been able to respond effectively to the challenges we face in the telecommunications industry. You know your union, notwithstanding job loss bloodbaths in Telkom and Post Office, should be growing fast in the cellphone and call centres.

This is the combination of the challenge you face at this congress comrades. Let me repeat: you have to answer the question - what will you do about the plight of labour brokered workers in the ICT sector? The only way we can answer that, through consistent action, is through repositioning the union to overcome its current weaknesses whist multiplying its current strengths. This brings me to COSATU 6th Central Committee taking place towards the end of this year.

My Comrades

The Central Committee in November has to assess progress on implementing our 11th National Congress policies and decide what needs to be done to ensure that they are being implemented. Congress summarised its conclusions thus in the Final Declaration:

1. We are not prepared to tolerate massive levels of unemployment!
2. We want labour brokers banned now!
3. We will not accept widespread poverty!
4. We cannot live with grotesque levels of inequality which have made us the most unequal society on the planet!
5. Workers are no longer prepared to tolerate poverty wages:
6. Workers are demanding that the People Shall Share in the Country`s Wealth, as promised in the Freedom Charter.

Delegates mandated us “to embark on a united and radical programme of action to realise workers legitimate demands, and to engage our communities and the broader democratic movement, to support us in these efforts”, based on these four pillars:

1. Abolish the apartheid wage structure: forward to a living wage!
2. A radical socio-economic transformation: the people shall share in the country`s wealth!
3. Build strong worker-controlled unions: organise or starve!
4. Create our own Lula moment: driving the second phase of our transition!

How far we have gone to implement this?

We have had some successes. Labour law amendments have been passed which, if properly enforced, will give workers more protection against employers like Telkom, SAPO and the SABC, and speed up transformation in the workplace. Government have agreed in principle to a national minimum wage and we look forward to engaging with them on how it will work and at what level it will be set.

Overall however, two years later, too little has changed. We have not done enough to fulfil the Congress mandate. Unemployment, poverty and inequality remain massive challenges, and are even getting worse.

Unemployment is still rising; in the second quarter of 2014, by the more realistic expanded definition, which leaves out those who have stopped looking for work, it was 35.6%. This inevitably lead to more people living in poverty, not only among the jobless, but among the thousands of employed workers who have to share their meagre earnings with as many as ten dependent unemployed family members.

Half of all employed workers earn R3000 a month or less, meaning that most South African workers can`t afford the basic necessities of life. The crisis of inequality is summed up in the statistic that 50% of the population lives on 8% of national income and the top 5% of earners earn 30 times more than the bottom 5%. The share of workers in national income declined from 55% in 2000 to 49% in 2008.

There are specific important issues which we are still struggling for – the abolition of labour brokering, scrapping e-tolls, and rewriting the conservative, neoliberal elements of the National Development Plan (NDP). We still suffer from our two-tier service provision, where a still mainly white, rich minority can pay for top-class private services, while the mainly black, poor majority have to struggle with inefficient, under-resourced facilities.

We are still struggling to escape from the quagmire of crime, corruption and maladministration, in both the public and private sectors, and the failure to bring those guilty to justice. The latest shocking crime stats must be a wake-up call.

The CC must assess what progress we have made in implementing the 2nd Phase of the Transition, the radical restructuring of our economy. Some of these policies are already in place in paper – in the government’s Industrial Policy Action Plan, the National Infrastructure Plan and at least part of the New Growth Path.

But while some government departments and ministers – such as Trade and Industry and Economic Development - are moving ahead, their efforts are constantly being sabotaged, in particular by the business sector, the Treasury and Reserve Bank, who are wedded to exactly the opposite policies – conservative, free-market, neoliberal economic policies, which are also at the heart of the NDP.

Comrade delegates

The other key area where the Congress took a very strong line was organisational renewal. It warned us that “We cannot afford to fight silly battles against one another when the house is on fire”. It called for “all of us to go back to basics, focus effectively on workplace issues, organisation and recruitment, deliver service to our members, and implement our 2015 Plan!

“It is only through building powerful, unified organisation that workers will have an effective engine to drive the changes we want to see at the workplace, in the economy, and at a political level”. Congress mandated us to:
- Build strong worker-controlled unions, focused on issues of concern to our members, at the workplace, socio-economic and political levels;
- Organise the unorganised, particularly farm workers and other vulnerable and super-exploited workers, and bring all workers under the umbrella of this mighty federation.
- Develop a detailed 3-year strategy to systematically take forward the 2015 Plan, monitor implementation of this strategy, and present a report on progress to our 2015 Congress. We also mandate the CEC to update the 2015 Plan, in line with current conditions, and the discussions and Resolutions of this Congress.
- Set new recruitment targets for each sector, targeting young workers, women workers, vulnerable workers (very low paid, contract, part-time, seasonal etc), non African workers and migrant workers (including foreign nationals).
Although some work has been done to achieve these goals, we have tragically been diverted by internal disputes and divisions which have seriously disrupted our organisational work.

We have launched our campaign to organise vulnerable workers, but lots more needs to be done to organise the unorganised. There are many such workers in your sectors, such as call-centre staff, one of the fastest growing and most exploited groups of workers.

The Generations 16 dismissals revealed the exploitation and lack of union membership in the entire entertainment business. Another area where you should get more involved is the print media, where competition from internet news sites is leading to retrenchments and harsher working conditions.

A strong union in this sector will also help to speed up the transformation of media houses which still publish propaganda on behalf of their wealthy owners and big business in general, rather than the poor majority.

Comrades
Before the Central Committee, all shop stewards and activists must read the Secretariat Report which has been circulated in draft form to all affiliates. It will go through internal discussions before a final report is circulated on 10 October 2014 to all structures to allow for a month to discuss the challenges we face.

Everything possible is being done to resolve our internal problems, with the assistance of an ANC task team and a group of COSATU veterans, but this will be a key challenge before the CC. Unless we can heal the wounds and emerge more united and strong, we shall be struggling to implement Congress’s resolutions.

The CC must act decisively to put a stop to practices which lead to disunity and divisions within or between unions. We must say no to the alien cultures of factionalism, rumour-mongering and character assassination which sadly have infiltrated our movement and paralysed us.

COSATU must be an independent, worker-controlled and radical federation, still part of the restructured tripartite alliance, but mandated solely by the resolutions of National Congresses and by the needs and demands of the workers.

We must remain a militant fighting force, battling for better wages and working conditions, and fearlessly exposing white monopoly capitalism, greedy employers, corrupt politicians and incompetent officials, while never losing sight of our goal of a united non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa and a peaceful, socialist world.

I wish you all a highly successful Congress and look forward to meeting many of you again at the Birchwood Hotel on 10 November.

Patrick Craven (National Spokesperson)
Congress of South African Trade Unions
110 Jorissen Cnr Simmonds Streets
Braamfontein
2017

P.O.Box 1019
Johannesburg
2000
South Africa

Tel: +27 11 339-4911 Direct 010 219-1339
Fax: +27 11 339-6940
Mobile: +27 82 821 7456
E-Mail: patrick@cosatu.org.za

ANC Birthday Wishes for Comrade Winnie Mandela

Winnie Mandela celebreating her 78th birthday.

26 September 2014

The African National Congress wishes stalwart and ANC Member of Parliament, Comrade Winnie Nomzamo Madikizela-Mandela a happy 78th birthday today.

It is our wish that Mama`s day is one of rest and joy shared with loved ones. South Africa remains indebted to the role played by many heroes and heroines of our struggle to deliver our freedom. We thank her and many other dedicated freedom fighters for their loyalty to the African National Congress. As we mark Comrade Nomzamo`s birthday today it is with a sense of gratitude to her and her generation for their selfless and unflinching sacrifices.

Issued by
Zizi Kodwa
National Spokesperson
African National Congress

Enquiries
Keith Khoza 0828239672
Khusela Sangoni 0795105408

Adoption of Jonathan Was a Product of Sacrifice — Gov. Akpabio

Nigerian Gov. Chief Godswill Akpabio of Akwa
Ibom state.

September 28, 2014
Nigerian Vanguard

’Our action will shake the opposition’
•Speaks on fake churches and kid witches

BY HENRY UMORU

In this interview, Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State  bares his mind on why the PDP governors endorsed President Goodluck Jonathan for 2015 ahead of the December 6 National Convention of the party, the achievements of the PDP-led Federal Government, his state, his massive support for Jonathan,  and his next political move, that is, his senatorial ambition, among other issues.

Akpabio spoke after the PDP performance tour team, anchored by the Chief Olisa Metuh-led National Publicity Secretariat department of the PDP, visited his state.

Do you think the PDP has done enough to enhance the nation’s democracy?

I think considering the time frame when PDP took over power in 1999, PDP has done very well. There is stability in the polity and there is steady progress. And in spite of challenges faced by the party, challenges which are global in nature, such as insecurity,particularly the recent insurgency in some zones in the country, PDP has been able to give hope to future generation of Nigeria.

So many things have been done in the country that were hitherto not even contemplated. And PDP has been able to grow the economy to a point that today one  can say that Nigeria has the largest economy in the whole of Africa and the 24th largest economy in the world. Infrastructures that had decayed have now been rehabilitated.

And I am excited that today we now have a second Niger bridge under construction. We have the railway that  is working. We can travel now from Lagos to Kano. We can move all the way from Lagos thorough Ore going to Onitsha.

If you get to a place like Onitsha for instance, you will be  amazed. The dump that we used to have as a central location in Onitsha is gone. This, I believe,  is evidence of action. The improvement in education is legendary. The PDP administration, particularly under President Goodluck Jonathan, has established up to 12 universities, an unprecedented record, with  many polytechnics and colleges of education.  And I think as Nigeria population grows, PDP is rising to the occasion.

And if you go  to the states, you will be amazed at what is going on, particularly in the PDP states. Yes, there is a splinter group in one state in  an opposition party like Lagos. But if you compare what Lagos State is doing with what Akwa Ibom  is doing, it is so insignificant. Based on the kind of resources available to Lagos, then you will know that the PDP administration in Akwa Ibom and other states of the federation are doing exceedingly well. So I am sure that at the rate the PDP is going, Nigerians will never cease placing their hope and mandate with the PDP.

As the Chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum, how has the forum and you as the leader helped in stabilizing the party?

What we have done is to give the opposition a big challenge and something for them to ponder about. For instance, in the history of democracy in Nigeria since 1960, the PDP family came together through the engineering of the PDP Governors’ Forum and then accepted by the National Working Committee, NWC ,of our great party, the BoT and our NEC, which is the final decision making organ  of our party. We endorsed Mr President. We say we want to follow the democratic example of a democratic party in America, where a sitting President does not have to go through the hurdles of spending a lot of money in order to get nominated for  second term in office.

Particularly when that President is a sitting President, it is evidence of capability and shown some strides to move forward the America economy, which is the same in Nigeria today. So we have done something remarkable, something that is first of its kind in Africa when we came together and said, ‘look, let’s bury our ambition and line behind our party leader, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan for a second term in office’ and this has been applauded by all organs of the party.

So I think, to a large extent, our efforts in the PDP Governors’ Forum have helped to stabilize the polity helped to assist the Working Committee to be more effective and even reunited the party across board.

In the entire country, the PDP states are no longer looking forward to a fractured party as a result of inconclusive presidential primaries. Rather, they have lined up behind their leader and they are waiting for the opposition to scatter, come and join us, so that we can win easily.

The issue of adoption of the President as the sole candidate at the last NEC was championed by you as the leader of the PDP  Governors’ Forum. What is your take on criticisms from the opposition that the action was not only  undemocratic, but  also lacking in what they termed internal democracy?

Well, you can answer that for me by explaining to them that, that was democracy in action. In America that we are copying, the incumbent President does not go through primaries. We are not saying that the President will not face general election, he will but the incumbent does not go through primaries.

So the idea of going to spend presidential time instead of facing insurgency, food insufficiency and other things and then you start travelling around the country first to win primaries when you are already the sitting President within your political party does not make sense.

I think it is a very fantastic new model of internal democracy that we started from a point of saying ‘look, let’s sacrifice our personal ambition and support Mr President to have a second term’. We are not saying that other people should not come and contest.

But we are saying as governors,  we are not going to contest against our sitting President. That we want to put hands and support him to go for second term so that there will be stability in our party. It does not mean that any person who feels like contesting cannot contest. So we have not affected democracy in any way, instead, we have deepened democracy by suppressing our own personal ambition. That is the first thing.

And then we wanted to create stability for our party and allow our party to focus on other positions in terms of primaries instead of having a fractured party at the end of the convention. So we are going to move as one family to the  convention to elect our President.

A fantastic way of putting the question and everybody will say yes and then we go back and then face the opposition that is democracy at work. So I don’t think anybody should criticize it, rather we should be commended for not behaving like past governors who, by now, nine or 15 of them would have declared for Presidency and then confusion will start in the party.

Should people who said no, we don’t want to go for Presidency, we want to support our President to have a second term, should they be castigated or should they be praised? Rather people should say yes, for people to suppress their personal ambition and sacrifice their own longing for power and then move forward to support another, is evidence that Nigeria is changing.

So I think the opposition is rattled. Any time you do something and the opposition criticizes it, know that that thing is biting them. But if they praise it, then you should be worried. Now that they are against what we have done, that shows that they have a big challenge because they know they are not going to be able to do same. So I am not worried about the opposition, rather I am excited that the opposition is feeling the impact of what we have done.

One major problem on Nigeria is that of continuity and lack of maintenance culture, and having done a lot, are you thinking of how these projects will outlive Akpabio. Who succeeds you and, after leaving  office as governor, where are you going?

First, I thought of what have always been the bane of Nigerian development which has always been maintenance culture. So I submitted  a bill to the House of Assembly  to set up Akwa Ibom State Infrastructure Maintenance Agency. The bill has been passed and we have signed it into law. We are hoping that through that agency, we can employ hundreds of our youths to assist in the maintenance of the infrastructure that we have built.

The second one is that I did not emerge as a governor on my own. I didn’t come through my own volition, it wasn’t through my power, not because I was rich.  I came through the benevolence of God and I said  ‘let God’s will be done’. When I was campaigning,  I went to a particular local government to address some elders and I told them that my prayer is that the best candidate should be chosen by God and they said  ‘no, always pray that God should choose you’.

If God chooses the best, that best will develop the state and I will benefit from it and my children will benefit from it. I don’t have to be a governor to serve my people. But when it fell on me, I knew that God had sent me on a mission.

Lessons

You will be amazed at what my colleagues have learnt from my state. So many of them who have visited here have taken one thing or the other away. Look  at the way we have been able to handle the issue of the Akwa Ibom child and Akwa Ibom as an industry for house helps. We  realised that the root cause of it was illiteracy. So we declared  free and compulsory education and made it possible for every child to have access to education from primary school to senior secondary school level.

And we opened it up to all Nigerian children who are resident in Akwa Ibom. And ask me why? The answer is simple,  if you educate your children and you don’t educate your neighbour, you are preparing armed robbers to attack your graduate children.

Today, we have 1.9 million children at the basic education level in the state in a population of  4million. And we brought certain innovations because some of the kids might not be able to pay for chalk, to pay for broom and all those things. So we started paying subvention, N100 per child, per term in the primary school to the head master and N300 per child in a term in the secondary school to the principal to provide logistics so that things like chalks, dusters and diesel where they have generator, they will not go and place the burden on those children and that will stop them from having free education.

We now signed a bill into law, the child right law and then enshrined a provision that made it compulsory to ensure that every child resident in Akwa Ibom  has access to education. We have tripled school enrolment; now appointed education monitors. We appointed a senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Education Monitoring and a Special Assistant for Education Monitoring for the three senatorial districts.

The law also gives us the power to destroy fake churches using the belief to make money. They stigmatise the child and say the child has big eyes and therefore she  is into witchcraft and therefore, for exorcism, the parents should bring N300,000. Where the parents have no money, the child is thrown out of the house. So the law allows us to demolish those houses, those  churches and  addresses  those fake pastors and we have charged some of them to court. Today many of them are facing conviction and that has brought the practice totally to an end.

In the health sector, we have built  a lot of primary health centres, renovation of  existing hospitals and equipping them and building five brand new hospitals and a state-of-the-art hospital at the federal centre in Uyo that can cater for over 357 beds that would be doing open heart surgery, kidney transplant and all that, one of the biggest hospitals in Nigeria. Yet we are able to declare free medical treatment for all our children and I can tell you that in six years we will not have a single incidence of polio.

We declared free medical treatment for all pregnant women across the state. What has happened is that we have reduced maternal mortality to its barest minimum  if not totally eliminated. We also declared free medical treatment for retirees and pensioners so that our elderly people can also enjoy the benefits of their labour after they have retired.

Why the massive support for your party and the President?

First, the PDP is Nigeria and Nigeria is PDP. The only true national party today in the country is the PDP, all other parties are either owned by one individual or the other, or owned by one ethnic group or the other. PDP is the only political party that cuts across ethnic lines, cuts across religious lines and it is not owned by any symbol. That is number one, so saving the PDP is saving the nation.

Two, yes I support President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan with everything that I have. I was not happy in the past when governors were fighting Presidents, Nigeria has so many problems and so when you become a leader in Nigeria, you  have enormous load in your head. And to get distracted by your commanders who are supposed to ease the load from you, to me was something I felt should not be tolerated and it was all because of personal ambition.

I believe that power comes from God and God gives it to who he pleases. Nigerian having learnt a lesson that all those who clamour for power never really get the power.

Those who really go out to search for power in Nigeria never get the power, that is the history of our country.

So I am a good student of history, I don’t go looking for power. Rather I look for a way for my country to survive. And I know that the success of the President of that country is the success of that country. If President Goodluck Jonathan does not succeed, it means that Nigeria has failed. And I look at my six-year- old son and I ask myself a question, what do I want to bequeath to that child? A fractured country where he will not be sure of stepping out to go and visit his friends  just across Abia State?  A country where criminals and hoodlums will take over and you cannot stroll or even take a ride?

I have also made a point clear. It is not only President Goodluck Jonathan that I am supporting. When his excellency of blessed memory, President Yar’Adua was in power, I did not fight him, I did not organize insurgency against him and thank God there was no bomb blast. I never organized a newspaper write ups to insult even when he had his own challenges. With President  Goodluck Jonathan now  in power, why should I go and start insulting him or  try to bring him down? I never did that and I supported him.

What would be your legacy and what would you like to be remembered for?

In Akwa Ibom, for instance, I would like you to remember that it was that PDP governor that brought his people closest to God. What I have done in the last seven years had always been guided by God. I put God first in everything that I do.

I hold a solemn assembly every year to pray for the benefit of my people and for God’s mercy and then God’s guidance for the administration. And then every month, I gather all strata of the Christian faith and then I bring in bishops,  clergy from across board and they gather in the Government House and pray for the peace of the state and for the progress of the state and for the intentions of the government.

And at the end of the year, we give glory to God in a major coral festival, never seen before in Africa. We assemble 9,999 choristers and they sing to the glory. Something extremely remarkable that has broken the Guinness book of world record, that state has a serious covenant with God.

See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/09/2015-adoption-jonathan-product-sacrifice-gov-akpabio/#sthash.UEov4Okt.dpuf

We’ll Crush Terrorists, Says Jonathan in Benin

Nigerian newspapers graphic with President Goodluck Jonathan.

by SEBASTINE EBHUOMHAN
Nigerian Mirror
Sep 28, 2014

•Benin monarch gives him highest royal attire

President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday promised to crush the Boko Haram sect, the deadly sect that has killed and maimed thousands of Nigerians and other citizens and destroyed countless property in violent attacks perpetrated more in the northern part of the country.

The President made the promise at a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) South- South sensitization and unity rally held at the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium in Benin City, Edo State capital.

President Jonathan, who was received on arrival at the Benin Airport by his host, Governor Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole, and national as well as state leaders of the PDP and senior government officials, flew briefly to Oluku Bye-pass, where he commissioned the rebuilt Benin—Ore axis of the Benin—Ore—Shagamu Expressway.

As expected, President Jonathan also visited the palace of the Benin Kingdom, where he paid the Monarch, Oba Uku Akpolokpolo Erediauwa, a courtesy visit and intimidated him about his imminent return to the palace for his re-election campaign.

Receiving the President, Erediauwa congratulated him for his popular endorsement by the leaders and members of the PDP as an unopposed candidate.

In his eulogy, Erediauwa said he often sees Jonathan in dark-coloured attires that do not reflect sharpness and brightness. He, therefore, advised him to always wear bright apparels henceforth, and thereafter, presented the President with the kingdom’s highest royal robe, called Egbeigbe, reserved for only princes and princesses, as Sunday Mirror reliably learnt.

Speaking later at the stadium, President Jonathan reiterated that he was in Edo State for the sensitization and unity rally. He emphasized that it was not yet time for campaign and promised to return for campaign.

He enjoined all members of the PDP in the geopolitical region to engage in decent and peaceful contests and campaign for the tickets of the party so as not to create enmity “within ourselves.” Particularly, he highlighted the necessity of peace as a pre-condition for electoral victory in Edo and Rivers states in 2015 and beyond.

“These two states have Klegs. So, by 2015, we must get our states back,” Jonathan stated, even as he decried politics of discrimination, victimization and god-fathers.

“Before coming here, I was at Oluku where I commissioned the Benin highway. Even the enemies of this administration have agreed that the PDP government has improved the quality of roads,” Jonathan stated, before highlighting the transformation of other critical sectors such as aviation, agriculture and food security, employment, and poverty reduction, which he added, has seen a reduction of poverty by 50 per cent achieved by his administration.

On the twin issues of Ebola Virus Disease outbreak and insurgency in some parts of the country, Jonathan said, “You are all aware that we conquered Ebola. And we shall surely conquer Boko Haram. Like Ebola, we we’ll defeat Boko Haram,” to which the 40, 000 thousand capacity-filled stadium echoed affirmation and agreement in unison.

Earlier speaking at the point of the road commissioning, the Minister of Works, Architect Mike Onolememen, disclosed that the 75 kilometres long Phase 1 of the highway reconstruction project, which is the Benin Ofosu axis, was awarded to Reynolds Construction Company at the cost of N24, 266,157,202.82 billion. He added that the Federal Government recently awarded the contract for the outstanding section of the road from Ajebandele to Shagamu.

The rally brought several leaders and members of the PDP across the six states of the South-South geo-political zone together. They include Vice President Namadi Sambo, Senate President David Mark; Delta State Governor, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan; Bayelsa State Governor, Seriake Disckson; Cross River State Governor, Mr. Liyel Imoke; and Abia State Governor, Chief Theodore Orji; as well as Akwa Ibom Deputy Governor, Mrs. Valeri Ebe, who represented her boss, Chief Godswill Akpabio.

Others that attended the rally and spoke at different times include PDP National Chairman, Adamu Muazu; Chairman of PDP Board of Trustees, Chief Anthony Anenih; many Senators, House of Representatives members, state lawmakers and heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies of Federal and state governments.

However, Speaker of House of Representatives, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, was absent at the rally. Sources said his absence may not be unconnected with the conferment of the traditional title of Matawallen Sokoto on him yesterday in Sokoto by Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III.

The rally also provided the opportunity for President Goodluck Jonathan and Alhaji Adamu Muazu to formally receive a former chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Tom Ikimi and his followers in the southern geo-political region led by Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu and Prince Tony Omoaghe, all of whom had already announced their defection to the PDP before then.

The rally resulted to severe traffic hold-ups all over the metropolitan city of Benin, with concomitant hectic time for security agents that were positioned at different parts of the city. Itinerant traders also took advantage of the rally to make brisk businesses even as heavy downpour heralded the rally, dispersing the thousands of crowd quickly out of the stadium.