Taking COSATU Today Forward, 3 May 2024 #ElijahBarayiBrigades
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY #COSATU acknowledges workers and their families for coming in great numbers at May Day rallies in nine provinces #Back2Basics #ElijahBarayiBrigades #VoteANC #ClassStruggle “Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism” #Back2Basics #JoinCOSATUNow #ClassConsciousness |
Taking COSATU Today Forward
‘Whoever sides with the revolutionary people in deed as well as in word is a revolutionary in the full sense’-Maoo
Our side of the story
3 May 2024
“Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism”
Organize at every workplace and demand Personal Protective Equipment Now!
Defend Jobs Now!
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Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- COSATU condemns the DA's attacks on the rights of workers
- POPCRU wishes workers a pleasant May Day
- South Africa
- COSATU is humbled by the overwhelming response by workers to the Federation's May Day Rallies
- COSATU May Day Message, 2024 – Build COSATU unions, Defend Democracy - Vote ANC-Building a strong and united COSATU in mobilising for the ANC Electoral Victory on the 29th May 2024
- South African Communist Party Statement on International Workers’ Day
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- May Day: We Rally To Beat Back Right-Wing Extremists, Promote Equality, Advance Democracy
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics
COSATU condemns the DA's attacks on the rights of workers
Matthew Parks, COSATU Acting National Spokesperson & Parliamentary Coordinator, 02 May 2024
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) condemns the Democratic Alliance’s ill-informed attacks on the rights of workers in the strongest possible terms. The DA’s pledge to scrap all the progressive gains workers have painstakingly achieved since 1994 is a brutal reminder that workers cannot trust the DA with their lives and rights.
The National Minimum Wage (NMW) came into effect in 2019 raising the wages of six million farm, domestic, cleaning, transport, hospitality and other highly impoverished workers. The NMW has put money into workers’ pockets improving their living standards. The NMW has proven to be a highly effective tool to reduce poverty and inequality and inject stimulus into the economy. If the DA had bothered to read research by South Africa’s most reputable universities it know the NMW has not resulted in job losses.
The DA’s hysterical opposition to the NMW defies the most rudimentary economic logic. How will workers be productive if they cannot afford transport to work or the food to feed their bodies? Who will buy the products our companies produce if workers cannot even afford the most basics in life?
Yet the very same DA Members of Parliament, who enjoy millionaire salaries, have been happy to receive increases as MPs, MPLs and Councillors, even in the Municipalities they govern.
There belt tightening would offend the “fiscal hawks” of the DA.
Workers have struggled during the darkest days of apartheid, whilst the DA’s predecessors sat meekly in the Whites’ only Parliament; to achieve the constitutional democracy we enjoy today and to protect the rights of workers to unionise, to collective bargaining to improve their working conditions and when aggrieved, to strike. The DA’s disdain for these most basic of civilised rights is glaring in Tshwane Municipality where the DA has reneged on signed wage agreements and dismissed workers en masse.
Today workers enjoy the rights to paid maternity, parental and adoption leave, to paid time off and overtime pay.
The Employment Equity Act requires employers to ensure that all workers are able to reach their full potential, irrespective of the colour of their skin or their gender.
COSATU campaigned for many years to achieve the Occupational Health and Safety Act guaranteeing workers the right to a safe workplace and to refuse dangerous work.
More recently 900 000 domestic workers were included under the Compensation of Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act to provide them protection from workplace injuries.
The Competition Act now requires the Competition Commission to consider the impact on jobs, local SMMEs and industries when approving large company mergers.
Parliament recently passed the Companies Amendment Bill requiring the CEOs of companies to disclose the obscene salaries they pay themselves and the peanuts they pay their most junior staff in their annual company reports as part of addressing the entrenched apartheid wage gap prevalent in the private sector.
These are the common sense progressive labour rights that so offend the DA and its dinner party circles in the wealthy suburbs of Constantia and Sandton. The DA has no problem with a CEO of a bank earning R150 000 in a single day, yet a bank cashier would not earn that in two years. The DA thinks its fine for the CEO of a mining company to earn R300 million in a year yet squabble with mineworkers wanting an extra R150 a month.
The silence of the DA has been deafening when each week a mine worker dies at work, when employers allow their pit bulls to kill their gardeners, when domestic workers are sexually harassed at work. The DA was nowhere to be seen when farmworkers were paid as little as R6 an hour not so long ago in De Doorns.
The solution to growing the economy and reducing unemployment is to tackle the actual obstacles to growth. These are ensuring businesses reliable and affordable electricity; the mining, manufacturing and agricultural sectors are able to export their products, Metro Rail can transport commuters to work, local government is able to provide quality municipal services, crime and corruption are tackled, and yes that workers (also known as consumers) are paid a living wage and are partners in growing the economy.
Amazingly for all the DA’s false pretence at supporting the economy, it is even opposed to local procurement. (Let’s not even mention Black Economic Empowerment). It has unashamedly championed removing any measures to protect local industries and emerging SMMEs in support of allowing a flood of cheap (and usually subsidised) imports from overseas.
For a party that pretends to be paying attention to international trends, the DA’s awareness of these very same labour standards and economic interventions that have been successfully implemented in the United States, Europe, Brazil and else is stupendous.
Sadly, the DA’s disdain for workers and its dogged determination to oppose any measures to improve the rights and working conditions of workers is no surprise. The DA has voted against every single labour law in Parliament since 1994 and even opposed the Constitution’s affirmation of the rights of workers. Clearly no rights for workers meet the DA’s miserly threshold.
More recently the DA tabled a shameful Responsible Spending Bill at Parliament demanding the wages of nurses, teachers, police officers, cleaners and anyone working for the public sector be cut by 10% annually.
The DA knows it is selling poppycock and this is precisely why it will never publish these naked attempts to slash workers’ wages in the pamphlets it takes to working class communities on the Cape Flats.
Whilst we are disappointed that the DA’s economic model is to impoverish workers and treat them little better than slaves, we take comfort for the common sense of workers have shown as they have consistently rejected the DA’s absurd theatrics in every election since 1994.
COSATU and our Affiliates are crisscrossing workplaces and communities across the country to ensure workers come out in their millions on election day to reject the DA’s attacks on the rights of workers and to ensure an overwhelming majority for the only party that has been with workers in the trenches, the African National Congress.
Issued by COSATU.
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POPCRU wishes workers a pleasant May Day
Richard Mamabolo, POPCRU National Spokesperson, 30 April 2024
The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) joins millions of workers across the globe in celebrating May Day as international occasion affirming and celebrating the dignity of labour and uniting workers in a common struggle for peace and socio-economic progress.
May day was first celebrated in 1886 as part of the struggle for an eight-hour workday. On 1st May that year, hundreds of thousands of workers across the United States went on strike, demanding better working conditions and shorter working hours.
The day serves as an important reminder that workers will only truly be free when the phenomenon of wage labour and class is eradicated. Only when production and distribution is for people and not for profit, will the worker be free. This holiday is therefore first and foremost a socialist and communist holiday and must be associated with the Communist Manifesto which reaffirms the need for international unity of the working people in line with its theme which says, “Workers of the world unite, for you have nothing to lose but your chains”. There is no ending of wage labour and exploitation of the workers without worker unity. Any movement that brings about the disunity of the workers is anti-revolutionary and only advances the capitalist grip on our people.
In South Africa workers are defined by low wages, precarious labour contracts that are characterised by long working hours without benefits and a permanent contract. We will be celebrating the day against the background of a deepening crisis of capitalism which has resulted in global crisis of unemployment, high levels of inequality, and extreme poverty. Workers and the working class have had to endure the miseries, pains and suffocation brought about by this barbaric and inhumane system of capitalism.
The ongoing high cost of living crisis continues to be a challenge for working class communities across South Africa. This crisis has been fuelled by growing economic inequality exacerbated by global corporate giants who squeeze workers’ wages while extracting more wealth for their executives and shareholders. As recently reported by Oxfam International, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes since 2020, while the wealth of 5 billion people has decreased. Further, seven out of ten of the world’s largest corporations have either a billionaire CEO or a billionaire as their principal shareholder.
It comes as no surprise that we have seen a corresponding wave of labour actions around the world, making it clear that the labour momentum of 2023 has carried forward into 2024 as workers reject sub-par offers and concessions from employers that are simultaneously recording massive profits.
On May Day, let us continue to mobilize and organize in solidarity, fighting for peace and social and economic justice and build the better world all workers deserve.
Workers should use this year’s celebration to demand and fight for the defence of collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is currently under attack from employers and they have embarked on reversing the hard-won gains of workers and the rights of workers.
Equally workers should use worker’s day intensify the fight against job losses, casualization, privatization and retrenchments.
Workers should relentlessly fight the job blood bath that is currently taking place across all sectors of the economy that has led to South Africa being ranked the most unequal society in the world with high levels of poverty, extreme inequalities and an unemployment rate of 32,1%.
As we mark this day, as workers, we must to unite to fight against capitalist exploitation, poverty wages and the growing inequality. We must take a stand against the attacks on collective bargaining and the curtailing of workers’ rights. Just like the workers of 1886, we must continue with the struggle in the present day as workers are still subjected to unbearable working conditions, slave wages, victimisation, retrenchments and union bashing.
As a worker-led union, we re-dedicated ourselves to the noble and worthy cause of fighting and demanding a living wage, fight against police killings, the reneging of signed agreements, austerity measures and any plans to collapse collective bargaining.
For the working class of South Africa there is a clear need to build resistance and to struggle to secure decent housing, and to ensure the NHI is implemented. The pandemic has exposed the gross inequality within society. It has exposed the extent of low pay and precarious employment, which have had the hardest impact on women and young people. It has exposed the massive exploitation by parasitic landlords and the global speculative investment funds, the new absentee landlords, that increasingly control and determine policy, making vast profits from the people.
Workers need to build more militant trade union and community organisations to defend and advance their interests, to protect their living standards and their rights. Workers need the right to join and be represented by a trade union, with the right to unrestricted access to represent workers and the right to organise. We support workers seeking to rebalance power in their work-place through unionisation.
Only by building working-class power and uniting our movements at a global level can we effectively challenge the growing concentration of multinational corporate power.
Today, perhaps more than in the past, we need the unity of organised workers and the working-class at large. This is the core of our message today.
It is through organising the unorganised and forging maximum unity of organised workers, and the working-class at large, that we can successfully roll back the neoliberal agenda that undermines collective bargaining.
As we attend the COSATU May Day rallies across the country this Wednesday, we will be resolute in fighting for our workers’ rights and defending our trade union federation COSATU!
Issued by POPCRU
COSATU is humbled by the overwhelming response by workers to the Federation's May Day Rallies
Matthew Parks, COSATU Acting National Spokesperson & Parliamentary Coordinator, 02 May 2024
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is humbled by the overwhelming response by workers to the Federation’s May Day rallies that took place at venues across all nine provinces on 1 May, Workers’ Day.
Thousands of members representing millions of workers and their families across economic sectors and workplaces, braved cold and wet conditions, travelling long distances to celebrate this important occasion with some of the highest attendances in recent times.
Workers’ Day has traditionally been observed by workers across the world as a day to honour the sacrifices of countless workers and the struggles of generations to improve the working and living conditions of the working class. It became a public holiday after many years of campaigns for it to be declared as such by COSATU and its predecessors.
It is an opportunity to celebrate the many victories COSATU and workers have achieved with our alliance partners, the African National Congress and South African Communist Party, since 1994 from our constitutional democracy to our progressive labour laws, from the 60% of the budget spent investing in working class communities to minimum and social wage achievements boosting workers’ incomes.
It is a moment for workers and COSATU to put pressure on the state and employers to do more to pay workers a living wage, tackle unemployment, grow the economy and invest in public services.
As we head towards the May 29th general elections, it is a rallying point to mobilise workers to come out in the millions on election day and return the ANC to office to continue our efforts to build a better life for all.
COSATU applauds workers for remaining resolute in the face of difficult challenges and for defending own hard-won victories from those who seek to reverse workers’ rights and protections.
We are grateful for the outstanding work done by journalists and the media fraternity enabling millions to watch COSATU’s May celebrations, for the efforts by the South African and Traffic Police Services to ensure participants are safe, for drivers who provided transport, the sound and events crews who worked through the night, the catering and cleaning staff who worked long hours before and after the rallies, local artists who dazzled attendees and the many other workers who made these events so memorable.
We thank you.
Issued by COSATU.
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COSATU May Day Message, 2024 – Build COSATU unions, Defend Democracy - Vote ANC!
Building a strong and united COSATU in mobilising for the ANC Electoral Victory on the 29th May 2024
1. Background
Today is Workers’ Day!
This day belongs to the millions of men and women who work tirelessly to produce our food and build our houses, they are the ones we rely on for our essential services, including education, health care, safety and security.
They are the ones who clean our streets and communities, build our roads, work underground for our mineral and industrial necessities, and they drive long distances to deliver much needed goods to far flung communities. Today we honour all these men and women, wherever they are. These are our real heroes!
May Day is born of working class struggles for decent wages, decent working and living conditions and dignity for all. We are gathered here today to demonstrate the importance of solidarity and power of unity in action.
Brief history of International Workers Day:
- Workers struggles in imperialist centres of capitalism, namely the US and Europe, against very bad working conditions and exploitative wages.
- Workers struggles in Chicago for an 8-hour work day and safe working conditions.
Today, we pay tribute to the Federation of Organised Trades and Labour Unions, which hundred and forty years ago (in 1884) at its National Convention in Chicago, in the United States, proclaimed that “eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labour from and after May 1, 1886”.
- on 1 May 1886, more than 300 000 workers went on strike across the country. The strike was met with murderous violence by the ruling elites, as scores of peacefully protesting workers were butchered on 3 May 1886.
- The first session of the Second Socialist International, in Paris 1889 adopted a resolution for working class support of the 8-hour work day.
In our own context, at the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the May Day, the newly established COSATU staged one of the biggest ever stay-aways in South Africa to demand the recognition of May Day as a paid public holiday.
- supported by the formations of the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) under the leadership of the United Democratic Front (UDF).
- more than 1,5-million workers observed COSATU’s call, joined by the masses of school pupils, tertiary students, taxi drivers, hawkers, shopkeepers, domestic workers, self-employed and unemployed people. Rallies were held in all the major cities, even though many of these were banned in advance by the state.
- These forced P.W. Botha regime to succumb and recognise Workers’ Day as a paid public day in 1987.
- Today, May Day is one of the 12 public holidays, which we celebrate as part of the achievements of the COSATU-led trade union movement and a gain of the broader working class in our democracy.
Importance of Workers Day today
COSATU takes this day very seriously as an important organisational tool of struggle. True to our traditions of worker control and strong organisation as our base, we use this day to account to the working class on the gains, setbacks and challenges of our long journey and struggle.
- We now host May Day events in all nine Provinces of South Africa, from across all sectors of the economy and workplaces.
- COSATU continues to be bold to speak the truth and not sugar-coat the naked reality that is experienced by the workers and the broader working class on a daily basis.
International solidarity with all workers of all nations!
COSATU extends warm and fraternal greetings to fellow workers gathered and marching in different parts of the world, particularly on our own continent, Africa. Our destiny is tied to one another by the bounds of extreme underdevelopment, poverty, diseases and hunger throughout the continent that define the common basis of our joint struggles.
2. Understanding the political economy of the transition from apartheid – Working with the ANC to build a democratic developmental state to transform and industrialise our economy and create jobs
The democratically elected government led by the ANC in 1994 inherited a state bankrupted by apartheid.
- Context of crisis of South African capitalism dating back from global capitalist crises of 1973/1979
- the deep and prolonged recession from 1989 to 1993, at the height of our struggle against apartheid and the global sanctions momentum.
The new democratic state had a massive task to build a better life for all especially the historically oppressed masses on the one hand, while also addressing dis-investment and capital-flight on the other hand.
The democratic state also guaranteed fundamental rights, including:
- radical changes in the labour relations regime, away from repressive Apartheid workplace regime
- new democratic labour legislation consolidated our (workers) gains, creating new conditions of work, but also new contestations and contradictions.
- as workers we had to develop different objectives, and new strategies and tactics had to be considered, to ensure we remain relevant and adapt our radical trade union movement in the evolving context of the post-apartheid challenges.
We must also acknowledge that the transition from Apartheid to the new democratic order has come with its own contradictions and costs, especially for the working class.
We have observed the fact that the state itself is contested terrain, e.g:
o The packaging of neoliberal reforms inevitable part of our transition.
o But, we have also the negative effect of the neoliberal trajectory both on class terms, but also in the general erosion and hollowing of the capacity of the state to drive transformation.
That is why, as workers we should understand the strategy of capital over the three decades of democracy.
- in consolidating its class power - it has managed to establish its hegemony over the democratic state and society;
- the manner in which it has decisively influenced the current structure of the economy and the labour relations, e.g.,
o the sustained attacks on Collective Bargaining and the institutions regulating the labour market reflect the intensity of the struggle by capital to roll back our gains.
o even pending threat to the Minimum Wage regime if we fail to win the upcoming elections.
Three main elements in the strategy of our class enemy in its agenda to sustain exploitation of workers even under the democratic order, and to weaken militant trade union movement as well as their ploy to maintain key economic features of a Colonialism of a Special Type:
1. Extensive and generally negative process of workplace restructuring.
a. Massive capital-intensive investment, replacing workers with machines to weaken shop-floor strength of the militant trade union movement.
b. Casualisation, externalisation of work, labour brokers and work intensification
c. The abuse of Section 189 of the Labour Relations Act by bosses to embark on massive retrenchments.
- This has produced rising unemployment crisis, rising wealth and income inequality, as well as the poverty-wages paid to vast majority of workers.
- It has also produced growing precarity and vulnerability among workers, mostly with many amendments of the 1995 LRA, all chipping away rights of workers and strengthening the hand of employers to undermine workers’ power.
- Even today, capital is still calling for amendments to the labour relations legislations to remove the existing protections of the workers.
o The claim that such reforms would encourage investments.
- Because of these, many of our people suffer from long-term unemployment. Results of quarter 4 of 2023 showed that 11.7 million South Africans were unemployment, in a labour force of 24.6 million people.
Comrades, the biggest threat to all South African workers and gains of our democracy, is a possible coalition of parties such as the Democratic Alliance (DA) and Action SA, that have proudly positioned themselves as the primary political enemy of workers and the representative of our class enemy.
- the DA and Action SA have openly committed themselves in their manifestos to embark on amendments to the labour laws.
- to remove the existing protections of the workers and to weaken collective bargaining in order to make it easy for the employers to hire and fire and to heighten the super-exploitation of the workers.
- Certain components of domestic monopoly capital took advantage of the goodwill of democratic state to internationalise their ownership, shifting some of their capital reserves to imperialist North stock exchanges, some of which is still taking place even today.
- The role of capital in complicated networks of fraudulent tax evasion and the illegal financial outflow, including illicit outflow of capital.
- This is part of the broader play of capital, taking advantage of favourable balance of class forces, through disinvestments that have been taking place since 1994.
- For example, since 1994 the share of manufacturing in the economy shrunk from 17.3% to 13.5% today, and that of mining shrunk from 19.5% to 8.1% today.
- We know that the decline in mining and manufacturing has affected COSATU with declined unionisation in key private sector circuits of capital.
- While public sector unionisation grew under democracy, the decline in private industry sector unionisation resulted in union density of less than 24% of workforce by 2019 DOEL figures.
- Financialisation as a strategic response of capital, through which they again undermine our trade union militancy.
- With this has been a growing replacement of productive circuits of the economy, by service sector, especially banking, accumulating trillion of Rand, growing influence of speculative finance, etc.
- Since 1994 the financial industry, anchored on banks, exploded from 13.4% to about 22.4% in share of the economy, thus becoming the dominant economic sector. Finance and including tourism, now constitute about 63% of the economy whilst agriculture remain relatively stagnant at 2.6%.
- The influence of financialisation is seen in our own provident funds are not growing, because they are not deployed in productive activities like infrastructure projects that would serve to create the long-term potential growth of our economy.
- This shift has also resulted in the growth of the often casualised low-wage jobs, especially in the transport and wholesale & retail, which since 1994 employment grew from 6% to 9.6% and 12.9% to 15% respectively.
o The SACP’s Financial Sector Campaign and the call for utilisation of prescribed assets on socially useful investments
o We also call for wealth tax and the increase of corporate income tax to discourage the current investment strike by capital and to reduce inequality.
Comrades, the battle for worker control of retirement and savings funds is at the centre of our decisive struggle as workers.
- We continue to call for a strongly resourced and proactive industrial strategy, including the beneficiation of our mineral resources.
- We also call for pulling our economy out of the current semi-colonial relations in its trade with the global North countries in which South Africa is used as a mere source for the extraction of vital mineral resources.
The ANC’s 2024 Manifesto priorities aim at building a democratic and developmental state, reverse the stranglehold of monopoly capital and build state capacity to effectively deliver on its mandate.
3. Strengthening our Campaign to defend Collective Bargaining and workers’ rights in all sectors of the economy – Building strong unions to defend workers
- Major gains of the democratic dispensation — progressive labour laws, conditions of employment and robust labour market institutions, which are a result of years of struggle.
- The vote for the ANC is part of our struggle to defend these gains, because only the ANC has stood with us in defending these legislations during debates in the National Assembly.
Herein is a summary of four specific areas of focus and brief assessment to that end;
- Employment
- Unemployment
- Major victories for workers in labour law
- Challenges
On Employment – We note some growth in employment, back to pre-Covid-19 levels. Since Covid-19, over 2.5 million more people were employed, with 790 thousand more people employed last year, with Free State, Eastern Cape and Northern Cape most notable.
- There is persisting gendering disparity in employment, with about 1.9 million more men employed than women.
- Initiatives to prioritize youth employment are also key.
On Unemployment – The levels of unemployment remain extremely high at 41,1%. Almost 7.9 million people are unemployed, with a further 3 million discouraged work-seekers. Black women and youths are most affected by unemployment.
On the progressive labour law and workers’ rights – Collective Bargaining remains the key gain of struggles by workers since 1994, which we must defend. Here are cornerstone:
- The Labour Relations Act (LRA)
- The Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) – the BCEA now provide that:
a. a worker who works for less than 4 hours per day, must be paid for a full day;
b. Both mothers and fathers can take 10 days parental leave to bond with new born children;
c. A mother or father who adopts a child, is now entitled to 10 weeks of parental leave.
- The National Skills Development Act (NSDA)
- The Employment Equity Act (EEA) – to address historical inequalities resulting from years of discrimination of blacks and women in the workplace.
- The health and safety laws including –
o The Compensation of Occupational Injuries and Diseases Amendment Act (COIDA) – recently extended to cover to 900 000 domestic workers.
- A National Minimum Wage (NMW) was enacted in 2018 and has now been increased to R27.58 in March 2024.
Challenges identified by COSATU that require dedicated attention.
- While organized labour has won major victories, we also face very serious challenges and contestation of workers’ gains.
o Employers’ tendencies to undermine collective bargaining, abandon signed wage agreements and impose wage freezes on workers who are already drowning in debt and not able to provide for their families.
o Threats of retrenchments of thousands of workers by companies, state owned entities and even municipalities.
o Growing number of local municipalities and state-owned enterprises failing to pay their staff. Also instances in which employers failing to submit workers contributions to pension funds, some even SARS PAYE
o Women still face sexual harassment in the workplace and the critical importance of workplace transformation and equity.
o Constant attacks on workers’ rights by IMF, World Bank, etc., with calls for privatisation, decreasing employment in the public sector and lowering public sector workers’ wages.
4. COSATU Calls on workers to defend our Democratic gains – Vote ANC!
Despite numerous challenges, we take pride in celebrating the 30th anniversary of our democracy on this May Day. As workers we appreciate the strides and positive changes because we suffered the most and bore the worst brunt of the apartheid and its repressive employment regime.
The alliance COSATU, SACP and SANCO with the ANC have been central to promulgate progressive gains of our democratic advances.
- We cannot take for granted the significance of defending and advancing towards more of these gains.
Here are significant gains that COSATU and the alliance must defend:
- About 89% of the country’s households now have access to water, from 60% in 1994.
- About 85% of South African homes have access to electricity.
- More than 18 million vulnerable people receive social protection in terms of social grants, from only 2.5 million in 1999.
- Nearly every young person aged 15-24 years is literate, and adult literacy now stands at 85%, up from 64% in 1996.
- While still a challenge, the poverty rate declined from 71% in 1993 to 55.5% in 2020.
- The ANC government set up the largest HIV/AIDS programme in the world, with more than 5.8 million people on antiretroviral treatment.
ANC Manifesto 2024 Six priorities
COSATU throws its full weight behind the six priorities outlined in the ANC’s 2024 Manifesto, especially those related to the economy and the broader developmental agenda.
In the Manifesto, the ANC-led Alliance has committed to anchor the economic and social policies of the seventh administration towards “a developmental macroeconomic framework”, to build the developmental state.
In line with the key socioeconomic commitments of the manifesto, amongst others, this developmental macroeconomic framework means:
- A moratorium on budget-cuts and the stimulation of the economy in alignment with the economic and social priorities.
- The creation and sustaining of 2.5 million work opportunities in delivering public goods and services to communities.
- Alignment of monetary, fiscal and trade policy, along with transformation of the financial sector, to support job creation and industrialisation.
- Strengthening income support through existing social grants and use the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grants as a mechanism towards phasing in a basic income support grant.
- Promulgate the National Health Insurance (NHI) to make quality health care affordable and available to all.
- Build a capable and developmental state, strengthen links between government at all levels and the people, rebuild and improve local government, build a professional and developmental public service based on Batho Pele principles, and strengthen cooperative governance through the District Development Model.
- Build on achievements opening access in the higher education, by strengthening NSFAS, to ensure South Africa realises NDP 2030 target of 1.6 million enrolments for universities, 2.5 million and 1 million for TVETs and CET colleges respectively.
o Achievements – presently, black students in universities increased from 49% in 1994 to 71% in 2021 and 60% of the university students are women.
o From 1991, when TEFSA was established to 2020 the student population grew by nearly seven hundred percent and in 2024 the student population that is funded by NSFAS for the first time surpassed a million (1.1 million).
Vote for the ANC campaign
NB: Comrades, this 2024 May Day coincides with the momentous seventh democratic elections on the 29th May. This is our solemn message, this campaign is both to mobilise workers towards a decisive victory of the ANC in these elections
- the ANC remains a workers’ choice in defence of democracy and workers’ rights.
In March we launched the Eijah Barayi Brigades and the Violet Seboni Brigades which require all our effort and support.
- For the first time since 1994, our movement led by the African National Congress (ANC) is facing a realistic possibility of being unseated by all sorts of coalition of reactionary forces, spearheaded by DA’s so-called Multi-Party Charter (MPC).
Why is our revolution facing real threat of reversal in these elections?
We are not saying that this DA-led group has suddenly become popular amongst the masses of our people more than the ANC itself.
Our key message is that a decisive victory or a defeat of the ANC depends on what we are going to do as workers, leading to the very last day of the official campaigning period and the 29th May 2024.
All hands on deck
First, between today, 1st May and 29th May, with the Siyanqoba Rally to be held at the FNB Stadium, we are all hands-on deck, on the ground and in the realm of ideas to shape the narrative
We must unleash all our resources and personnel to ensure that the ANC decisively wins this seventh elections and the reactionary forces are defeated.
Second, we have to ensure the most optimal turnout of our people to cast their ballot at these elections. We must guard against complacency and ensure our people come in their numbers to vote.
Comrades, a higher voter turnout spells a decisive victory for the ANC.
So, the writing on the wall is very clear comrades – if we want to secure a decisive ANC majority victory, then all of us must make sure that all the members of our affiliates understand as to what is at stake in this election and come out in numbers on the 29th of May to vote.
Third, dealing break-away reactionary MK Party a decisive blow.
Political education to show our people how MK Party, similar to Bantu Holomisa’s UDM and Julius Malema’s EFF, one-man neo-fascist shows
MK Party’s most regressive pronouncements, e.g., support for a return of corporal punishment on children by parents, the abolishment of the gay and lesbian rights, the reintroduction of death penalty and the elevation of the tribal authorities over the elected representatives.
Why our emphasis on the MK Party?
Because it’s a break-away party from the ANC likely to affect the outcome of this 2024 elections at the expense of the ANC especially in KZN. If we don’t mount a formidable campaign, together with the EFF, the MK Party would pose a threat of eating directly into the ANC constituency, thus indirectly raise the voter share of the DA-led counterrevolutionaries.
Education and campaign to those legitimately angry at neoliberal austerity and corruption and want to punish ANC
- What are disastrous consequences of an ANC loss of power to workers and poor communities?
- A possible ascendence of a DA-led coalition, which
o promises “to go after COSATU”, and workers’ benefits.
o regards the NHI and provision of universal health coverage for all as disastrous. A DA-led government will reverse, and more empower private health sector.
o wants (together with Action SA) to phaseout the National Minimum Wage, even to overhaul the LRA and aspects of BCEA in order to introduce flexible employment terms, empowering employers to hire and fire workers.
o wants trade unions to pay a deposit to an appropriate independent body before they can embark on legal strike action, again undermining the right to strike, which is guaranteed by the Constitution.
o wants to make students from the working-class households earning more than R180 000 per year to pay for 44% of the fees, in terms of its financial aid model that excludes any of the current provision of funds for the living allowance, accommodation and the study material. This would be a receipt of disaster in terms of the gains in access for the working-class households.
o wants to replace the Public Service Act with a new legal framework, towards a confrontational posture towards the radical trade union movement in the public sector, unstable public service apparatus and therefore poor service delivery.
Only workers can defend our gains and make advances in line with the four pillars of our programme of action going-forward.
A decisive victory for the ANC in this 2024 elections would provide the best possible scenario but requires every worker to cast our votes. It also requires that we remain focused ahead as we are still going to face massive challenges as workers, regardless of the outcome of the elections.
Our strategic outlook and tasks that we have set out for ourselves as the federation at the COSATU 14th Congress in September 2022, centre on:
- Resisting the deepening of the neoliberal trajectory and to continue to fight for an alternative developmental path around the perspective of the Developmental State.
- Provide practical alternatives in our campaigns and demands that place socialist solutions at the centre.
To practically pursues this agenda, the 14th COSATU Congress adopted five elements laying out our immediate to medium-term integrated organisational and political strategy, as follows:
- Building and strengthening COSATU and its affiliates at the workplace.
- Building unity in action with other unions and federations.
- Building and strengthening the socialist-axis.
- Building campaigns with mass-based organizations and progressive NGOs; and
- Building and fighting for the renewal of the ANC.
The starting point in carrying out this integrated organisational and political programme is the building and strengthening of COSATU and its affiliates at the workplace.
Roll out of our back to the basic programme of the Listening Campaign, to root our unions on shopfloor at the workplace.
The campaign to organically establish our unions at the workplace through sustained efforts to:
- Entrench workplace democratic renewal of branch congress, election of shop stewards, establishing activist branch substructures and workplace programme of action for transformation.
- Shopsteward education and leadership training together with accountable organisers, properly supervised, to ensure support for branches and service to members.
- Strengthening our organisational substructures, especially at the regional level, as engines of service delivery to members and structures of our unions at the workplace.
__________________________
South African Communist Party Statement on International Workers’ Day
Solly Mapaila, SACP General Secretary, 1 May 2024
Today, on International Workers' Day, the South African Communist Party (SACP) proudly stands in solidarity with workers across South Africa and the world. We commemorate the 138th anniversary of the workers' struggle in Chicago, United States. On this day, in 1886, workers fought for an eight-hour working day. They faced a brutal response from the US state. Their courage and sacrifices inspired working people worldwide. Their struggle became a lasting tradition celebrated as International Workers' Day, also known as May Day.
Defending and advancing workers’ achievements
Before 1994, organised workers through non-racial trade unions played a crucial role in fighting for workers’ rights, such as the right to organise and participate in collective bargaining. This progressive movement fought against the racist and sexist job reservation system to achieve equal treatment in the workplace. The workers continued the struggle after April 1994, achieving significant milestones. These have a positive impact on workers’ rights and wellbeing.
The trade union movement has empowered workers by providing them with a collective voice and platform to express their concerns and fight for their rights. Workers have been able to challenge exploitative working conditions, push for better treatment, resist labour exploitation and refuse dangerous work.
The trade union movement played a crucial role in advocating for legislation that protects workers' rights, such as the right to organise, strike and bargain collectively. Empowering workers and protecting democratic and trade union rights has provided a platform for workers to engage in class struggle against capitalist exploitation, racial and gender oppression.
By building the trade union movement, workers have been able to challenge the dominant capitalist ideology. They have established an alternative narrative that prioritises their wellbeing and rights. By prioritising political education, workers have strengthened the working class in the struggle against capitalism. Thanks to the trade union movement, workers have fostered working-class solidarity and weakened the divisive tactics of capitalism that seek to pit workers against each other.
It is important to continue to protect these achievements to empower workers to negotiate for better wages, benefits and improved working conditions, challenging the unequal distribution of wealth and power in society.
The trade union movement has fought against discrimination based on gender, race, age, and other arbitrary grounds. Together, we have campaigned for equal pay for work of equal value, non-discriminatory employment policies and legislation, and affirmative action to ensure equal representation. Protecting and expanding these achievements is important to eliminate unfair discrimination and create a more democratic, non-racial and non-sexist work environment.
Through collective bargaining, trade unions have secured better wages, negotiated working hours and improved benefits for workers. These gains have been important in raising the living standards of workers and their families and reducing poverty and inequality. It is important to protect these achievements towards addressing the wealth gap in society.
The trade union movement has been instrumental in advancing a comprehensive social security programme for workers, including medical aid cover, retirement funds, unemployment insurance, and disability benefits, as well as maternity and paternity leaves. Workers have achieved the national minimum wage and advanced the National Health Insurance and Universal Basic Income Grant struggles in the spirit of working-class solidarity. Protecting these achievements is crucial to ensure the overall wellbeing of workers and tackle the dominance of the capitalist market in major aspects of their lives, like healthcare.
It is important to protect the trade union achievements because they have significantly improved the lives and rights of workers. The achievements have contributed to the struggle to reduce inequality, address discrimination and empower workers to have a say in their working conditions. By safeguarding these achievements, we can ensure that workers' rights and wellbeing are protected and they and their communities continue to benefit.
The achievements of the trade union movement and workers since 1994 must not be taken for granted.
There are attempts to weaken trade union rights and reverse these gains. The SACP will continue working closely with Cosatu and other unions to expose and tackle the bosses' agenda, ensuring more workers join trade unions and actively participate in their activities.
The struggle to eliminate discrimination is ongoing. The trade union movement should continue to play a vital role in protecting workers' rights and advocating for equality in the workplace.
The trade union movement has advanced the struggle for workers’ income and financial security.
However, workers’ achievements are under attack. Collective solidarity is crucial in defending the hard-won achievements and tackling the inequality inherent in the capitalist system altogether with the system itself.
The most sustainable path forward is to unite and intensify the struggle to build socialism.
Capitalist system crises
As we reflect on the significance of International Workers’ Day, it is crucial to acknowledge the profound impact of ongoing capitalist crises on workers and the poor in general. The capitalist crises are deepening, worsening working conditions, unemployment, income and wealth inequality, as well as poverty.
The capitalist class, supported by their political representatives, consistently seeks to transfer the aftermath of their system crises to the workers and the poor. They also enforce austerity measures, involving budget cuts. This affects workers, including women, and the poor in general. The bosses also cut the wage bill to protect and increase profits, forcing workers to bear the brunt of capitalist crises.
Building workers’ power
The trade union movement and the SACP have been at the forefront of the struggles for workers’ interests in both the public and private sectors. Together we have been campaigning for policies that advance the rights of the young people and women who are unemployed and are mostly the first victims of capitalist crises.
Together we remain opposed to budget cuts in development and social spending. Together we are opposed to attempts to privatise public assets, as in the case of South African Airways. We raised our voices and demonstrated against anti-trade union rights that undermine collective bargaining. Together, we campaigned against the rising cost of living, which affects workers’ incomes.
Let us unite and intensify the working-class struggle on all fronts. The SACP will strengthen its alliance and joint efforts with Cosatu to organise the unorganised, deepen worker education and build the progressive trade union movement to be more united and stronger.
Vote ANC to defend and advance workers’ achievements and struggle
The SACP calls on our people to vote for the ANC in the upcoming elections, on 29 May 2024. We say this for the following reasons, amongst others:
1) The ANC, along with the SACP and the Cosatu-led trade union movement, has actively worked hard to achieve, establish, protect, and promote democracy in South Africa. We have made significant improvements in the lives of South Africans, particularly the workers and poor, by providing essential goods and services such as housing, electricity, clean water, education, healthcare, and social grants. We have also championed a progressive constitution, which is against discrimination and upholds workers' rights.
2) The ANC is committed to addressing the problem of unemployment, especially among young people. The ANC has adopted a plan to create and sustain 2.5 million work opportunities through public employment programmes over the next five years. The ANC aims to prioritise local manufacturing, raise investment levels in various industries, support small businesses and co-operatives, and focus on intensifying skills development to build a people's economy, reduce inequality and tackle poverty.
3) The ANC has implemented policies to uplift the poor and marginalised communities. These policies include social grants, free basic services, affordable and free housing programmes, the national minimum wage and Unemployment Insurance Fund benefits. By voting for the ANC, workers will ensure the continuation and expansion of the pro-poor policies.
The ANC plans to introduce a basic income grant, which is an important step towards a universal basic income grant that the working class has been fighting for. This grant will provide income support to the unemployed and vulnerable workers.
4) The ANC has prioritised the expansion of education and skills development. It has expanded access to basic and higher education and aims to achieve universal early childhood education. Already we have reached near-universal education attendance by children aged five and six. The ANC has also planned to open new universities and colleges in the next five years and invest in education and training to equip the working class with the necessary skills for sustainable employment and collective worker ownership in the form of co-operatives.
5) The ANC has been at the forefront of the struggle for accessible healthcare for all. It has made significant progress in providing free healthcare to pregnant women, and children under five years, combatting HIV/AIDS and COVID-19, improving healthcare facilities in rural areas and townships, and increasing life expectancy. The ANC's plans include implementing the National Health Insurance as law to ensure quality healthcare for all, regardless of their income status.
6) The ANC has shown leadership in global peace efforts. We reiterate our steadfast internationalist solidarity with the people of Palestine, who know that they are not alone in their suffering, resistance and struggle. In the east, west, north, and south of this globe, peace-loving people are more united than ever in solidarity with the Palestinians. We all demand an immediate ceasefire and an end to the ongoing crimes and genocide against the Palestinian people.
We reiterate our call for an end to the criminal blockade against Cuba. We express our support for the people of Swaziland struggling for democracy and the people of Western Sahara struggling for self-determination and against occupation by Morocco.
Let us be clear. The ANC has not determined these commitments alone, just as it was not the sole force behind our victory in the decades-long battle against the apartheid regime and the progress realised by millions since April 1994. Extensive consultation within the Alliance, including with the SACP and Cosatu, considered the interests of the working class and its essential revolutionary role.
On this International Workers' Day, we urge all workers to stand strong and united. Let us defend and advance the gains of the workers' movement.
Let us go all out and vote for the ANC and continue the struggle for a socialist future!
International-Solidarity
May Day: We Rally To Beat Back Right-Wing Extremists, Promote Equality, Advance Democracy
01 May 2024
This 1 May, UNI General Secretary Christy Hoffman sends the following message:
Happy May Day!
Unions are taking to the streets today to both fight back and win forward. We are celebrating the importance of workers coming together to win their power in societies. And fighting back against the continuing advance of a right wing agenda which intends to strip our rights, diminish our standards of living and destroy our democracies.
The world’s 3,000 billionaires have increased their wealth by 34 per cent since 2020 while workers’ rights have receded by every measure. Inflation has taken large share of workers wages, and cuts in public spending have stalled poverty reduction. It is no wonder that trust in government has plummeted and with that, trust in democracy.
Far too many workers are so driven by anger at the status quo that they embrace deceitful political leaders who do not share democratic values, who prefer to blame “outsiders” for losses in living standards and fan the flames of racism and nationalism. The rights of women and LGBTQ+ communities are equally under attack.
But right wing forces should not underestimate the power and determination of trade unionists to mobilize, to fight back and to win back our democracies. For example, in Argentina, the extreme right wing leader Milei decided that he could only implement his painful “reforms” if he first destroyed the unions. Hundreds of thousands of workers have since joined a general strike and Milei will face resistance at every turn.
We know unions a essential for democratic workplaces. They are a vital check on employers’ power on the job. They ensure workers are treated as human beings, not as robots, as Amazon workers often say.
But they do more than negotiate wages and conditions. Unions educate and mobilize, and right now, that could not be more important. The World Economic Forum identified misinformation as top global risk to our futures and our democracies. False narratives fester when workers feel their dignity is being stripped away. We know that economic pressures widen fissures along racial, national and religious lines, as people scapegoat migrants and minorities rather than the rich and powerful making policies.
Unions champion inclusivity, defend dignity and reinforce economic justice across our communities. They foster solidarity in communities where too often racial resentment and xenophobia grow.
That is why this May Day, our commitment as trade unions must not only be to preserve rights on the job. We must fight to advance justice in our communities. We do that by organizing and growing our movement. We do that through our shared struggle for democracy.
So today, join us on the streets and in your union halls. Demand that your employer and your elected officials listen to your voice. Let us show that democracy does not end with a vote; it begins there.
______________________________
Norman Mampane (Shopsteward Editor)
Congress of South African Trade Unions
110 Jorissen Cnr Simmonds Street, Braamfontein, 2017
P.O.Box 1019, Johannesburg, 2000, South Africa
Tel: +27 11 339-4911 Direct line: 010 219-1348