COSATU Today, 14 December 2009

After ten days of strike and failure of further attempts by SACCAWU to resolve the strike, Sun InternationalS once again demonstrated its bad faith in the negotiations when they returned after a whole day of negotiations with pre-strike position of October as a final offer.

Since the beginning of the strike the company frustrated all attempts by the workers; they came unprepared to meetings, refused to negotiate and agree on picket rules and never offered anything new in negotiations, accept reiterating its October position.

Over the last few years South Africa had become a top international attraction. In the same period, Sun International profited more than doubled, yet the workers hardly received a just share from the gains. Workers are aware that until the early 1990s with the transition from Apartheid to a democratic dispensation the sector and the company have not performed very well. It is our struggles and the peaceful transition from Apartheid to Democracy that has made South Africa such an attractive international destiny for tourism, leisure sports events and other regular international conferences. It is from these events that hotels like Sun International gained, from the WCAR, WSSD, Rugby World Cup, international cricket events, continental soccer events, Miss World pageants that companies like Sun International has benefitted and from next year's FIFA World Cup 2010 they expect a further explosion in profits. All of these events and future events is as a result of our struggles, yet today workers do not benefit and we believe the company can afford workers demands.

Workers demands:

• A wage increase of 13% effective from the 1st of July 2009

• A ratio of 90% to 10% of full time employees to scheduled employees

• Tips to be unconditionally be allocated to workers

• An end to the exploitative practice of averaging of working hours

• The extension of the scope of the Bargaining Unit

• Improved night shift allowance

• End the use of Labour broking and interns from hotel schools to undercut working conditions

The intransigent attitude by the company throughout the dispute, leave the Union and striking workers with no other choice but to intensify the strike and solidarity action.

The Union with support from COSATU and other allies intensified actions on the picket-line with specific focus on Sun City.

SACCAWU further call on the public to join and support striking workers on the picket lines at all Sun International establishments throughout the country.

1.2 NEHAWU holds CEC meeting

Fikile Majola, NEHAWU General Secretary, 14 December 2009

NEHAWU held its Central Executive Committee (CEC) meeting on the 12-13^th of December 2009 at the Parktonian Hotel, in Johannesburg. The CEC considered the current socioeconomic and political situation, both internationally and domestically as well as our organisational performance in championing the interests of our members and in building a strong union since our last meeting in December last year.

As a union organizing workers in the health and education sectors amongst others, the CEC considered current developments in these sectors especially since the election of a new government led by President Jacob Zuma. As part of the deliberations on the national political situation, the CEC noted the emergence of a new political tendency within the ANC. The CEC is of a view that this is a grouping of sections of the 1996 Class Project and other conservative forces driving the interests of the elites in our country who are hell-bent on undemocratically contesting for leadership positions in the ANC and efforts to marginalize other Alliance partners.

The central executive committee pledged support and committed our union to:

(a) Actively participate in the implementation of the Health 10 Point Plan, at the centre of which are the National Health Insurance (NHI) and fight against HIV/AIDS. In this regard, the union commits to take a lead in the campaign for the NHI and to support the fight against HIV and the implementation of new measures in the expansion of the treatment of AIDS.

(b) Step up our work in the transformation of the tertiary education system, especially in the light of the establishment of a new national Ministry for Higher Education and Training. Hence, the CEC welcomes the decision of the ministry to convene the tertiary education summit early next year.

(c) As part of the national commitment to the creation of the decent jobs, the CEC supports the banning of labour-brokers, and commits the union to fight for the absorption of workers employed by the labour-brokers into the public service.

(d) Whilst we support the raising of funds from the private sector to build new hospitals and improve infrastructure as part of preparations for the implementation of the NHI, the CEC committed the union to fight against the use of public-private-partnerships, which includes the management and operations of facilities.

(e) We therefore call on Health Minister Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi to make publicly available the report of the commission that was tasked with the evaluation of hospital managers.

(f) We have resolved to continue and amplify our efforts of fighting corruption and nepotism in the public service, in our society at large and call upon our members to refrain from engaging in any corrupt activities but work hard to expose corruption where they witness it.

(g) Demand that a deadline be set for the tripartite alliance task team on macro-economic policy tasked with the process of reviewing the monetary policy and mandate of the Reserve Bank

(h) Welcome the debate on Nationalisation as a step towards the creation of a developmental state and also in line with our socialist principles but we condemn the hysterical and rancorous tone that the debate has deteriorated into at times.

(i) Call upon all our comrades within the Alliance to refrain from engaging in tabloid politics when discussing critical issues that affect the well being of our people because that trivialises those issues

(j) Call for the review of the Higher Education Act of 1997, especially regarding issues of institutional autonomy and academic freedom in the context of transformation in higher education so as to give the Minister of Higher Education more powers to intervene.

(k) Call on government to review the Further Education and Training Colleges Act of 2006 which has led to the removal of FET sector workers out of the public service to the employ of the institutions.

(l) Welcome the South African Communist Party’s analysis of the ongoing service delivery protests that have erupted all around the country. Whilst we support the service delivery demands of our communities, we condemn the lawlessness and xenophobic tendencies that have been perpetrated in some of the situations.

(m) Congratulate our vanguard party the South African Communist Party for its successful 2^nd Special National Congress and we support the resolutions that came out of that process.

What came out of the deliberations is that the union remains a radical and transformative union and a labour movement that is committed to taking up the immediate concerns of the workers in their workplaces. We re-affirm our commitment to dealing with broader social and political challenges in the context of fighting for socialism and also to remain a reliable champion of the working class.

1.3 FAWU rejects Coca Cola Shanduka Employee Share Scheme

Katishi Masemola, FAWU General Secretary, 14 December 2009

FAWU has rejected the unilateral announcement of employee share scheme (ESOP) by Coca Cola Shanduka Beverages Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Cyril Ramaphosa’s Shaduka group of companies and one of the five bottling companies for Coca Cola products in South Africa, without engaging the union on the structure and content of the scheme.

The initiative, purported to be an empowerment of employees in Shanduka Beverages, appears to be a public relations exercise to try and tame possible employee back-lash following a similar scheme at SAB Ltd, the largest bottler of coca cola products in the country and in Africa and one of the nine mega-bottling companies of coke in the world.

At this stage the union does not have adequate details on how the senior managers will benefit from the scheme but has every reason to believe that the ESOP is structured in the same way as the SAB Ltd given that Cyril Ramaphosa is the non-executive director at SAB Ltd and at the parent SABMiller Plc. This will have the same effect of reinforcing disparities of asset ownership in society and inequitable distribution of income in Shanduka when a handful of managers getting much more shares than hundreds of low-earners, in the same way it does in SAB Ltd. Further, the little information at our disposal suggest that length of service is been used to allocate shares among low-earning employees and the net effect is that those with twenty years of service will get two and half times more units of shares than employees with five years of service.

Therefore FAWU condemns this elite enrichment of a handful few black managers at the expense of mass empowerment of hundreds of workers in this company. This is no different to other transactions which were condemned for enriching the few without being broad-based in distribution of benefits to the many.

We will reject arguments that black manager talent retention effort and reward to lengthy loyal service are reasons for the inequitable spread of allocation of shares as unacceptable.

FAWU does not accept the conditions attached to full benefit in ESOP such as employees who retire or get retrenched or disabled during the ‘lock-in’ period of 10 years being part-disqualified from fully benefiting in the transaction.

In the same way we are doing at SAB Ltd, the union will be consulting its members throughout the festive period into early next year. If our members agree that we should wage protracted campaign against Shanduka the will certainly do that.

Meanwhile, we call on Cyril Ramaphosa to encourage directors of Shanduka Beverages to meaningfully engage the union on the structure and content of this ESOP initiative.

SACCAWU Logo

1.4 SACCAWU members score victory at Ackermans

Mike Abrahams, SACCAWU Spokesperson, 14 December 2009

After protracted negotiations with Ackermans where there are multi-union negotiations, SACCAWU through persistence, mobilisation of members and good organisation managed to secure a better deal for our members as compared to the other two unions.

While the other two unions settled for R285.00 or 8% and R287.00 or 8.5% whichever is greater, SACCAWU managed to secure an settlement of R297.00 or 8.5% for our members.

2. South Africa

2.1 Declaration of the SACP Special National Congress, Polokwane - December 13, 2009

We have met in Polokwane over four days in our mid-term, 2009 SACP Special National Congresss. We are 900 delegates bearing the mandates of over 96,000 Communists from all corners of South Africa. We have convened together with comrades from the Young Communist League, from our Alliance partners, and fraternal formations from across the world.

At the outset of our Special Congress, together, we set for ourselves three basic strategic tasks:

First, we said that we would consolidate, as Communists and allies, an understanding of the current global capitalist crisis – a crisis that is deep-seated, systemic and far from being over. It is a crisis that has deepened the plight and suffering of billions of workers and poor world-wide. Here in SA a million working people have lost their jobs in the course of this year alone.

Faced with this crisis, this Special Congress has underlined the imperative of taking both defensive and offensive anti-capitalist measures. Around the world the crisis has compelled greater reliance of capital on the state for bail-outs, rescue packages and protective interventions. We pledge, here in SA, to ensure that we use this greater reliance of capitalists on the state to advance our own objective of rolling back their greedy domination over the production and allocation of surplus. We pledge to organise and mobilise in our places of work, in our communities, inside the state itself to ensure it is not the workers and poor who bear the brunt of this capitalist crisis.

We have agreed that the present global crisis is, in fact, a crisis of human civilisation itself. The capitalist accumulation drive is increasingly carrying us to the brink, to the collapse of the bio-physical conditions for any sustainable life on our planet. As the world meets in Copenhagen this coming week to agree on responses to climate change, it is clear that capitalism has no answers to the crisis we all face. In fact, many capitalist responses, like carbon trading, will feed the bourgeoisie’s next speculative frenzy and aggravate the mortal dangers we face.

We say: the only sustainable response to climate change is SYSTEM change. The struggle for socialism and the struggle to preserve our forests, our farm-lands, our water, the air that we breathe – these are one and the same struggle. As SACP members, we are green because we are red.

On our internationalist responsibilities this Special National Congress has reaffirmed our commitment, working with progressive forces, to coordinate our peoples all over Africa to resist neo-colonial wars, to struggle against aggressive imperialist impositions, and to build a strong peace movement against proliferation and for the closure of all foreign military bases.

We have committed ourselves to organise massive solidarity with the peoples of Western Sahara and Palestine in their struggle for their basic right to self-determination. We call for both Morocco and Spain to guarantee the full repatriation of Aminatou Haidar.

The SACP will continue to support a progressive resolution to the political stalemate in Zimbabwe by prioritising peoples’ basic needs. We will continue to mobilise against the despotic regime in Swaziland.

Secondly, at the outset of this Congress, we said that we had an obligation to respond to a cruel reality – after 15 years of democracy in our country, after more than a decade of economic growth, notwithstanding progress on many fronts, our society continues to be characterised by appalling levels of racialised inequality, and by crisis levels of unemployment. Patriarchal oppression continues to afflict millions of women. Together, we have high-lighted the underlying systemic features in our society that reproduce this crisis of under-development.

In plenary discussions and in commissions we have agreed on a programme of action to respond to these national realities. We will take forward and deepen our shared Alliance commitment to placing our economy onto a different, job-creating path. We will advance a state-led and worker-driven industrial policy. We will ensure that macro-economic policy is knocked off its throne, and comes down to earth. It must be aligned with our strategic developmental priorities. Shoulder to shoulder with our Alliance partners and the rural masses, we will advance rural development as a key pillar of our revolution. We are committed to turning around the critical sphere of local government, with a special emphasis on building popular power at the local level through organs of participatory democracy.

Together, let us transform the entire education and training dispensation. We have pledged the SACP’s support for government’s HIV/AIDS campaign. Let us all take collective responsibility for the challenge of this pandemic that is sweeping through our society. We reaffirm our commitment to the struggle for a National Health Insurance, built on the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”.

Together let us ensure that working class women organise and mobilise to take their rightful place in all sites of power. Together, as women and men, let us defeat the oppressive shackles of patriarchal oppression.

Together with our Allies, and the great majority of South Africans, we Communists pledge to fight the scourge of crime and corruption. We will carry this struggle forward without fear or favour. Without militant worker vigilance, corruption will devour our democracy.

Thirdly, at the outset of Congress, we agreed that it was our task as the SACP to carry forward the analysis of progress and challenges within our Party, and within our broader ANC-led Alliance. What has happened since our 2007 12^th National Congress? What has happened since the ANC’s 52^nd National Conference in December 2007? We have noted the important gains made in consolidating Alliance unity. We have noted the fighting unity that was built around the April elections. Let us carry these gains down to every district and community of our country.

We have also noted the early warning signs of a small but sometimes clamorous anti-communist, chauvinistic tendency in the ranks of our broader movement. Together, with all of our Alliance partners, we pledge to nip this tendency in the bud. We pledge to fight factionalism, not with factionalism, but with a principled programme of action. We pledge not to be unduly diverted, nor provoked by what will become an increasingly isolated and incoherent tendency. We shall defend our fundamental Communist principles of solidarity, of internationalism and of a robust rejection of all brands of chauvinism. We pledge, always, to be a disciplined force for unity in the heart of our broad revolutionary movement.

As an SACP we have fought many battles. We are steeled in struggle. We are proud of the dramatic growth in our Party membership since our 12^th Congress.

Our opponents, and even some of our friends, are sceptical about the prospects of building a socialist South Africa. They call on us to unveil some detailed, ready-to-roll-out “socialist blue-print”, some fanciful utopia of the very kind that Marx and Engels long ago rejected. As Chris Hani always reminded us, socialism has to be built here and now in the struggles of millions and millions of workers and the poor. Socialism, he always said, is not built in a dream-world; it doesn’t belong to outer space, or another time-zone. It has to be built here through collective action. It is about simple things – food and shelter and work for unemployed hands that long to be active. It is about a life of dignity for young and old. It is about simple things, yet so hard to achieve in a capitalist world. Socialism is about displacing reckless capitalist greed with solidarity with our fellow human beings, with responsibility for our threatened natural world. Socialism is about common-sense itself – common-sense that is constantly undermined in a capitalist world.

Which is why we say: A luta continua!

Socialism is the future! Build it now!

2.2 COSATU statement on SACP Special Congress

Patrick Craven, COSATU National Spokesperson, 14 December 2009

The Congress of South African Trade Unions has noted the media coverage of the SA Communist Party’s recent special national congress, much of which wrongly suggests that the Alliance between the ANC, COSATU SACP and SANCO has been plunged into crisis.

COSATU reassures its members and the people of South Africa that nothing could be further from the truth. The Alliance is not in crisis. It is intact and as necessary as ever, as confirmed by Conference and Congress resolutions of all the Alliance partners and declarations of successive Alliance Summits.

We are totally united around all the policies of the ANC election manifesto and are working tirelessly to see those policies implemented.

This unity was reaffirmed in the declaration of the Alliance Summit held on 13-15 November 2009. Reports suggesting that the Draft Alliance Programme of Action moved by the General Secretary of COSATU created divisions and contradictions were leaked to the media by a small tendency within the leadership of the movement which is unhappy with the central role of the Alliance in policy formation.

COSATU, just like all Alliance formations, chose not to engage with leaks and distortions of internal discussions by factions, or a new tendency, that cannot win internal discussions and chooses to put in public internal discussions that still have to be concluded.

Having said so, we must state that the Draft Alliance Programme of Action was presented by the COSATU General Secretary on behalf of the Alliance Secretariat, not on behalf of COSATU, as claimed by the faceless sources who are hell-bent on feeding misinformation with a view to creating a crisis in the minds of the public, which had no opportunity to participate in the rich Alliance discussions.

The Alliance has always been based on shared values and principles but has also tolerated and encouraged robust engagement and debate on areas of disagreement, without this calling into the question the necessity for the Alliance.

Against this background the federation regrets the current spats between personalities from the ANCYL, the YCL and the SACP, which have unfortunately become personalised. This shows the need to conduct them in a manner that does not involve personal insults, mudslinging and challenges to the bona-fides of those who hold difference views on any policy question.

If not stopped, this can lead to the closure of the space for genuine political debate, which is the life-blood of the Alliance and should never be stifled.

The Alliance and its partners must go back to basics and re-establish the traditions of comradely disagreement, which raises the quality of debate and advances the struggle for the national democratic revolution.

We can, and must, then refocus our discussions on the real crisis in society – the massive levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality and the urgent need to speed up the implementation of the progressive pledges of the ANC election manifesto which 66% of South Africans voted for. The real public discussion we call for is the need for a new growth path which will address the crisis of underdevelopment.

2.3 In defence of the SACP and the National Democratic Revolution!

Castro Ngobese, NUMSA’s National Spokesperson, 14 December 2009

NUMSA has noted the dastardly public rantings and insults directed at the South African Communist Party (SACP) by the structures of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) particularly by its President Julius Malema.

The structures of the ANCYL have been unleashing missives to the SACP as part of reinforcing the resurgence of anti-SACP posturing within our revolutionary alliance as led by the African National Congress (ANC). This anti-SACP wagon by the ANCYL and other likeminded individuals within the movement is not ideologically coherent and is informed by historically discredited and defeated endeavors to banish the SACP cadres who are members of the ANC. Lessons must be drawn on how we dealt with African Chauvinism and Anti-Communist tendencies within our ranks as represented by Pan Africanist Congress, Black Consciousness Movement, the Gang of 8 and COPE.

These attacks should be located and understood within the context of the re-alignment of different class forces and fractions within the ANC who see the SACP as a threat to their narrow and self-centered accumulation interests. The ANC YL particularly with particular reference to its President Malema must be cautious not be knowingly or unknowingly co-opted and used by this fraction.

As Numsa we fully support the calls for the transfer of wealth to the people as a whole in the form of nationalization and socialization of mines and banks as resolved in the Freedom Charter. We are supporting these calls NOT out of being fanatics as our detractors or class enemies suggests. But it is out of concrete struggles waged by our communities against the brutal theft of our resources in areas such as Maandaagshoek and Baphaalane-Ba-Mantserre.

We call on the ANCYL leadership to draw a leaf from these profound words by Mao Tse-Tung, “In the great leap forward movement, some will fall by the wayside, some will become revisionists. But some will join the enemy camp”. We hope these words will accord the ANCYL national leadership an opportunity to revisit their ideological orientation and political understanding or ‘join the enemy camp’.

The leadership of Numsa will recommend to Cosatu to seek an audience with the ANCYL national leadership as part of rescuing this progressive formation of young people from being co-opted because of the new economic interests entrenched amongst our leaders. The ANCYL still remains a critical leadership reservoir and agitator for radical implementation of the Freedom Charter within the national liberation movement as led by the ANC.

Numsa is eagerly waiting for the outcomes of the vanguard party of the working class – the 2^nd Special National Congress resolutions and we are confident that it has emerged with ideologically informed and clear resolutions that will lead society in general, but the working class in particular as we search ever forward to build working class power in the workplace, in the community, in the state, in the economy, internationally and ideologically.

2.4 DENOSA welcomes Minster Radebe’s address on HIV and the law in the 21^st century

Asanda Fongqo, DENOSA Communications Officer, 14 December 2009

DENOSA has welcomed the speech made by the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Jeff Radebe at the meeting of Eminent African Jurists on HIV and the Law in the 21^st Century.

Minister Radebe reiterated words by our iconic leader and the most famous statesman former President Nelson Mandela that the HIV and AIDS pandemic is not only a health challenge but a human rights issue.

The union is encouraged that the Minister has highlighted that the Constitution of the country states clearly that discrimination against people infected with HIV and AIDS has no place.

DENOSA also agrees with him that “The concept of human rights speaks to the modeling of social, economic and political relations, to holistically reflect the common vision of a society whose shared welfare demonstrates no prejudice, one against the other, in any way. Our claim to a culture of human rights would therefore be incomplete if we disregard the incidence and impact of HIV in our times. “

DENOSA continues to advocate for people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS and emphasizes that ARV’s should be made available extensively. We reiterate our strong condemnation of continuing attitudes of attaching stigma and discrimination towards the affected and infected.

DENOSA appreciates legal efforts by government to care for the vulnerable and commits itself to continue playing a pivotal role in rooting out discrimination against people infected with HIV and AIDS.

Mluleki Mntungwa (Communications Officer)

COSATU ICT Unit

1-5 Leyds Cnr Biccard Street

Braamfontein

2007

P.O.Box 1019

Johannesburg

2000

South Africa

Tel: +27 11 339-4911/24

Fax: +27 11 339-5080/6940

E-Mail: mlu...@cosatu.org.za

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