SA needs a Skills Revolution and the working class must take responsibility for it. Umsebenzi Online: Volume 11, No. 18, 17 May 2012

[Malesela Maleka]

Umsebenzi Online - Volume 11, No. 18, 17 May 2012


Volume 11, No. 18, 17 May 2012

In this Issue:

a.. SA needs a Skills Revolution and the working class
must take responsibility for it
b.. Liberals as eternal political hypocrites



Red Alert

SA needs a Skills Revolution and the working class must take
responsibility for it


By Blade Nzimande, SACP General Secretary

This week I attended an important gathering of UNESCO, focusing on
sharing experiences on how to strengthen technical and vocational
education (TVET). An important consensus was reached that good and
quality TVET is critical for inclusive economic development in
general, and for human development in particular. As we discuss the
implementation of a new growth path, the industrial policy action plan
3 and rollout the infrastructure plan in our country it is absolutely
essential that the matter of skills development be prioritized. This
is an essential component of micro economic transformation.

As we debate the notion of a developmental state we need to realize
that for the state to be developmental it needs capacity and state
capacity cannot be build on the backbone of an unskilled working
class. The skills and capacity are even more critical for Socialism as
under socialism we will need more capacity and efficiency to address
the needs of the overwhelming majority of the workers and the poor,
with the working class playing its leading role. Skills development
should feature as prominently alongside the living and social
campaigns.

To bring about rising living standards and a better life for all our
people, South Africa must have an increasingly productive economy
which creates decent jobs for workers on a large scale. Our workers
must, steadily but decisively, improve their educational and skills
levels, especially their technical and vocational skills. This will
enable our country to set out on a new and sustainable growth path,
with a regenerated manufacturing industry and the new jobs that will
accompany this.

Manufacturing will not only create new jobs in the actual production
of goods, but also stimulate other employment in services such as
transport or telecommunications and even encourage further development
in primary industry such as mining and agriculture.

In order to achieve all this it is essential for the country to
undergo a skills revolution - a process that must make certain that
every citizen is trained to a high level and can contribute
productively to social and economic development. This will ensure that
we overcome the effects of job reservation and cheap labour which was
such an important part of the strategy of oppressive colonial and
apartheid regimes for over a century. Job reservation did not allow
blacks to do skilled work - and so prevented most South Africans from
becoming skilled artisans, technicians or managers and banned them
from all but a few professions. Since 1994, we have done surprisingly
little to overcome the effects of this legacy.

One of the main reasons for this lack of progress is that the working
class has not yet fully taken responsibility for the skills
revolution. Unless we ourselves drive the process and ensure that our
children and our communities appreciate the need for it, no skills
revolution can be successful. The working class and it's organisations
must play a central role in ensuring that employers allocate
sufficient resources to training and that they play their part in
skills development and especially in technical and vocational
education and training (TVET). Whilst we need to mobilize all social
forces behind a skills revolution, Worker driven and worker led TVET
is an essential component in the struggle for the transformation of
South Africa's workplace.

Vocational education at the skilled artisan level not only allows
workers to make a decent living, but can also lay the basis for
further studies leading to technician or professional qualifications.
In some highly developed countries with strong manufacturing
industries like Germany and Switzerland, up to 70% of young people go
into an apprenticeship straight from basic education, usually at the
age of sixteen. It is also essential that workers take up in earnest
the issue of artisan aides - who are essentially doing artisan work
but without proper certificated upgrading and consequently not paid as
such - to become full artisans.

At the UNESCO Congress in Shanghai, China, many delegates made the
point that in those countries with low-skilled workforces; technical
and vocational education tends to have a low status. Poor attitudes to
vocational training are based on an outdated, elitist attitude to
manual work that doesn't recognize it's economic value or it's
potential to create wealth for the individual or society. China has
recognized that skills are essential for raising the living standards
of its people and is investing heavily in technical and vocational
education at both senior secondary and higher education level.

It would be wrong to say that education and training can on its own
create jobs; it COULD just create people who are educated but
unemployed. However, it is also true that without an educated and
skilled work-force it is not possible to have the level of economic
growth and development that creates enough decent jobs in line with
our developmental agenda. It is essential for a country to have good
policies for economic development, including policies for industrial
development, for the development and maintenance of infrastructure,
and for job creation more generally. But for such policies to be
successful, education and training are essential.

Our government is now starting to tackle seriously the issue of skills
development in South Africa. The working class should assert itself to
ensure that its interests are placed at the center of this process.
Unions and worker-led community organisations must take a lead in
advising government on education and training policy and take up these
issues in their respective workplaces. They should encourage workers
to participate in strengthening our FET colleges and SETAs, and even
our schools that provide the basic education that every person needs
in a developmental state. Unions must insist that their employers - in
both the private and the public sectors - play their role in training
both new workers as well as those already in employment. They should
insist that the apprenticeship and learnership systems become
entrenched as an integral part of the activities in every workplace.
Every workplace should become a training space!

The working class must not only work to ensure the existence of some
kind of TVET but should concern itself with the type of education that
is provided. We must always insist that the TVET curriculum should not
be narrowly occupationally focused; it should also include significant
elements of social studies, humanities and ethics. This is because all
education should prepare people to live as responsible members of
society who contribute to not only to its economic life, but also to
its social, cultural, scientific and political life. Workers ARE
producers of goods and services, but they are also citizens and
rounded human beings with a whole range of interests.

Also important is for workers to advocate for the recognition of prior
learning (RPL) so that the knowledge they have acquired through
practical experience can be recognised, certificated and rewarded.
Another important issue is to design a system of qualifications in
which there are no dead ends and that all TVET qualifications open
articulation pathways to higher learning for those who wants to
continue studying.

In engaging with training policies, we should be aware of a view
coming from some on the left that actually conflicts with the
interests of the working class. This view argues that all skills
training is just for the benefit of capital, to help it to increase
profits. It follows, according to this argument, that any policy to
prioritise training or skills is just promoting the needs of capital
and is anti-working class. This is a fallacy. Skills will, in fact,
strengthen the working class and make workers less expendable,
especially if the working class itself is at the head of this
struggle.

Similarly we must critique the right wing and liberal notion that
education and training is narrowly only for the workplace. Central as
education and training is for the labour market, but it must be broad
enough to empower our youth and workers with the necessary knowledge
and capacity to deepen and consolidate the national democratic
revolution.

The SACP hopes that the forthcoming COSATU Education and Training
Conference in July will tackle the issue of TVET in particular, as
well as clearly define its role in skills development in general. The
SACP is of the view that COSATU in particular has an important role to
play in driving a progressive skills agenda.

Asikhulume!!



In the aftermath of the march to COSATU house by the DA and Hellen
Zille's spirited attack on the public protector we have decided to
republish the article below. Once more events have vindicates us!!


Liberals as eternal political hypocrites

Blade Nzimande, General Secretary

Liberalism in general and its different South African shades has only
been consistent on one and only one thing, political hypocrisy.
Otherwise how does explain the fact that the DA has come out with guns
blazing against e-tolling in Gauteng (which the SACP incidentally also
has problems with) whilst at the same time imposing its own toll gates
on Chapman`s peak in Cape Town.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the media completely ignored the
SACP Central Committee statement over the weekend when it pointed this
out, since, for all intents and purposes, mainstream and commercial
media in South Africa, with few exceptions, has become the mouthpiece
of especially post 1994 (white) liberalism.

Liberalism and political hypocrisy have a long history in South
Africa. The very same liberalism in our country had over decades prior
to 1994 preached `freedom` whilst strenuously opposing one person one
vote as the basis of genuine democracy in our country. Instead, whilst
they pretended to oppose apartheid (but privately praying for the NP
to win election after election), they only argued for a qualified
franchise, that only educated blacks (`because they are civilized like
us`), should be given a limited vote whilst not tampering with white
minority rule and power.

For instance at the height of the struggles against the criminal
apartheid regime, right into the negotiations of the early 1990s, the
Democratic Party, the predecessor to the DA and many of its fellow
travellers, never advanced a principled stance for majority rule based
on one person one vote. Instead majority rule, as enshrined in our
constitution today, was won by the liberation movement, using a
combination of armed and mass struggles as well as the moral
superiority of its struggle.

When Dr Pieter Mulder made extremely provocative statements about
blacks and land ownership in our country, this has been met by a very
loud silence from the liberals because Mulder has `spoken for us
all`!! From the hordes of the mushrooming liberal NGOs, there are no
talks or even whispers of going to the Equality Court or the Human
Rights Commission, as ordinarily would have been the case had similar
statements been made about whites. There are no parliamentary motions
or call for special debates or `points of order` and warnings of
unparliamentary language, had it been the other way round!

In true liberal fashion, especially after 1994, liberals have
opportunistically cherry-picked on issues where they want to appear to
be on the side of, or speaking for, the majority of the people our
country. They seek alliances with the workers when they seek to
capture the SABC (the `Save our SABC Coalition`). They would seek to
build alliances with worker organizations on opposing the Protection
of State Information Bill (POSIB) and `civil society` coalitions to
oppose e- tolling in Gauteng, even in courts, if need be.

But we are yet to hear of `civil society` initiatives against abuse of
farm workers, against labour brokers, or against retrenchments. There
is no `right to know` campaign on why Nelson Chisale had to be thrown
into a lion`s den by a white racist nor is there an outcry about
threats to our constitution when judges, as public officials, resist
to declare their interests and those of their spouses.

There is already an important lesson for the working class about all
this, that we should be extremely vigilant about liberal fellow
travellers posing as friends and allies of the working class. Liberals
choose issues on which to try and fool the working class, often issues
aimed at opposing government and the majoritarian character of our
democracy. For instance when Cosatu embarks on actions against labour
brokers, these liberal `friends` and `civil society combatants` will
be conspicuous by their absence. Why? Because liberals are not against
capitalism and the exploitation of the working class nor are they for
the total emancipation of the black majority or the total eradication
of the legacy of colonialism of a special type. Instead the very
notion of `civil society` is used to hide elite class interests, and
often racial ones as well, whilst pretending to be the greatest
defenders of freedom (`Under Law`) and equality.

This is why liberals don`t want to support the campaign on deepening
participatory democracy - participatory democracy is reduced to their
donor funded organisations, pursuing sponsored views on issues such as
the POSIB, the media appeals tribunal, and many others. The liberals
are fundamentally opposed to the increased role of the state in the
economy, because, whilst purporting to seek to speak on behalf of our
people, they do not believe of a state that seeks to act to advance
the interests of the majority. It is for this reason that liberals
have sought to use the courts and all institutions supporting our
democracy, to try and oppose, discredit and subvert all government
decisions aimed at the thorough transformation of society. The
liberals now are going to court to challenge the Languages Bill, yet
have never raised their voices about the marginalisation of indigenous
African languages. They oppose the National Health Insurance Scheme,
and practically all that stands to benefit our people. That is why
they have reduced our struggle to constitutional legalisms, devoid of
any substantive economic and social transformation.

Liberalism, especially in the 1970s and 80s, argued very strongly for
instance that apartheid was an aberration and distorted the otherwise
rational capitalist market system, refusing to see the deep
interconnectedness between the two, thus reinforcing the very
conditions for the reproduction of the apartheid system. Apartheid was
not a distortion of, or aberration from, the capitalist market, but
was a brutal and particular form of colonial and bourgeois rule, which
affected the lived experiences of the overwhelming majority of South
Africans.

Perhaps liberalism is after all not a hypocrisy as such, but its very
nature and character is elitist, and it will at all times act like
this. South African (white) liberalism in particular evolved from a
racialist form of accumulation of privileges, and it still largely
displays similar features today. It is an expression of the
coincidence of race and class in a patriarchal society.

It is therefore important for the working class to understand that
it`s fate lies in its own hands, working in alliance with progressive
forces in society. It is this understanding that would characterize
the working class as a class for itself rather than a class in itself.
It is only a politically conscious working class and the majority of
our people that will expose the hypocrisy of liberalism, in all its
manifestations.

The principal task of the working class is to lead and be at the head
of the mobilization of the people as a whole, and intensify the
ideological offensive against all forms of reactionary and regressive
tendencies, including liberalism, workerism, populism and demagoguery.
In so doing it should act as the glue to the unity of our Alliance!
This is the true meaning of the working class as the principal motive
force of the national democratic revolution. It is taking
responsibility for the revolution!

Asikhulume!!