Address to the COSATU Elective Local Shopsteward Council: JHB Local Chairperson Cde Mchunu
17 May 2018
Revolutionary Greetings to: The COSATU Gauteng Provincial Secretary, Cde Dumisani Dakile The JHB COSATU Cluster Secretary, Cde Itumeleng Molantoa The JHB COSATU Local, Deputy Chairperson Cde Ntombi Majali; The JHB COSATU Local, Cde Nobhala Mike Mongwe; The COSATU JHB Local, Cde Itumeleng Shoai; our revolutionary gender activist; The leadership of the Alliance present and guests; And most importantly, all affiliates represented by shopstewards,
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Receive the most warm and revolutionary greetings on behalf COSATU JHB Local and the Local Office Bearers. Comrades and friends;
We meet here today as one of the most trusted and reliable, giant revolutionary Federations of workers in South Africa. We meet as COSATU in the Johannesburg Local. We do so when the leader of the alliance, the ANC, is fresh from the 54th National Elective Conference in December last year. We want to take this opportunity to congratulate the new leadership collective, and wish them well as they discharge their responsibilities. We meet as COSATU JHB Local in fulfilment of our Constitutional mandate to renew not only the leadership, but the programmatic mandate as well. This work will fuse into the broader COSATU programme as it renews itself later this year. Provincial and national congresses are expected to be convened this year. We shall wait for the dates of these congresses.
Cde Deputy Chair; This meeting also comes on the heels of a successful May Day. A completely different May Day compared with last year where we saw disruptions of the day in Free State. This Workers Day is a result of a long struggle for the emancipation of workers from imperialist bondage, manifesting itself, in our context, through White Monopoly Capital and its sibling neoliberalism as economic regimes that continue to keep workers in perpetual chains of poverty. 2|Page
Neoliberalism continue to suck the blood of our workers like a vampire, without any mercy, leaving them gasping for both fresh air and fresh blood. We are also in the process of observing Africa Month. We must celebrate the fact that despite foreign interferences, largely, there is political stability and economic growth in our continent. As workers we need to contribute to efforts to integrate African states. This will give us a strong base to fight off any capitalists’ tendencies to turn the African growth story in favour of West, Europeans and International Monitory Fund as their stooges. We also meet after successfully commemorating, last month, Cde Chris Hani’s death. And after a proud and dignified send-off of our Mother of the Nation – Mama Winnie Madikizele-Mandela, and Dr Zola Skweyiya (May their souls rest in peace).
Cde delegates;
One of the areas we need to look close into is the New Dawn. At this moment, the left forces within the Alliance have not really engaged with the New Dawn, especially its meaning for the working class. We have seen the stalling of the public sector negotiations, and the Bus strike which has now been concluded but which took so long to end, the deaths in the mining sector, and the retrenchments in the private sector and state-owned enterprises. This is happening in the context of a New Dawn.
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In all this, the COSATU leadership is keeping quiet. Does this reflect the alignment of forces before, and after Nasrec? As we see it, it seems difficult to criticize the current leadership of the ANC and its government. Or is it a question of comrades having a lollipop in their mouths and a cheese in their hands? Hence they are mumbling in their statements. A case in point is the Life Esidimeni saga. When workers were put in the cross-fire, COSATU was nowhere to defend the workers. Shockingly, the Bus striking workers, whose majority are in a COSATU-affiliated union, SATAWU, were represented by our rival union, NUMSA in all key public platforms including the media. Again, if we look at the debate on minimum wage, COSATU was tailing the debate, a rival; teething labour federation was at the forefront of the discussions on this important issue. ‘The question of a lollipop in the mouths of our leadership and a cheese in their hands looms large’; This therefore raises dramatically a question of where is this current leadership taking us? We cannot allow this giant Federation to gasp and be in life support because of the indecisions of our leadership. The reality is that the workplace is becoming more precarious and unpredictable. Employers are firing, hiring and humiliating the workers without any formidable resistance from COSATU and its member affiliate of Unions. It is important to be frank and robust and raise these issues in the structures, and not outside as we remain disciplined cadres of our organizations. This elective Local Council is one such structure where we must raise such critical questions without fear of retribution.
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Comrades;
The struggle for economic freedom of the Africans has become more urgent than before, with a rallying call for Radical Socio-Economic Transformation as advocated by the ANC. COSATU, in the 8th National Congress in September 2003; adopted a 2015 Plan and said the following on Socio-Economic Programme Defending and Creating Quality Jobs: “Ensuring quality jobs requires both stronger efforts to manage workplace and sectoral restructuring, and more targeted policy engagement overall. We cannot afford to let South Africa follow the pattern of National Democratic Revolution in the rest of Africa, where the ruling elite colludes with local and foreign capital to enrich itself at the cost of the country as a whole. “Rather, we must ensure that government acts to restructure the economy fundamentally, which in turn requires that it do more to manage capital. At the same time, we must define an effective strategy to lock capital into a national agenda, through incentives, regulation and discipline, in order to ensure higher investment.” Therefore, intrinsic to this economic struggle, must be the unambiguous role of the working class, as the only reliable class, given its location in the means of production, to make sure that the ANC government implements Radical Socio-Economic Transformation. As we pursue this struggle for economic emancipation, we must focus our energies to both the workplace struggles, and policy arena.
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It is therefore important that his meeting discusses all challenges facing our workers at the workplace and at the policy level. The vulnerability (precariousness of the workplace environment), and safety of the workers at the workplace, together with proper protective clothing should form part of the resolutions of this congress.
Cde delegates;
COSATU affiliates should earn the confidence of the members by being responsive to the members’ needs, by servicing them well. Attending to their needs and reporting back to them as regular as possible will do the trick. I am happy that this meeting serves as one such platform where members receive feedback and also engage from the floor. It is important that whatever is discussed and resolved here will find its way to the general membership. I will suggest that COSATU leadership in this meeting consider establishing publications managed by plant or branch or sites leadership, making use of employer noticeboards effectively. “The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.” [Vladimir Lenin]
But this should not replace organizational meetings but seek to summarise and make public COSATU/Unions views, announcements and decisions public. This will give confidence to members.
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Comrades;
Case management, and handling is a key service to our members, and should be approached with care all the time. COSATU and affiliates leadership
should
handle
disciplinary
hearings
effectively
and
competently, and give regular feedback. The members must be able to have confidence in the leadership during these hearings. Crucially, shopstewards must seek to continuously improve their understanding of the governing rules, and impart the knowledge to members as well in order for members to know how they should conduct themselves at the workplace. Updating members on various workplace changes is not a preserve for leadership only but for members as well, this will minimise errors that may give rise to disciplinary hearings. Updating members of cases and type of disciplinary cases that are on the rise should be done as well in order to arm and conscientize the members. Unions should be able to save jobs, and this is only possible when the members and their leadership work very closely with each other than against each other, in sharing information.
Cde Nobhala;
The building of COSATU engines and making assessments, without attempting to be naïve, are critical tasks facing the Federation nationally.
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Within our Province and other lower structures, like our local, it is required that as shopstewards we raise the bar of our discussions, and probe deeper into issues with a correct sense of vigour, and forthrightness. “Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children...” [Amilcar Cabral] We need, firstly, at a local level, together with the cluster, enter into a frank discussion into the functionality of COSATU locals in relation to the apparent strengths and weaknesses of affiliates of the Federation. It is incumbent on leaders of affiliates to take a meaningful lead in ensuring that shopstewards attend and participate in the life of the Federation at a local level. We must have an honest and frank discussion about how we bring about full participation and functionality of the Local. These must include, amongst other things, the functionality of the LOB itself to bring life to sub – committees, activities and programs. The crises that besiege the local in relation to participation and functionality must ultimately take us to a point where we should discuss the structure of the Federation locally and at cluster level with an attempt to strengthen the COSATU at these levels; including our Affiliates as well.
“Any strategy will fail without a strong organization on the ground. Only a strong and militant organization can ensure that COSATU and workers
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as a class are taken as a force to be reckoned with. We can never affect the balance of forces if our organization is weak.” The working class does not get a leadership role automatically, but must continue to earn it. To that end we must build the capability of our organization and ensure genuine internal democracy” [Organisational Programme-Build COSATU Engines; Consolidating working class power for quality jobs-towards] If for instance, an affiliate can generate functionality at shop floor/workplace/branch level as well as at a regional level whilst at the same time it cannot participate in the COSATU local and cluster level; we will ultimately have a crisis in generation of views and perspectives. In the sense that, when the Federation convenes at PEC level; you will have affiliates both those who participate and those who do not participate, within their own right, come to the PEC with an affiliate position instead of a COSATU local or cluster position. Or even worse a conflict or conflicts of views. Therefore if the CEC and PEC can have full affiliate participation around constitutional meetings, campaigns, activities, commissions and sub – committees, the same must be applicable at a local and cluster level. As Locals and Cluster are the basic units of COSATU, the implementer of COSATU programmes.
Cde delegates;
The workplace restructuring is a threat to workers and society. The workplace has seen more jobs being precarious; outsourcing some of 9|Page
the core jobs is on the rise. Both private and public sectors have seen this trend going up. Can COSATU affiliates organize in the informal economy? Can COSATU and its affiliate work towards the unity of all the workers? Informal and formal sectors. To achieve this therefore, “COSATU should begin immediately to monitor
negotiations
to
identify
new
needs
and
weaknesses,”
[Consolidating working class power for quality jobs-towards 2015, ‘Elements of our programme-2C].
Comrades;
We must also be weary as COSATU shopstewards of the companies declaring losses to the revenue agency and in return they get compensated for such losses whilst workers are excluded from the compensation process. It is therefore prudent of us as a Local to begin a process of looking into ways in which we can, together with our affiliates unions, develop targeted responses to these demonic acts by bosses. ‘We must run a campaign to ensure that, in an instance that a company which underperforms and ultimately is forced to right size by retrenching or casualising, the company bosses too must be blacklisted from running other companies.’ If COSATU can run this campaign successfully, no company will retrench.
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We must run such a campaign in our local coupled together with establishment of a special committee that will look into these kinds of issues with an attempt to bring affiliates together to formulate common views around these matters and also build capacity of the Local for campaigns, research and activities.
Comrades and friends;
Elections 2019 “The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament.” [Vladimir Lenin]
We all know that the ANC suffered an election blow in the 2016 local government elections. This defeat, among others, was attributed to factionalism and hallowing of the ANC structures at the time. Of course, the renewal programme agreed to at Nasrec is going to take time to make itself felt on the ground.
Perhaps, one of the greatest weaknesses since the rise of opposition forces in our City; has been the inability of the Alliance to hold the DAEFF-run city to account. As a Local, we have done our bit by condemning a raft of reactionary policies of the DA. We condemned the DA for cutting free water, for arresting-humiliation of SAMWU comrades, and reflected on Xenophobic statements, and their implications for the working class in the city, by Mayor Mashaba.
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The ANC on the other side, have tried to raise the wrongs of this DA administration. But this has been done in a very weak manner. For instance, ANC comrades sit in the council meetings and yet all these key issues that the Alliance is raising are not finding expression in the council debates. Also, there are no campaigns, and there are no marches. It is business as usual.
DA-EFF council is having the best of times, no opposition from the benches of the ANC.
Equally, the SACP Linda Jabane District (and Sub District 6) has organized a few demonstrations on evictions, but again this has gone without notice, or presenting any threat to the DA-EFF government.
This has been, in part, as a result of the party not taking its vanguard role seriously in the Local, leading to a situation where the workers have no vanguard or the vanguard is moving without the workers!
The ANC and SACP have labour desk and labour sub-committee respectively, but we do not see COSATU views in those structures. Neither is COSATU invited to make input contributions.
But the biggest problem with all these efforts is that they are not flowing from any Alliance strategy to hold the DA-EFF-run city council to account. Clearly, these have not had any impact.
Currently, the DA is winning the propaganda war, and if the Alliance wants to win back the masses a clear strategy on how to relate to the DA in the city needs to be urgently formulated. 12 | P a g e
Because the Alliance at local level is at the coalface of service delivery, and community endeavors, the Alliance has to improve its working relations at the local level to better service its members and deal with the DA-EFF reactionary agenda. And also return the City to the people’s movement.
As parts of our attempts to strengthen our general capacity as a Local on various fronts that have been mentioned above, we must equally urge the incoming leadership to begin the task of preparing for the coming general elections in 2019, which should lead to the victory of the ANC.
Comrade and friends;
As I close, May has also been a month where we are celebrating the bicentenary of Karl Marx and his theoretical contribution to working class struggles. This congress must come up with a programme to truly celebrate this giant of communist thought; guided by his famous words that: “Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.” Having said everything that I have said, I therefore wish to take this opportunity to thank you all for allowing me to be your Chairperson and leader,
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I wish to further thank the outgoing LoBs for the work they have put through since elected, the CEPPWAWU JHB Local (& Wits Region) leadership collective for allowing me to serve in COSATU as their deployee. Lastly, I thank my family for allowing me to be part of COSATU as well as CEPPWAWU to serve the workers.
Wish the new leadership that will be elected all the best.
The struggle continues! Aluta Continua! Amandla! Viva COSATU, Viva! Viva ANC, Viva! Viva SACP, Viva! Viva SANCO, Viva Viva COSATU, Viva
Thank you comrades and companeros
Input address by the outgoing chairperson of Johannesburg COSATU Local; 17 April 2018 by Cde Mchunu, a Global Labour University (GLU) Alumni. 14 | P a g e
