THE National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has demanded the nationalisation of the Reserve Bank under workers’ control in a strongly worded statement.
‘The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) has consistently called for the nationalisation of the Reserve Bank, for the abandonment of the neoliberal macro-economic policies which have ruined the manufacturing sectors of this country and led to massive shedding of jobs, and for the abandonment of inflation targeting by the Reserve Bank and its replacement by employment, and all rounded development of the people and economy of South Africa.
‘All successive Reserve Bank Governors have miserably failed to protect the majority of the people of South Africa, who are the working class.
‘The Bank’s instruments for managing the value of the rand have all failed, as witnessed by the abnormal levels of unemployment in South Africa today and the ever-deteriorating value of the rand itself against other currencies.
‘NUMSA notes with great concern the public announcement by President Jacob Zuma regarding the appointment of Mr. Lesetja Kganyago as the new SA Reserve Bank Governor – a person well known for his neoliberal capitalist bent.
‘Consistently, Mr Kganyago has been a model neoliberal financial mismanager of note. Indeed, his appointment opens old but unhealed wounds among workers, given Mr Kganyago’s brutal and ruthless pursuit of neoliberal capitalist financial policies when he was Director-General at the National Treasury.
‘Mr Kganyago’s appointment reaffirms the ANC government’s ongoing reliance upon the failed, neoliberal capitalist policies and strategies.
‘Mr Kganyago has done nothing to protect workers and the broader society from the global and national capitalist crises.
‘To illustrate, the collapse of the African Bank because of inadequate supervision and regulation by the SA Reserve Bank is so notorious that the Wall Street Journal (28 September 2014) described it “as a small drop in a bigger bucket of trouble for South Africa’s banking system”.
‘The problems are amounting to a subprime-loan crisis for the country. The South African Reserve Bank has managed to rescue the failed bank and avert a panic, but it has not been able to prevent a large bad-debt pile from getting larger.
‘Why would workers and the broader society have confidence in the deputy Reserve Bank governor with this record?
‘Behind the gamble the SA Reserve Bank and Finance Ministry have taken by allowing such a high level of unsecured loans by loan-shark type banks, is their policy of maintaining extremely high interest rates.
‘These rates are killing indebted working-class people, with more than half our country’s twenty million borrowers now “credit impaired” according to the National Credit Regulator.
‘NUMSA pressured former Governor Tito Mboweni on this point beginning in 2008 and we were rewarded with rates cuts, but it was too little too late and under Governor Gill Marcus’s continuation of what we consider ‘‘sado-monetarist’’ policies, by 2011 the prime rate charged in SA was second (amongst our major trading partners) only to Greece’s – not a good sign. The nominal interest rate the Reserve Bank sets is still far too high.
‘Our country’s financial stress has been worsened by the Reserve Bank’s incompetent mismanagement of exchange controls – as witnessed in Mark Shuttleworth’s Supreme Court of Appeals victory last week – and its relaxation of exchange controls several dozen times since 1994.
‘As a result, we are reaching disastrous levels of foreign debt, because far too much SA money leaks abroad through licit and illicit capital flight.
‘This partly reflects how generous the Reserve Bank has been, allowing huge multinational corporations (such as former SA firms Anglo, De Beers, Old Mutual, SAB Miller, Investec, Didata, Gencor, Liberty, etc) to take profits and dividends offshore.
‘This outflow has helped cause the country’s foreign debt to rise from $25 billion in 1994 to $140 billion today, a ratio (to GDP) as high as the mid-1980s’ debt crisis.
‘We call on the new Governor to introduce new and fresh mechanisms to control price increases, fight poverty, promote creation of decent work, and abandon the policy of inflation-targeting.
‘He must lower interest rates and tighten exchange controls, and move towards social control of our society’s banking assets, at the same time eradicating the moneylenders’ usurious policies and practices.
‘We reiterate our call for the nationalisation of the Reserve Bank.’
• Striking NUMSA workers from both Platchro Mining Services (a contractor at Glencore mines in Kroondal and Waterval) and some Glencore Western mines have raised their demands to ‘10% shares in the profit of the Glencore mines’.
Workers took to the streets marching to personally hand over their memorandum to Glencore and Platchro representatives at the Glencore Waterval plant on Thursday 2 October 2014.
Dressed in trademark red union shirts with SAPS (South African Police Service) keeping a watchful eye, the striking employees chanted at the entrance to the Glencore offices.
Jerry Morulane, regional NUMSA secretary, was present and spurred them on to fight for what is rightfully theirs.
The Glencore representatives Richard Vermeulen and Japie Fullard left the site before they could be confronted.
Responding to a question by a Platinum Weekly staff member about why the union was demanding 10 per cent of Glencore’s profits, NUMSA shop steward Joseph Koetje replied, ‘Because they have so much money and we are poor; they have to give it to us. We work for them.’
The first section of the memorandum describes the ‘exploitation of employees’ by Platchro and lists the workers’ demands: a basic salary of over R5,000, an underground allowance of R1,500, a travelling allowance of R800, a living-out allowance of R1,000, 100% medical cover and a provident fund with 100% employer contribution.
The second item on the memorandum demands that Glencore addresses ‘the abuse and harassment of African women’ in the workplace, such as the dress code which violates the constitutional right of particularly African women.
The union calls for an across-the-board wage increase of 14%, the introduction of a 5% service increment, an increase of the scarcity allowance by R500 and the implementation of a three-shifts roster in the plant.
The union also demands that jobs must be ‘harmonised’ without downgrading any employees; the recognition agreement must be amended; and the agency fee must be finalised.
The memorandum concludes with the demand that Glencore must: ensure no Glencore Western mine employees are exposed to an unsafe working environment during the strike; that untrained or incompetent employees may not be used to fill the positions of striking workers and that Glencore must ‘stop peddling lies about the union on its members as well as harassing members with silly messages’.
Finally, the union pledges that, ‘No worker of Glencore Western mines will return to work until all these demands are addressed including the demands of Platchro Mining Services’.
