THE Central Committee of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) at its meeting on 20-24 April has published the important key areas covered and decisions taken.
The first key area dealt with by the NUMSA CC concerned the decision mandated on the leadership by workers at its last Special National Conference to build a ‘Marxist-Leninist revolutionary working class political party’.
The NUMSA CC statement reads:
‘NUMSA will forge ahead with the task of the creation of a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary working class political party
‘NUMSA’s Special National Congress resolution instructed this Central Committee to explore the formation of an independent socialist political organ of the working class. The Central Committee received a comprehensive and detailed report from the Movement for Socialism Task Team on the political work done thus far.
‘Consistent with the NUMSA Marxist-Leninist ideological perspectives and the Special National Congress Resolutions, the Central Committee resolved to forge ahead with the establishment of an independent, revolutionary socialist workers political organ.
‘However, to complete this task, the National Office Bearers were mandated to take forward this work through a structured internal discussion process in the union, through policy workshops at national and regional level and the speedy conclusion of international study tours.’
The second item of the statement deals with the question of the United Front.
NUMSA has been spearheading a campaign for the United Front, which it aims to establish in June, and has invited eight unions to join.
In its statement on the United Front it reports:
‘United front launch in June 2015
‘The central committee having received a progress report on the good work of the United Front in communities and having taken stock of its campaigns that are rooted in working class struggles, it endorsed the formal launch of the united front that will take place at end of June 2015.
‘The central committee continues to hold the view that the united front must continue to be a front to take up struggles of the working class and the poor and link shop-floor struggles with community struggles, and that the United Front working with community organisations should be able, at an appropriate time, to take a decision to support individual working class leaders in the coming 2016 local government elections at strategic municipalities who are struggling against neo-liberal agendas and who are fighting for full implementation of the Freedom Charter to be councillors in all strategic municipalities to champion working class struggles at the level of the local state.
‘The central committee called on the United Front to lead and take up the campaign against closure of municipalities and call for a new re-demarcation of municipalities away from the current clustering of poor municipalities and call for the increase in funding allocation by the national Treasury to poor municipalities who have no capacity to collect revenue and to deliver services to our people.
‘The central committee agreed that the launch of the United Front will take the form of a conference whose outcomes will be delivered to a rally that will take place in Gauteng and all Gauteng regions are tasked to deliver both metalworkers and the working class in the launch of the UF.’
On the burning issue on the spate of xenophobic attacks that have occurred in the townships the NUMSA CC resolved to:
‘Wage a sustained ideological and political campaign to win the hearts and minds of the working class and the poor.
‘Together with our allies amongst COSATU affiliates and the United Front, engage with those who are expressing such anger and encourage them to redirect their anger against the proper target – the neoliberal agenda of capital and its allies in the ANC and SACP government.
‘Mobilise our networks in the African trade union movement to act in a united, class conscious manner against xenophobia with a view to working towards the convening of an African conference against xenophobia, paid for by capital, the real cause of xenophobia.’
The statement went on to condemn statements on these attacks made by leaders of the ruling ANC saying:
‘The CC rejected the poisonous utterances and ill-conceived recommendations by the ANC’s Secretary General, Mr Gwede Mantashe, that foreign nationals should be placed in “camps” and be “vetted” before they can enter South Africa. Such recommendations are anti-working class, in a world in which capital moves very rapidly and freely across borders but labour does not. We further find Mantashe’s parochial suggestion is not consistent with the Freedom Charter injunction which clearly states that “South Africa belongs to all those who live in it”.’
On the ongoing scandal relating to the non-publication of the official report into the massacre of miners at the Marikana platinum mine in 2012 – the single most lethal use of force by South African police since the Sharpville massacre in 1960 – which resulted in the deaths of 41 striking miners, the report said:
‘Marikana Massacre: Farlam Commission Report
‘The CC has been disgusted by the fact that the Marikana Massacre Farlam Commission report and its findings and recommendations have not been made public. Instead it has been made a private affair of the President by the commission. We are demanding that theFarlam commission must make both its findings and recommendations public.
‘It was President Jacob Zuma’s government that killed workers in Marikana. In the middle of such a massacre and in the face of such a crisis he appointed a commission whose task and mission was supposed to lay bare the facts on the roles of the police, and the leadership of the police starting from the Minister of Police at the time, Nathi Mathethwa, the current commissioner, Riah Phiyerha, General Zukiswa Mbombo, the provincial North West commissioner, and the role played by Cyril Ramaphosa in this massacre.
‘We also need to know whether the commander in chief of the armed forces of the South African republic, President Jacob Zuma, had a role to play in giving orders to the police to shoot to kill. The commission, must tell the South African public who gave orders to shoot to kill.
‘The NUMSA central committee demand that Farlam, the leader of the commission, must call the press conference to tell the SA public the outcome of the commission report. We can’t be subjected to Jacob Zuma who knows the outcome as his government is conflicted.
‘This is so critical if our country’s constitution which has separation of powers is respected by all of us. We firmly believe that there is no government that can justly claim Authority over information of this nature. This must be done urgently and immediately. We want want this report, as it doesn’t belong to JZ and his cabinet – it belongs to the SA public.’
Regarding the expulsion by the leadership of the trade union federation COSATU of its democratically elected general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, for his refusal to fully and unconditionally support the ANC, a move which followed NUMSA’s own expulsion from COSATU for its stand against the right-wing ANC, the statement says:
‘The CC reaffirmed its decision to reclaim Cosatu, from the right-wing faction led by S’dumo Dlamini and his gang. NUMSA will be working with other unions, to embark on massive mass roll-actions, in line with the resolutions and campaigns, as agreed and resolved by workers during the last COSATU 10th National Congress in 2012.’
What is clear from the NUMSA CC statement is that the union – which has grown in the space of a few years into being the biggest trade union in South Africa with 360,000 members thanks to its militant opposition to the pro-capitalist ruling triumvirate of the ANC, COSATU and the SA Communist Party – is declaring war on both COSATU and the ANC.
What remains unclear is the whole question of the relationship they envisage between a new ‘Marxist-Leninist’ revolutionary party and the United Front they are organising.
For Marxists, the United Front is a tactic whereby different parties of the working class come together to fight on very specific issues confronting the working class.
It is an alliance for a definite purpose.
Reading the NUMSA statement it appears, however, as if it will be the United Front that will be the political party that stands against the ANC in next year’s election.
The danger is that what is being established is primarily a United Front-type party containing all shades of political ‘left’ organisations – a veritable swamp of revisionism and ‘left’ reformism.
With a great tide of revolution sweeping South Africa and the whole of the continent, what the working class need above all else is complete clarity, a resolute revolutionary leadership that will fight every tendency and organisation that seeks to compromise and turn aside from the historic task of leading the South African working class to power through the socialist revolution as part of the African and world socialist revolution.
It demands the building of a revolutionary party of the Fourth International.