‘THE ANC/SACP (African National Congress/South African Communist Party) is trying to weaken, isolate and destroy us,’ NUMSA KZN (National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa Kwazulu-Natal) Regional Political Workshop said on Sunday.
The region issued a declaration describing the ANC ‘task team’ intervention, led by deputy president of both South Africa and the ANC, Cyril Ramaphosa, as a ‘farce’ and a contravention of COSATU’s (Congress of South African Trades Unions) constitution.
DECLARATION
‘We, the Shopstewards and leaders of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) in KwaZulu-Natal, have met over the past two days, 25-26 October 2014, as delegates to the Numsa KwaZulu-Natal Regional Political Workshop in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal.
‘We are drawn from strategic Numsa organised companies to discuss and plan on how best to improve service to our members; and how to take forward and accelerate the groundbreaking resolutions taken at our watershed Special National Congress (SNC) held in December 2013.
‘The workshop also appreciates the unprecedented growth of the national union of metalworkers and committed to improve service to our members as our primary obligation.
‘The Political Workshop was emboldened by the input delivered by Numsa General Secretary comrade Irvin Jim, on behalf of the National Office Bearers (NOBs).
‘We noted the ongoing and deepening global capitalist crisis that continues to inflict greater misery onto the majority of the working class and the poor of the world.
‘This crisis has confirmed the need for the working class of the world, as a class for itself, to vigorously fight for the abolishment of the capitalist system and its barbarism, and usher in the humane and just system of Socialism.
‘We noted that we were meeting when the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa, specifically in Liberia, was ravaging Africa.
‘The pandemic has claimed more than four thousand lives.
‘This is indeed a tragedy.
‘We welcome greatly the working class internationalism and solidarity displayed by Cuba and its people who have deployed their medical personnel to assist the affected countries.
‘We condemn the late and weak response to the Ebola pandemic in our African sister countries by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other relevant world bodies.
‘The Western and European countries should take full responsibility and make resources available to fight the disease, since Africa’s economic resources and wealth was looted by them, thus leaving Africa without necessary health infrastructure to respond to these kinds of outbreaks.
‘African governments must demonstrate leadership and take charge of the struggle to rid the continent of Ebola.
‘We condemn the lack of a continent-wide response to the pandemic.
‘We urge all peoples of Africa to unite in fighting this disease, and to desist from using this disease to whip up xenophobia and other anti-African, anti-working class emotions and practices.
‘In South Africa, after 20 years of our bourgeois and neoliberal political democracy as a result of the 1994 negotiated settlement, the Black and African working class and rural poor populations continue to be subjected and suffer from highly racialised levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality.
‘It is the ANC and its government that consciously have hoisted and entrenched the neoliberal capitalist policies onto South Africa post 1994.
‘The workers and the poor continue to languish in squalor, ravaged by poverty in apartheid-created slums and shacks, and rural poor communities continue to be consigned to unproductive land in former Bantustan areas, in the meantime, the ANC continues to preach the ideological fog of a “good story to tell”!
‘Because of its neoliberal and capitalist policies, the ANC has continued to suffer an unprecedented electoral support decline in all post-94 elections.
‘The electoral decline is a manifestation of the working class’s dissatisfaction with the ANC’s failures to advance a radical programme, as envisaged in the Freedom Charter.
‘Our unity as Numsa in the midst of the factionalist onslaught led by certain of Cosatu’s affiliates’ leaders, aligned to the ANC/SACP, who want Numsa expelled from Cosatu, places an enormous responsibility upon us, to remain united and reclaim our federation.
‘We are adamant that our expulsion from Cosatu has been a well-coordinated and political attempt by the ANC/SACP faction, to weaken, isolate and destroy Numsa because of our socialist revolutionary character.
‘This faction seeks to undermine our Special National Congress (SNC) resolutions. We reiterate our correct political analysis that the ANC’s Task Team intervention, led by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, was not only a farce, but an overall flouting of Cosatu’s constitution and founding principle of being a worker-controlled and democratic union federation of workers.
‘We have consistently stated the ANC was not a neutral player, in relation to the ongoing political, ideological and organisational paralysis faced by Cosatu. In fact we view it to be at the heart of the crisis in Cosatu.
‘The Workshop was characterised by high levels of political maturity, discipline, frank and robust engagements. The Workshop called for recommitment for Numsa to forge ahead with the implementation of the Special National Congress (SNC) resolutions.
‘The Political Workshop called on workers to unite behind their true revolutionary socialist leaders, to demand the immediate and full implementation of the Cosatu 11th Congress Resolutions, and to join Numsa in the United Front.
‘In line with the union’s 400,000 membership target by year 2016, KwaZulu-Natal has recommitted itself to work tirelessly to reach its own membership target of 70,000.
‘As the overwhelming socio-economic challenges confronting the working class continue to deepen, perpetuated by the failure of the 1994 democratic breakthrough to uproot colonialism of a special type in South Africa and the neoliberal capitalist policies championed by the ANC led government, the Political Workshop urged Numsa to continue to build the United Front with the aim of linking work place struggles and community struggles.
‘The political workshop key message was for the working class to remain mobilised and refuse to be demobilised by political patronage and perks of power being dangled as a carrot by the ruling elites.
‘We firmly believe that the only way to take our struggle forward geared towards the radical and full implementation of the Freedom Charter is through a mobilised working class, conscious of its responsibility, as a class for itself, and which is at the helm of leading society and revolution.
‘Our failure to appreciate this role and responsibility will result in our revolution being defeated and this can only lead to the triumph of neoliberal capitalist
barbarity.’
Statement issued by Mbuso Ngubane, NUMSA KwaZulu-Natal Regional Secretary, October 26 2014.
Meanwhile, calling Numsa’s imminent expulsion from Cosatu a well-co-ordinated plan by the ANC, the union has formed its own party and promises to go to court.
‘We can now confirm cessation of hostilities are over,’ said Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim in a press conference following Cosatu’s special central executive committee (CEC) meeting last week.
Numsa leaders were clear that:
• The United Front, announced at their 2013 December special conference, will launch in December;
• They will go back to court to force Cosatu President S’dumo Dlamini to hold a Cosatu special national conference, at which they would use their numbers as the biggest Cosatu affiliate to ‘deal with S’dumo and his friends’; and
• They will fight tooth and nail against a scheduled special CEC meeting on November 7 aimed entirely at calling a vote on Numsa’s expulsion from the trade union federation.
‘We are adamant that our expulsion from Cosatu has been a well-co-ordinated and political attempt by the ANC and (South African Communist Party) faction, to weaken, isolate and destroy Numsa and its leadership because of our socialist revolutionary character,’ Jim said.
Last Thursday, a call to vote on whether Numsa should be expelled from Cosatu was abandoned after Numsa threatened to challenge it in court on the basis that it would have been unconstitutional.
Another meeting has been called at which Numsa could be expelled, whether or not they attend the meeting.
‘We will not run away from any meeting or boycott it,’ Jim continued.
In the interim, Cosatu and eight other affiliates sympathetic to them are going to court to demand the special congress to be held.
‘We will, to that end, immediately reinstate the legal challenge to demand that the current national leadership of Cosatu devote their efforts to ensuring that a special congress is held, to resolve all the matters killing Cosatu,’ Jim said.
Concurrently, the union is forging ahead with its plans to form a workers party, which may or may not contest elections. So far, December has been earmarked as the month it will launch.
‘The United Front is not Numsa . . . Numsa is just a catalyst,’ Jim said. He said the working class did not have an alternative. ‘Elections is one form of mechanism and it is not ruled out.’
Numsa deputy secretary general Karl Cloete said Numsa would never transform itself into a political party.
