THE following is a statement by COSATU:
‘DESPITE three vacancies in the executive and a deputy president who wants out, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa did not want a Cabinet reshuffle to overshadow his State of the Nation Address yesterday.
Ramaphosa does not want his address, expected to focus on the electricity crisis facing the country, to be overtaken by the political fallout of a Cabinet reshuffle. Instead, Ramaphosa will announce a plan of action for his government for the year ahead.
Ramaphosa’s reputation has been sullied by the Phala Phala scandal, in which foreign currency was found stashed in furniture at his private game farm, instead of it being declared to the authorities. He has also been unable to deal with the ongoing electricity crisis that has crippled the economy.
Political parties like the EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters led by Julius Malema) want him gone.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) on Monday said it has high expectations for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Thursday 9 February, although its statement describes an out-of-control crisis.
COSATU says: Workers and society at large are battling to cope with a 43% unemployment rate, rising levels of debt and an economy struggling to emerge from a deep recession.
These are made worse by ten hours of load shedding (power cuts) a day, a deteriorating passenger and freight rail network under siege from criminal syndicates, rampant levels of crime and corruption, and dysfunctional municipalities unable to provide basic services. To restore hope, the SONA needs to present a clear programme and set clear implementation benchmarks and timeframes.
The government also needs to account for the implementation of the 2022 SONA commitments as part of building society’s confidence.
The economy cannot grow, and unemployment cannot be reduced with continuous load shedding. The Lekgotla recommendation for the declaration of a state of disaster needs to be officially implemented.
The government needs to ensure Eskom (predominantly state-owned power supplier) has all the resources and authority at hand to reduce load shedding, ramp up targeted high impact maintenance and bring on board new generation capacity. They also need to slash Eskom’s debt burden and plug its fiscal holes, and tackle the corruption and criminality crippling Eskom.
Similar interventions are needed at Transnet and Metrorail, which are key to growing the mining, manufacturing, and agricultural sectors as well as to the urban economy. Equally the government needs to come with clear turnaround plans for the Post Office, SABC, DENEL and other embattled but once thriving state-owned enterprises.
COSATU say the economy needs a stimulus package from both the public and private sectors. Schemes like the Bounce Back Scheme and the Infrastructure Programme need to be resuscitated and expedited respectively. The progressive commitments of the Economic Recovery and Reconstruction Plan need to be implemented honestly and diligently.
Whilst welcoming the reduction by 3% in unemployment in 2022, no society can sustain itself with a 43% unemployment rate. It is critical that government assist the unemployed, and in particular the youth, to enter the labour market.
The Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme needs to be doubled in the February Budget Speech to accommodate at least 1 million participants, and then 2 million by the October Medium Term Budget Policy Statement.
The Special Relief Dispensation (SRD) Grant has been the source of relief to millions of unemployed persons. The administrative glitches that have bedevilled it need to be resolved to ensure all unemployed persons receive it. This needs to be raised to the Food Poverty Line and utilised as a foundation for the Basic Income Grant.
The alarming deterioration of municipalities needs to see concrete action from COGTA (The Department for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, involving service delivery across the regions), SALGA (South African Local Government), Treasury and the law enforcement organs.
Their free fall implosion is costing thousands of workers their jobs as companies are forced to close when municipalities no longer provide basic services.
The chaos in local government is bleeding Eskom R57 billion and rising. Particular attention is needed to the provision of clean and accessible water. The backlogs in water infrastructure need to be sorted out or it will plunge the nation into another unaffordable crisis.
The government needs to announce clear interventions to ramp up the fight against crime and corruption. These need to include the reversal of the deeply concerning decline in SAPS and NPA personnel numbers.
The South African Revenue Services needs to be empowered to undertake lifestyle audits of politicians and senior state managers.
Law enforcement organs and judiciary needs to be well resourced to fight corruption and serious crimes.
The South African government needs to fix its relationship with public servants. A state cannot be productive if nurses, doctors, police officers and countless other hard working public servants feel aggrieved that their employer is outsourcing the bill for state capture and corruption to them and pickpocketing their meagre wages to balance the books.
It is untenable that while public servants are drowning in debt government bureaucrats are spending billions of rands on half baked ideas.
The President needs to know that this SONA will have political consequences because the public will be giving their verdict in 15 months time. What happens in the next few months will be watched closely by workers and South Africans in general.’
Issued by COSATU
Sizwe Pamla (COSATU National Spokesperson)
The following is a
statement by NUMSA:
‘Boycott campaigns against apartheid Israel must be intensified said the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) in a statement on Tuesday.
‘NUMSA noted the decision by the SA Rugby Union to withdraw an invitation for the Israeli-based Tel Aviv Heat to play in the Mzansi challenge rugby tournament. The decision was reversed because of pressure, particularly from progressive organisations like the BDS Coalition who launched a public campaign rejecting this decision.
‘For years the BDS has been driving a campaign to boycott, divest and sanction Israel for its Apartheid policies against the people of Palestine.
‘NUMSA is not confused and we think it is disturbing that SARU was even considering allowing them to participate here on South African soil.
‘Israel is an Apartheid state. It is a settler colonial regime denying human rights to Palestinians. Its laws are geared towards subjugating the entire Palestinian population and they have done this through a brutal system of laws, designed to strip Palestinians of their dignity, and also their land.
‘The Israeli government has done a very good job of driving a false narrative to whitewash this crime against humanity, and SARU as well as other institutions in South Africa, should ensure that they educate themselves, so that they do not make embarrassing decisions like this in the future.
‘We align ourselves with the statement issued by the BDS Coalition that the Israeli government is using sports as a means to “sports wash” or whitewash its crimes against humanity and organisations like SARU should not participate in this.
‘Under Apartheid the slogan was “no normal sport in an abnormal society”, this too should be the attitude now. We must stop Israel from being allowed to participate in any sporting or cultural activities. They should be rejected just like the South African Apartheid government was subjected to cultural and sports boycotts all over the globe.
‘It is NUMSA’s view that Israel should be treated like the pariah that it is.
‘Israel is unapologetic for its illegal occupation of Palestine. The Apartheid state of Israel has institutionalised terror and brutality against the Palestinian population. It recently escalated the demolition of Palestinian homes in occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank.
‘A report by Human Rights Watch released in April 2021, titled, “A threshold Crossed”, describes the Apartheid State of Israel in the following way:
‘“Across these areas and in most aspects of life, Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy.
“In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
‘Palestinians supported the liberation movement during the dark days of Apartheid. We must never forget who are true friends are.
‘Apartheid Israel is no friend of ours.
‘They are a reactionary, racist, fascist state and they should be rejected and denounced on every public platform. We support all the demands made by the BDS including the demand for economic sanctions against Apartheid Israel. The campaigns to boycott, divest and sanction Israel must be intensified. That is the only way that the people of Palestine will be free.’
