Salutations
Leadership of COSATU present
Leadership of the Alliance present
All protocol observed
Introduction
We are gathered here to celebrate this glorious federation of workers and the working class of South Africa COSATU. Today, we celebrate 39 years since the formation of this federation, formed on this day at a rally in Curriesfontein, Durban in 1985. This federation was formed resulting from amalgamation of a number of trade unions and trade union traditions, from its predecessor FOSATU as well as a number of other independent and community unions. As we celebrate 39 years of COSATU, at the end of our 30 years of democratic transition, it is important to recollect our history of struggle, remember the gains workers made after 1994, highlighting that these were not free gains of freedom, but hard-won victories by gallant struggles by workers, who fought both workplace exploitation and apartheid oppression, producing the final defeat of apartheid in 1994.
Our histories of struggle
This federation is borne with the DNA of long history of struggles by workers dating back to the early 20th century, workers who against very repressive colonial and apartheid oppression and against very exploitative bosses planted the roots of militant struggles with their own lives and blood. The strength and the spirit of COSATU should be understood within the context of a long history of shopfloor militancy by African workers, with the first recorded strikes by African mineworkers taking place in 1913, who were organised by the African Peoples Organisation. This strike was swiftly crushed by the brutal and repressive response of authorities. Then was the formation of the Mine Workers of Africa in 1917, whose slogan was ‘Sifuna Konke’. These workers went on an industrial action again, that was brutally crushed by the police, killing and arresting workers. In the similar period were also the famous bucket boys strike by municipal workers in Transvaal and other strikes by mineworkers coinciding the renowned Rand Revolt by white mineworkers between 1920-1922.
We also come from the history of the formation of the first national federation of African workers, the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU), formed in 1919 in Cape Town, led by Clement Kadalie. The union started out as a trade union for the African and Coloured dockworkers in Cape Town, then soon developed into a general organisation, also organising skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers both industrial and in agricultural sector. Its main mission was to have an active approach with a view to obtain better working conditions and higher wages for their members. Between 1920 to 1927 the ICU grew becoming a national federation. Part of the growth spurt of the ICU also resulted from working closely with organisers and leaders of the Communist Party of South Africa, like Thabo Mofutsanyana and T.W Thibedi and others, who heightened the unions mobilisation and recruitment reach. Eventually by mid to late 1920s the leadership of the ICU, in particular Kadalie and AGW Champion in Natal expelled ‘communists’ from the ICU. There were other challenges of leadership and accusations of misuse of finance labelled against Kadalie. By 1933, the ICU had fractured, with AGW Champion forming his own ICU Yase Natal, a tendency we have seen resurface in our politics with Zuma’s MK Party.
In response to intense struggles facing African workers, the African Federation of Trade Unions (AFTU) was formed, largely organised by communists, of which Thabo Mofutsanyana because it General Secretary in 1932. In the same year, he organised marches demanding better living conditions for African migrants in compounds and townships looking for work.
The persistent work of communists to ‘swell the ranks of the ANC and workers’ following the 1934 Cradock Letter by Moses Kotane, saw the formation of the African Mine Workers Union (AMWU) in 1943, of which J.B Marks became its first president. These workers went on a land mark strike in 1946, leading to the formation of the South African Congress of Trade Union (SACTU) in March 1955. With the formation of SACTU, our movement began in concrete terms the establishment of our historic Congress Alliance, formed between the Vanguard Party of the working class (CPSA), the most organised formation of workers (SACTU) and the nationalist liberation organisation (ANC). It was this alliance with a broad popular front of progressive organisations that organised the Congress of the People gathering in June 1955 that adopted the Freedom Charter.
With accelerating repression following the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950, the CPSA was forced to dissolve, later to be reestablish as the SACP in 1963 in exile. Leaders of the communist party, who many of whom were already members of the ANC began to organise all Party activities and campaigns inside the ANC. At the reestablishment of the communist party in 1963, the Congress Alliance partner the ANC had also been banned and it together with SACTU were operating underground. In the country the mid to late 1960s were a silent period in terms of worker struggles, mostly because of brutal repression by the regime as well as because many leaders were either in exile, in hiding and or in imprisonment.
The crisis in the world economy, which also affected South Africa at the beginning of the 1970s resulted in employers squeezing African workers, resulting in intensifying crisis of social reproduction in most African households. This crisis resulted in sporadic strikes black workers between 1970 and 1972, including strikes by dock workers in 1971 and in 1972, strikes by textile workers in 1972, as well as a strike by PUTCO drivers in 1972 in the midst of great repression. Then, on January 9, 1973 workers in Durban construction factory went on strike demanding higher wages. By the end of March 1973, strikes had spread to more than 100 workplaces, affecting more than a hundred thousand workers. Last year, we celebrated 50 years of this gallant struggles by workers, whose industrial action became a catalyst for the rebirth of independent trade unions, culminating in the formation of COSATU in 1985.
These independent trade unions were built on the basic principle of worker control, independent from the bosses and led by shop stewards on the shopfloor. Worker struggles and their organised formations, that emerged in the aftermath of the Durban strikes increasingly re-connected the shop floor struggle with the broader liberation struggle and thus played an important part towards the defeat of the apartheid regime.
The reemergence of militant trade unionism in South Africa
The aftermath of workers strikes of 1973 was a rebirth of a militant trade union movement and at first contributed to connecting shop floor struggles with community and civic struggles, for example the infamous Fattis and Moni strike, in which Catholic Student Association worked with striking workers, and which galvanised middle-class communities to boycott food products from Fattis and Moni, contributing to the momentum of workers’ demands. In the early 1980s were a formation of what was called community (general) unions like SAAWU, GAWU, which organised across sectors, and even organised in Bantustan communities. These unions worked very closely with civic formations during boycott campaigns.
In 1979 a powerful trade union federation FOSATU was formed, with several trade union traditions, further giving impetus for shopfloor struggles. While the predominant tradition in FOSATU was workerist tradition, the federation also had affiliates from Black Consciousness traditions, Congress traditions, Pan Africanist traditions, and even those with anarchist socialist tendencies. Coinciding with this, in 1979, the Wiehahn Commission Report was published, leading to amendments in the Labour Relations Act, allowing the recognition of black trade unions, but requiring their registration, hoping this would give employers and the state more control over these unions. FOSATU unions registered and were able to build resolute trade union culture of struggle, which saw NUM, MAWU/NUMSA, GWIU/SACTWU, SAAWU, GAWU, SACCAWU, TGNW force employers to sign recognition agreements in a number of factories between 1979 and 1985.
Comrades, while trade unions were gaining momentum, by 1980 it became apparent that shopfloor struggles alone were insufficient to bring fundamental transformation—primarily the overthrow of the apartheid regime. Unity talks began following the formation of FOSATU, centred on building a single powerful trade union movement, but also to connect shopfloor struggles with the broader struggle for national liberation. In 1983 the United Democratic Front (UDF) was launched, a formation of civic, youth, cultural, and religious organisations, united on a mission to end apartheid oppression.
Culminating from these processes in December 1985, COSATU was launched, signalling the most powerful working-class block, as COSATU waged battles both on shopfloor, as well as community and civic struggles, as well as worked in alliance with the Mass Democratic Movement in the last push to defeat apartheid. As the struggle intensified both externally through heightened international campaign to isolate the regime and the internal struggles coalesced under the Mass Democratic Movement, COSATU became a key strategic force in the last push to make apartheid ungovernable. Following the ban of the UDF in May 1987, COSATU became the leading formation leading campaigns, stayaways and marches, bringing into sharp focus the connection of shopfloor, civic and political struggles. While leaders of the federation were subjected to persecution and detainment, the regime could not ban the federation following its own LRA amendment in 1979, fearing further sanctioning by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The period between 1985 and 1990 saw COSATU at the forefront of working-class struggles in South Africa, seamlessly combining campaigns on shopfloor, civic campaigns against municipal rate increases in townships, and political campaigns to end apartheid and release political prisoners.
Comrades, on the eve of our democratic breakthrough in 1994, it was this federation that led the drafting of the RDP, a redistributive programme for driving the state agenda for development in post-apartheid South Africa. From the first democratic administration, it was our leaders that were deployed in the executive, in parliament, in the provinces and in state departments to drive a transformative agenda. Obviously, now in retrospect, we are aware that the struggles of our people were brought to naught first by the ANC unilateral imposition of the neoliberal GEAR policy of what we have generally termed the 1996 Class Project. Comrades, since 1996, consecutive ANC government administrations have consistently pursued a neoliberal agenda, despite all indicators showing its failures in growing the economy, reducing unemployment, presently at above 41% (expanded definition), stubborn poverty, with more than 50% of South Africans living below the poverty line, and South Africa being a consistent world champion of inequality over the last 10 years.
Why we reject the GNU as a neoliberal coalition with the DA
Comrades, in the processes leading to the 29 May elections, both COSATU and the SACP had highlighted the primacy of the process to reconfigure the Alliance. As many of you are aware, while consecutive ANC leaders always gave the configuration of the Alliance question a cold shoulder, when we revisited the 29 May elections, the ANC leadership recommitted to many engagements on the reconfiguration of the Alliance. We even found consensus on the mechanics, including the issues of drawing candidate lists, issues of extending accountability, so that deployees of COSATU in government not only account to the ANC, but to the federation as well, especially in their performance on the key priorities of the ANC Manifesto.
On the very eve of the elections, the Alliance again met, making principled agreements looking at possible scenarios of elections results, highlighting a need for a commitment for an Alliance programme, even in response to what would be an election outcome. Against all these commitments and principle agreements, the leadership of the ANC went alone behind our back as COSATU and the Party and negotiated clandestine deals with the sworn enemy of workers and the poor, the DA. Comrades, we must recall that the DA remains an antiworker, anti-poor and white supremacist organisation, funded by capital to pursue their interests. Only just this May, the DA did not join the May Day celebrations of Workers Day, but on 2 May, the DA staged an infantile march to COSATU house, attacking the federation and the SACP, labelling us as enemies of the DA and enemies of business growth in South Africa. Yet, the ANC leadership decided to form secret pact with the DA, while the same ANC remains an Alliance partner of COSATU and the SACP. In the few months of the GNU, we already see the true colours of the DA, whose Basic Education Minister boycotted the signing the BELA Bill into an Act, with the DA taking a march with the racist ultra-right AfriForum in opposition to the implementation of the BELA Act. The same DA is also openly opposing the implementation of the NHI.
We already see signs of further consolidation of a neoliberal agenda in most government departments, driven by austerity and fiscal consolidation, yet with claims that the GNU wants inclusive economic growth, but implementing directly opposite policy tools and interventions to those required to stimulate growth, especially inclusive growth.
Comrades, that is why we are eagerly awaiting the upcoming 5th Special National Congress of the SACP, taking place from 11-14 December 2024. We believe this could be a history-making congress of the Vanguard Party of the working class, in setting an agenda for taking the torch to advance the NDR, which has persistently been stagnant and at times regressing under the pressure of consecutive neoliberal policy framework.
We cannot allow this federation to die
Comrades, from the history of this federation, but more so the history of workers struggles in this country, one resolution that must always preoccupy our work is the responsibility we have to our forebearers and to the working class as a whole, to ensure we do not allow this federation to be weakened, or even worse to fracture unto disarray under our hands. Both our SIC in October and the CEC foregrounded the task of the leadership of this federation, first to strengthen our political analysis of the prevailing conditions, as well as building strong and reliable organisation programmes to ensure this federation and our affiliates are equal to the mammoth task of defending the gains of our freedom, defending workers from the onslaught of retrenchments, job losses, growing precarity faced by workers every sector of the economy, now even including the public sector, because of increasing tendencies of employers to undermine workers gains, like Collective Bargaining processes, persistent attempts by employers to amend the Labour Relations Act, to take away protections of workers against unfair dismissals by employers, and their push at NEDLAC to amend our right to strike.
Comrades, mining sector alone, has shed more than ten thousand jobs this year alone. Even that which we regard as somehow public sector, including Transnet, Port Authorities, the Post Office and the SABC are undergoing retrenchments, changing conditions of employment for those who remain employed, with intensification of work.
At our 14th National Congress, the federation highlighted these challenges, calling for the federation in its MTV 2035 to rebuild COSATU engines, of building the federation and its affiliates, prioritising political and ideological education, as well as training of shop stewards to effectively represent workers on shop floor. Similarly, the SACP 15th National Congress also addressed these contradictions, posited in the Party’s programme for building a powerful socialist movement for the workers and the poor.
Comrades, to build this federation, our first mammoth task is the recruitment and mobilising large sways of unorganised workers. At present only 24% of all workers in formal employment are organised, which means about 76% of all formal workers are not organised.
The rebuilding of COSATU engines, political/ideological education and training of shop stewards, utilising current struggles to consolidate unity among workers across federations, as well as working with our left-axis ally the SACP to strengthen community structures and towards a reconfigured alliance are priorities as we remember and learn from the 1973 workers generation.
Conclusion
As we celebrate the 39th Birthday of the federation, we should be inspired by the gallant and courageous history of the struggles by our forebearers, who worked under the most despotic apartheid workplace regime. They risked not only their employment and livelihoods but also their lives under apartheid oppression.
As we progress forward, we must make our own contribution to the history of worker struggles in South Africa. We must record our contribution, so that workers in forty years from now, will remember glowingly our generation, not as those who destroyed this federation and betrayed their future, but as those, inspired by our history, marked our own names in history by taking struggles for workers and the poor, ensuring that this federation remains the most powerful defenders of the workers and of the working class!