The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) notes with deep concern the rise of far-right vigilante, racial and tribal groupings that pose a serious threat to South Africa’s hard won non-racial democracy.
The latest being the bizarre stitch up between AfriForum and March on March. This strange matchup between these two organisations with dubious agendas brings back worrying memories of similar unholy marriages between the AWB and the former Bantustan dictatorships in their desperate attempts to derail South Africa’s march to democracy in the run up to the 1994 elections.
Whilst some may dismiss these antics as the desperate attempts for attention by some bored, aging juveniles best left ignored, some of these organisations’ calls to undermine, unravel and even break up South Africa’s non-racial ethos can never be allowed to stand.
Calls for whites only homelands or Zulu or Tsonga or Venda only universities, sports, neighbourhoods etc. can never be tolerated. South Africa has seen this attempt at ethic balkanisation, mobilisation based upon race and language; it was called apartheid and it’s not coming back.
Ordinary South Africans must stand united in not only rejecting and condemning a few local delinquents making such dangerous calls, but similarly those individuals and even state actors from other countries who have sought to insert their dark, white supremacist, race baiting and fake news mongering agendas into our nation’s still fragile nation building journey.
COSATU appeals to our fellow trade unionists in Solidarity to embrace the call to unite all workers, black and white, and to distance itself from those who seek to divide South Africans based upon race or some misplaced nostalgia for apartheid or a weird fetish for Orania. Solidarity must play a constructive role and help ensure that ordinary Afrikaners are part of finding real solutions for issues affecting all South Africans.
We must similarly, government and the private sector in particular, act with speed to address and resolve our many burning socio-economic crises, in particular our unacceptably high levels of unemployment, poverty, inequality, crime and corruption as well as stagnant economic growth and embattled public and municipal services that lay the ground for such reckless and irresponsible forces to fester.
South Africa has come too far to allow such dark agendas seeking to divide the nation along race, language, religion or other lines. COSATU alongside the Tripartite Alliance and all progressive and sober voices will never allow our hard-won gains of the democratic dispensation to be lost, neither will we tolerate attempts to collapse our transformation journey.
Issued by COSATU
Matthew Parks (COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator)
Mobile: 082 785 0687
Email: matthew@cosatu.org.za