Sactwu has shown that capitalist investment can work not only for workers, but for their children too. Ferial Haffajee reports
SCORES of clothing workers’ children graced this week’s launch of a clothing union’s bursary fund: among them was one who has done particularly well.
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel introduced himself as “the son of a clothing worker” and recalled going from pillar to post in search of a bursary. He never received one; but he didn’t mind, he said, as this “may have put me on a very different career path”.
This week, the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (Sactwu) patted itself on the back for its decision to enter the world of capitalism. The union announced that its bursary fund has been boosted eight-fold to about R8-million from the profits of clever investments made by its company, Sactwu Investments.
The launch, held at the Carlton Hotel, Johannesburg, was replete with tuxedos; individual scrolls of Bertolt Brecht’s poem “In Praise of Learning” for guests; and other treats. “It shows how very far we have travelled,” remarked Jayendra Naidoo, a former unionist and current director of the National Economic Development and Labour Council.
Sactwu has, in the past, been able to make a minimal contribution to the education of its members’ children, but its profits will now mean that the union will pay half the fees of more than 600 students, plus assist almost 2 000 more students. Sactwu Investments was established to make the bursary scheme self-sufficient; it has grown beyond expectation to “several hundreds of millions of rands”, said John Copelyn, the company’s chief executive officer.
Copelyn and other union chiefs who have opted to cut deals across mahogany tables have come in for quite a drubbing from those who do not like labour’s new path. But they used the bursary launch to thumb their noses at critics.
Sactwu’s president Amon Ntuli said: “It’s been a sensitive decision, but we cannot sit all the time and be beggars.”
He added: “The government and employers themselves cannot deliver. Trade unions have found what is to be done.”
Medical students sat alongside seamstress mothers, trainee lawyers translated for textile workers as one speaker after the other praised the union’s decision. Among the audience sat employers who contribute 20 cents per worker to the bursary scheme and the big name of black business in South Africa, Dr Nthato Motlana stayed all evening.
The gathering attracted a grand audience because it is one of the first signs that black economic empowerment and trade union investments are beginning to pay off and are filtering down. Other such efforts to show tangible gains for workers are going to be essential to harness grassroots support for the path their organisations have chosen.
“Something must be ploughed back. People cannot wait for investments to start paying off,” said Moses Mayekiso, the CEO of Sanco Holdings, the investment arm of the South African National Civics Organisation.
The company has started the Ilima Community Development Foundation to fund bursaries and adult education schemes and to provide small business assistance to Sanco members, although the foundation has no money in it as yet. The holdings company is also planning a micro-loans company for small businesses.
With large numbers of retrenchments dogging the industry, the Mineworkers Investment Company is plunging some of its profits (of about R1,5-million) into helping jobless miners start their own businesses.
With this assistance, former miners-turned bricklayers, chicken farmers or bakers are earning a living in the rural areas of South Africa and even as far afield as Lesotho. The company has also set aside about R1,5-million for a union-run bursary scheme.