President Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday South Africa would continue to privatise state-owned corporations despite opposition from the country’s major trade union federation.
”We will proceed with that programme… of the restructuring of state assets,” he said during a quarterly parliamentary question session.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) vowed last week to go ahead with a two-day national strike against privatisation and poverty in October, accusing the government of intransigence.
Cosatu and the South African Communist Party are junior partners of Mbeki’s African National Congress (ANC) in a ruling alliance that together commands two thirds of the seats in parliament.
The ANC committed the government to the gradual privatisation of state-owned assets soon after it came to power in 1994, but has faced consistent opposition from its alliance partners, who say the sell-off is costing jobs and undermining services for the poor.
The government already has sold shares in the Telkom telecommunications company and the state-owned airline, SAA, as well as radio stations, leisure resorts and forests. But the SAA stake was bought back after the collapse of Swissair.
The government has forecast revenue from privatisation, seen as a key driver of foreign investor confidence, at R12-billion this fiscal year, mainly from the proposed partial listing of Telkom.
The government has agreed a framework with unions for privatisation, including guidelines on how to deal with the impact on jobs, but unions accuse authorities of steamrollering the consultations.
Unemployment is officially estimated at 30%, with more than half a million jobs lost since the end of white rule in 1994.
”We are proceeding with that programme (privatisation)
in part in the context of what was agreed with the unions,” Mbeki said. ”We will continue to engage with Cosatu and the other trade union federations to make sure that we are able to pull together,” he added, without referring directly to the strike plan. – Reuters