The next African National Congress (ANC) president should be biased towards the working class, gender sensitive and a unifier, said the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on Friday.
”The NUM central committee stated categorically that it does not view the issue of ANC leadership in terms of names or personalities,” said NUM general secretary Frans Baleni and spokesperson Lesiba Seshoka in a statement on last weekend’s NUM central committee meeting.
Instead of names, the NUM listed nine attributes needed by the future leader: working-class bias; gender-sensitive; a unifier; respectful of the central role of the ANC-led alliance; ”reflective of the collective wisdom of the ANC” and the ”collective maturity of the tripartite alliance”; able to ”rise above the fray of factions”; a ”non-ethnic entrepreneur”; and not a tribalist.
NUM said the government should own the mines to create employment and generate revenue towards education.
It noted that although the economy was growing, job losses were escalating and ”100 000 jobs have been lost in the mining sector alone in the years 1996 to 2005”.
On wage negotiations, the union was ”firm on the demand for double digits as opposed to poverty wage increments”.
It criticised ”fronting” as a form of black economic empowerment, particularly of concern in the construction industry, or empowerment which benefited only ”a handful of politically connected individuals”.
The NUM is the largest of the Congress of South African Trade Unions affiliates, with more than 260 000 members.
Strike a triumph
Meanwhile, the first day of the national public-sector strike on Friday was an ”overwhelming triumph”, said the public-sector unions in a joint statement.
”The vast majority of the 700 000 workers called upon to strike heeded the unions’ call.”
The unions said many strikers joined marches around the country.
”Big contingents from every union filled the streets in angry and militant, but also disciplined and peaceful, protest.”
They said even the government conceded the turnout was massive. The unions criticised police action against workers in the Western Cape and said union members had met the police in this regard.
”We only hope that the message has got through to the government, in particular the Minister of Public Services and Administration, that the workers are united and determined to fight on until there a substantially better offer than the 6% ‘wage decrease’ currently.” – Sapa