The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) welcomes Patrice Motsepe’s views on nationalisation, it said on Friday.
Earlier this week, prominent black businessman Motsepe, who is also chairperson of African Rainbow Minerals, told the South African Broadcasting Corporation he was in favour of the nationalisation of the country’s mines if the move was in South Africa’s interests.
”Numsa believes the ANC-led alliance must now fast-track the implementation of a framework within which nationalisation premised on the socialisation of the economic heights of the economy can be executed,” the union said in a statement.
It added that there was now sufficient consensus on nationalisation within the alliance for the ANC national executive committee ”to move beyond denial of this historically correct policy of the movement into the mechanics that would propel nationalisation into action”.
The union quoted from the Freedom Charter, which said that ”the national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people; the mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole; all other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well-being of the people”.
Numsa added that it wanted the government to nationalise the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) ”so that it may serve a developmental agenda that creates jobs and decent work to lift our people out of poverty and misery imposed by capitalism”.
Numsa said it was confident the South African Communist Party special congress under way in Polokwane would lead South Africa ”to achieve the nationalisation and socialisation of key and strategic sectors of the South African economy”. — Sapa