Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) heavyweight Zwelinzima Vavi has denied suggestions that a civil society conference under way in Boksburg was testing waters for a new political party.
“Let us right from onset state that we are not an anti-ANC and anti-government coalition,” the Cosatu general secretary told delegates on Wednesday. “We are not here to begin a process to form any political party, nor to advance the interest of any individual.”
In a speech prepared for delivery, Vavi said neoliberalism was the enemy. It had condemned people to poverty and unemployment.
“We want to roll back neoliberal advances and struggle for the adoption and implementation of alternatives,” he said. “Our struggles have to be both defensive and offensive.”
Vavi said the union federation was a friend of all who were genuinely anti-neoliberal, pro-poor and working-class political parties that had an indisputable record of struggle to advance society’s interests as the marginalised.
Vavi said the forces represented at the conference attended by various civil organisations were at the gathering to have a decisive say in the future of the country.
“Our goal must be to forge a strong, united movement for change.”
“A similar united social movement of Cosatu, the UDF, civic movements and progressive NGOs played a critical role alongside the unbanned ANC and SACP in bringing the racist dictatorship to its knees in those decisive years leading up to our democratic breakthrough in 1994.
“The challenges we face today are different but nevertheless very major and require a similar mobilisation of the democratic forces as we saw in those years,” Vavi said.
“In our 16 years of democracy we have achieved major advances. We have a democratic Constitution and many laws which have given South Africans basic rights — on paper at least — to freedom, dignity and equality.
“Despite our historic victories on the political battlefield, however, in the economic arena, many of the problems we faced in 1994 are still very much with us in 2010,” he said.
‘Growth at a snail’s pace’
“Typical of everything that is wrong with our society today, is this week’s announcement that Standard Bank, whose CEO Jacko Maree received a massive R18,2-million in 2009 alone, intends to retrench over 2 000 staff, making workers pay the price for their bosses’ extravagance and incompetence,” said Vavi.
He also pointed out that this was in the face of news that in 21 months, from January 2009 to September 2010, 1 145 000 jobs were lost.
“Which, as we keep saying, means that because each wage earner supports on average five dependants, more than 5,7-million people were thrown into poverty,” Vavi said.
The latest figures released on Tuesday reveal that the official rate of unemployment was still rising, at 25,3%, which means a further 45 000 jobs were lost in the third quarter of 2010.
Vavi said the roots of nearly all these problems lay in the failed economic policies adopted in 1996, centred around the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) strategy.
“It led to growth at a snail’s pace, higher unemployment and only redistributed wealth from the poor to the rich.
“It was a policy based on the misguided free-market, neoliberal policies of the Washington consensus, which led directly to the devastating worldwide economic crisis of 2008 and 2009,” he said.
The government on Tuesday announced its New Growth Path, which aims to create five million jobs by 2020, bringing the unemployment rate down to 15%
“While we obviously welcome and support such a target, we shall have to study in detail how the government’s new growth plan will achieve this,” said Vavi. — Sapa