We are creators of the wealth that is enjoyed by a small minority, which has hijacked the wealth we create for their private use.
We have built the cities where they trade and yet we live in squalor and poverty, which is our daily reality. The glass buildings in Johannesburg, Sandton and elsewhere we built by ourselves over many decades. We use scaffolds and often slip and fall many metres to our death.
We have built the streets of those who hijacked the wealth, and yet where we live there are no streets. We build water dams, yet until recently, we had to compete with the donkeys and horses for water.
We build their five-star hotels and their private schools and yet our own children have no access to such amenities. We have built the stadiums and other sporting facilities where their children play yet ours are condemned into dusty, stony and dangerous playing fields where their talents are unlikely to develop.
We are construction workers and after many hours at work, taking risks to our lives and health, we are paid a minimum wage of R1 345 a month. Today we join all other workers from other industries to rededicate ourselves to a struggle to improve our wages and conditions.
Since they discovered diamonds and gold, they have forced us all from all over sub-Saharan Africa to go down every day, deep in the bowels of the earth. We work in the most dangerous conditions, in high temperatures, in damp and poorly ventilated areas, where rocks fall daily, killing many of us and condemning others to a life in a wheelchair and the loss of limbs.
Some of our families have never had the chance to bury their breadwinners, whose bones remain buried many kilometres deep in the soil. Indeed, our bones can be deeper than the highest mine dumps you see in Johannesburg and the Free State.
For many years we were condemned to life in single-sex hostels where our employers encouraged us to sleep with other men so that we may not ask for leave to visit our families. We are mineworkers who created the wealth that built Johannesburg and other towns. Today, thanks to our many struggles, the minimum wage in the mines is R3 750.
We are now told we will fall into the category of workers who must demand only inflation and a moderate real increase if the government has its way in the New Growth Path. We are here today to say this amount is an insult if you consider how much our bosses are paid for working in air-conditioned offices whilst we sweat for almost nine hours every day.
We clean the streets day and night, exposing ourselves to the marauding gangs of no particular origin, as our legend artist Hugh Masekela put it. Without our labour, the streets where they trade, their parks and other amenities would be like the streets we come from.
In cold, wintry nights, with temperatures below zero, and in the summer days, where in Phalaborwa, temperature can rise into the mid 40s, we shiver and sweat for a minimum of only R4 100 a month.
We are the municipal workers without whom life would be impossible.
For seven days we prepare, teach and impart knowledge; we mark exams and sacrifice our weekends and nights. Our training is elaborate. We produce more teachers and every profession comes through our hands. Without us the world would return to darkness and backwardness.
We are the teachers who have produced the best brains. Karl Marx and Adam Smith went through our hands, together with most powerful heads of state. We are the creators of the world, yet we are remunerated at a mere R9 537 a month after spending 12 years at schools and four years at university.
Daily we face double exposure to HIV/Aids and other infectious diseases and accidents. Daily we are traumatised by the death of the patients whom we get attached to whilst treating them. We counsel grieving family members when they lose their loved ones.
We often put in overtime to cover dwindling numbers as many leave the public service for greener pastures in the private sectors and even overseas. Today we touch the blood of the victims of horrible car accidents. We see the broken bones and listen helplessly to their cries of pain. After three years in university, a nursing assistant earns a minimum of R5 000 per month.
After six years in training plus two more years in internship, doctors earn a lousy R26 250 and some take home only R16 500. This is how we value those who save our lives.
We move goods from city to city and travel as far as Malawi and Angola. For days and even weeks, we spend cold nights travelling. Without this they would not trade and our economy would come to a standstill.
Yet for this we are paid R4 000 for driving heavy lorries. This does not allow us to take our children on holiday this coming festive season. We are members of Satawu, our fighting union that has year-in, year-out led us in a battle to improve our wages and conditions of employment.
We stand in the gates of their factories, offices and homes on guard — in rain, in cold winter and unbearable sun for up to 12 hours, exposing ourselves to danger every day of the week. For all our sacrifices, we are paid an insulting R1 200 a month. We are members of the Satawu who spent six months in 2006 on a strike to try and improve our salaries.
We clean their offices and clean their surroundings, picking up dirt and exposing ourselves to diseases every day for a mere R1 100 a month. We are members of Satawu. Most of us are not in the unions and do not even get the peanuts guaranteed to others.
You will find us in the shops as you buy your groceries and other necessities. We are more likely to be casual, young and women. We work for many hours and many of our bosses don’t even respect the sectoral determinations that give us a minimum wage of R2 084 per month when we work in big cities, and R1 819 per month if we have the misfortune of being in rural towns.
We work in hotels where they spend the weekends spoiling their wives and children. We work in the restaurants where enterprises employing fewer than ten employees are paid R1 981.
We are from the farms that produce food that we all need. In many cases we hear from the radio that there is freedom and important dates are being celebrated. The constitution, celebrated as the best in the world, has no meaning to us. No labour law is applied to us. No union organiser reaches us. The few we have seen often get arrested for trespassing before they reach us. We have also seen department of labour inspectors being arrested before they can reach us.
We hear that government has introduced sectoral determinations that should provide R1 316 and R1 228 for forest workers, yet in many cases our bosses do not pay us even these peanuts, or they make us pay rent for the few goats and horses we own as a way of undercutting these minimum wages.
Many of us come from Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Our governments have not delivered for the more than two decades they have been in power. Now we are forced to risk crossing the crocodile-infested rivers to South Africa only for the farm bosses to take advantage of us.
They often do not pay us any salary! We receive a bag of mielies after a long day of hard labour, when we are not even allowed to speak to one another as the bosses fear that we will discover that we come from everywhere in our continent of Africa.
We hope that the ministers of labour and agriculture will speed up implementation of the ANC manifesto so that the state helps us organise ourselves and overcome the many obstacles that have been put in place to make it impossible to organise us.
We are the workers who are employed from the car boots of the human traffickers. Our hearts bleed every month-end when we see the extent of our exploitation and discrimination. For example, labour brokers pay workers a mere R2 700, while permanent workers earn R7 200
Today, together with all other workers whose professions I have not mentioned, we have come here to salute our federation Cosatu, as it celebrates the milestone of reaching 25 years.
We know that Cosatu has been an important instrument we have used to achieve many gains we are celebrating today. Some of us are forced to sell our bodies in the streets of our cities.
We know this amounts to our exploitation by men who see us as objects to satisfy their sexual lusts. Some rich ones hire us and eat sushi from our half naked bodies to demonstrate their power over us. With unemployment increasing every year, we support more and more of our unemployed family members.
We are the creators of the wealth that has been privatised and is enjoyed by the few. We are workers of South Africa. We hate the barbaric system of capitalism that allows this to happen.
Today, to be in the union is better than not to be in the union. All studies show that members of the unions have better pay, better conditions of employment and better job security than those outside the unions. But we know that we must still do much more to strengthen Cosatu so that it can continue to improve our wages and conditions of employment. We cannot afford to have a neutral government under these circumstances. We want a more active government that has a capacity to enforce the laws of the land.
Today there are only two million of us in Cosatu. We know that our challenge is to organise every one of the 12-million active in the labour market.