Cosatu president Sidumo Dlamini looks at the challenges which still face South Africa and which remain at the forefront of Cosatu’s agenda.
Thanks to the work of COSATU and its allies, especially the ANC in government, there have been significant improvements in the lives of millions of our people since the democratic breakthrough in 1994.
In 1996, only three million people had access to social grants; today the number is 15 million — 25% of our population. In 1996, 58% of the population had access to electricity, today it is 80%. In 1996, 62% had access to running water, today it is 88%. We have built 3,1-million subsidised houses, giving shelter to over 15-million people.
As we face the challenges of the next 25 years, however, it would be a big mistake for us to be complacent and heap praise on ourselves without taking stock of the problems we have not solved in the first 25 years. We have transformed the political landscape, but the distribution of wealth and economic power has hardly changed.
Indeed, we are facing a mounting crises of unemployment, with close to four out of every ten people who want to work unable to find jobs. A growing number of workers whose jobs have been casualised and outsourced, or who are employed by those human traffickers, the labour brokers, endure daily brutalisation and humiliation.
Unemployment affects black people, women and young people most. Today, 73% of all unemployed people are below 35. The youth born in the same year as COSATU now bear brunt of neoliberal policies and the capitation to global market forces.
Indeed, if we look today through the eyes of the youth, we see how this generation is continuously exploited by the despotic capitalist system. They have been turned into a sweatshop army in factories, in retail giants such as Shoprite and Pick n Pay, in the private security industry, in call centres and in the hospitality sector. In every area of life we see the class, race and gender inequalities we bequeathed from apartheid still in place and in some respects getting even worse.
On 5 December 2010, the Sunday Times published a survey revealing that in a period when we have been recovering from a recession in which over a million workers lost their jobs and as a result over five million people were plunged into dire poverty, the number of billionaires nearly doubled, from 16 in 2009 to 31 this year. South Africa’s 20 wealthiest men enjoyed a 45% increase in wealth this year. Only one woman made the top 100, in 95th place.
If the report is true, the top four richest men remain unchanged. Not surprisingly, the list is topped by Laskhmi Mittal, owner of ArcelorMittal SA, with a fortune of R21,5 billion, which is only the value of his holding in ArcelorMittal SA, not the international ArcelorMittal Group.
The richest South African is Patrice Motsepe, who is worth R19,9-billion from his stake in African Rainbow Minerals and Sanlam. But this excludes the value of his other investments, including Mamelodi Sundowns.
Third is a name which shows how little has changed since the days of apartheid — Nicky Oppenheimer, chairman of De Beers, who has a 2,5% stake in Anglo American, founded by his grandfather Ernest in 1917.
Number four is Shoprite chief Christo Wiese, who was arrested in 2009 at a London Airport with nearly £675 000 (R7-million) in cash in a suitcase, which was confiscated and is now the subject of criminal proceedings against him in the UK!
The statistics on earnings in 2009 reveal that topping the pile is Pine Pienaar, CEO of Mvelaphanda Resources, who raked in R63-million in 2009, closely followed by Norbert Platt, CEO of Richement, who got R58-million, and Marius Kloppers, CEO of BHP Billiton who took home R54-million.
Cosatu has frequently quoted the income received by Nedcom CEO Tom Boardman in 2009, yet this survey reveals that he ranks only 38th in the league of highest earners!
Only eight of the 150 top-paid executives come from the public sector, but what is remarkable is the number whose have either left or are leaving, some after heading companies beset with controversy and financial bail-outs.
Scandalously, according to the report, the highest paid SOE executive in 2009 was Khaya Ngqula, the former head of SAA, who was forced to resign after SATAWU produced a dossier proving he had squandered R30,8-million on perks for top executives. Yet he still ‘earned’ R13,7-million in 2009, including his controversial R9,35-million “termination benefit”. He ranked 61st in the overall top earners list.
These statistics will make workers more determined than ever to push for above-inflation wage increases. The wealth that these people own and receive is created by the labour of workers in the mines and factories, on the farms and in the shops.
Their bosses’ salaries and perks are now higher than those in developed countries, while workers’ wages are nowhere remotely near those of their American or European counterparts.
Yet so often it is these very same CEOs who moan about workers’ ‘excessive’ wage demands and ‘inflexible’ labour laws. It is the same people who say there is not enough money in the country to afford a National Health Insurance scheme. What utter hypocrisy!
These figures also confound the argument that CEOs are being rewarded for good results. Particularly in the public sector, but in private companies as well, it does not make any difference how well a company is performing. Even if you are sacked for failing to deliver or misusing the company’s money, your earnings keep going up.
As Cosatu prepares for next year’s living wage conference, we shall keep these figures in mind and use them to convince workers that they have every right to mobilise their members to fight for big increases, so that we can start to narrow the chasm between rich and poor in South Africa.
48% of South Africans live on less than R322 a month and 25% now survive on state grants. An average African man earns R2 400 per month, whilst an average white man earns R19 000. Most white women earn around R9 600 per month, whereas most African women earn R1 200 per month.
Inequalities filter down into every corner of society. In education, whilst we have made major progress in improving access, in particular for the girl child, we have not transformed the education system we inherited from the apartheid regime.
Children in black township schools are still victims of an unequal education system. They live daily with the fear of failure while watching their white counterparts in private schools top the list of achievers year after year.
It is the same story in healthcare. While the mainly white wealthy can buy world-class healthcare in the private sector, 86% of mainly black poor have to struggle to get any service at all in an under-funded, understaffed public sector, where patients are told to bring their own bedding and only Panado is available as an antidote. Nurses are overworked and underpaid.
The HIV and AIDS epidemic has worsened our situation, with life-expectancy dropping from 62 years in 1992 to 50 in 2006. Today, people leaving with HIV and AIDS occupy 73% of all hospital beds.
The life expectancy of a white South African now stands at 71 years and that of a black South African at 48. Faced with these realities, we have adopted the 2015 Plan to build COSATU and its affiliates, strengthen the ANC and the SACP on the ground, and build the Alliance and the developmental state.
We have called on our members to swell the ranks of the ANC and the SACP to ensure that these strategic allies of the workers retain their bias towards the workers and the poor.