Workers still heroic fighters
in the national freedom struggle
This week,
on 1 May, the workers and people of our country and the world celebrated
May Day. Once more, we convey our congratulations and best wishes to the
working people of our country on the occasion of the observance of Workers'
Day.
The well-deserved celebrations of our workers and people
were seriously marred and disturbed by the tragic death of more than 70
workers who drowned in a dam near Bethlehem in the Free State, while on
their way to the COSATU May Day rally in Phutaditshaba.
We extend our heartfelt condolences to the families
of the deceased, to COSATU, and the people of Kimberley, from where the
workers who died in the Bethlehem accident came. We thank the national
government and the governments of the Free State and Northern Cape for
their speedy response to this tragedy, to give all necessary support to
the relatives and friends of those who died.
The families and dependants of those who perished will
need all the assistance they can get to respond to the consequences of
this unexpected tragedy. We hope that the govt, from the local to the
national, elected by the same workers who died in Bethlehem, will act
with the necessary sympathy, sensitivity and speed to extend as much assistance
as possible to the families of the deceased.
The celebration of May Day necessarily brings into focus
the important matter of the role of the heroic workers of our country
in the common effort to achieve the reconstruction and development of
our country. Apart from anything else, we have to bear in mind, at all
times, that the principal beneficiaries of this process must be the working
people themselves, the majority of our population.
The black workers of our country played a central role
in the struggle led by the ANC to defeat apartheid oppression. They constituted
the core of the mass army for national liberation. They understood that
they had no choice but to engage in struggle to liberate themselves from
national oppression as black people.
They also understood very clearly, that the political
leader of the struggle for national emancipation was the ANC. Accordingly,
they resisted and defeated all attempts to detach and alienate them from
the ANC, the one liberation organisation of which they were members, and
which they knew represented their political interests as black workers.
Life itself dictated that even as they fought for the
national rights, these workers also had to engage the class struggle for
the improvement of their wages and working conditions and the defence
of their general interests as workers. It was therefore natural that they
should be keenly interested to form and join their own trade unions.
The black workers understood very clearly that these
struggles, the national struggle and the class struggle, were connected,
interlinked and mutually reinforcing. Accordingly, they also understood
that the ANC and their trade unions had to be connected, interlinked and
mutually reinforcing.
When the late President of the ANC, Chief AJ Luthuli,
compared the relationship between the ANC and the unions to being equivalent
to that of the spear and shield of a warrior, the workers understood this
perfectly. They could see from their own daily experience that their oppression
and exploitation derived from the fact that they were both workers and
black.
For the black workers, the matter was further clarified
by the position and role of the white workers. Essentially, these white
workers had been co-opted by the ruling group to act as the shock troops
in the defence of the system of white minority rule.
Already during the 1922 mineworkers' strike, the white
workers and their trade unions had demonstrated that they consciously
tied their class interests to their national interests as part of a racist
white minority that saw it as its national task to oppress the black majority.
They called for a white labour policy. It paid them to be white.
And literally, it paid them to be white. Jobs were reserved
exclusively for them. They benefited from a policy that rejected the principle
of equal pay for equal work. Their colour automatically secure their position
as die baas. They received all manner of state support to address what
was known as the poor white problem.
Historically, this left us with the problem of a racially
divided working class and a racially divided trade union movement. The
majority understood that its class interests would best be advanced by
the destruction of the apartheid system and its national emancipation.
The minority believed that its class interests would best be advanced
by the perpetuation of the apartheid system and the maintenance of its
positions of privilege.
The black workers understood that the best circumstances
under which they could pursue their immediate class interests of higher
wages, better working conditions and the advancement of their general
interests, would be if we transformed our country into a genuine democracy.
Democratic rule was therefore in their direct interest, both as black
people and as workers.
They have been proved right in this regard. In the period
since 1994, the legal framework for the pursuit by the workers of their
immediate class interests has changed qualitatively, and therefore the
circumstances in which they engage in struggle to protect and advance
their interests.
On the other hand, the white workers feared democratic
rule because it would end the discriminatory policies and practices that
placed them in a privileged position relative to their black counterparts.
Logically, it was in their interest to fight against the birth of democracy.
Since our liberation, the political representatives
of these white workers have expressed their desire to maintain their privileged
positions by campaigning against our affirmative action policies, that
are intended to ensure that those who were disadvantaged catch up with
those who were privileged by white minority rule. To frighten us into
inaction, they threaten us with mass emigration of white skills - the
so-called brain drain.
Because of their different interests, the black and
white contingents of our country's working class fought on different sides
of the barricades. The question whether it is possible at this stage of
the process of the evolution of the democratic revolution, to speak of
a united role of the workers of our country in the effort to realise the
goals of reconstruction and development.
Whatever the answer to this question, there can be no
denying the fact that the black workers of our country saw themselves
as liberation fighters, and consciously participated in the struggle for
our freedom as such fighters. The new questions that must be answered
arise from the fact of our liberation.
At the centre of these is the question whether the organised
black workers of our country have a specific role to play in the further
pursuit of the goals of the national democratic revolution, now that white
minority rile has been defeated.
To answer this question, we must understand that the
national democratic revolution, for whose victory the black workers fought,
does not consist in the single act of the defeat of white minority rule.
The national democratic revolution entails a protracted struggle to change
our country into a non-racial and non-sexist democracy.
Our national oppression did not consist only in the
exclusive exercise of political power by the white minority. National
oppression meant a comprehensive system of racist domination - racism
in politics, racism in the economy, racism in the social sphere, racism
in the institutions of the state, and so on.
Accordingly, the victory we sought was not only the
defeat of the apartheid regime and the transfer of power to the people,
important as this was. Its focus was not only the defeat of racism in
politics.
Our national oppression also consisted in the systematic
impoverishment and dehumanisation of the black majority. This has left
us with the legacy with which we are all familiar, in terms of which we
have to continue to live with the racial and gender imbalances and inequalities
of the past. These place the black majority where it was intended to be,
at the bottom, in terms of wealth, income and opportunity.
Necessarily, therefore, one of the central tasks of
the national democratic revolution is the eradication of the racist legacy.
The national democratic movement, of which the black workers have been
and are an important constituent part, has to use its political power
to address the other elements of racist domination.
It has to use the victory it scored in the area of racism
in politics, and therefore its access to state power, to secure new victories
against racism in the economy, racism in the social sphere, racism in
the institutions of state, and so on.
These victories will be an integral part of the national
democratic revolution, goals that were central to the struggle for national
liberation, for which the black workers fought. Without these victories,
it would be correct to say that the national democratic movement has not
fully realised its historic mission.
It is therefore obvious that it would be fundamentally
incorrect to say that the black workers, heroic combatants for the defeat
of the apartheid regime, completed their task as liberation fighters when
political power passed into the hands of the people in 1994. Necessarily,
their struggle for their own complete national emancipation has to continue.
This also means that the historic relationship between
the ANC and the black, progressive trade union movement remains central
to the completion of the mission of our national democratic movement.
It means that any argument that the black and progressive workers no longer
have an interest or role in the furtherance of the national democratic
revolution, this having been superseded by the class interests of these
workers, is wrong.
In any case, the sphere of practice and objective reality,
as opposed to the theoretical, both on the shop floor and in the community,
daily confirms to the black and progressive workers that the society in
which they live continues to emphasise the interconnection between the
national and the class struggles.
As we enter the final year of our First Decade of Liberation,
we will finally have to answer the question of what the national democratic
tasks of the progressive trade union movement are, in a situation in which
political power is in the hands of its pre-eminent political representative
in the national democratic struggle, the ANC.
The political victory of the democratic revolution has
given the working class greatly improved possibilities to pursue its immediate
class interests. The question that must be answered, practically, is what
the tasks of the progressive workers are with regard to the accomplishments
of the remaining strategic objectives of the national democratic revolution.
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