1 May 2003
Chairperson,
Leaders of our Trade Union Movement and other Organizations,
Workers,
Comrades and Friends:
I am very pleased that we have gathered on this important day in the political calendar of the workers, as well as all the people of our country and the world. This day, May Day, follows another important one in the life of all South Africans - Freedom Day, which we celebrated this past Sunday.
All of us gathered here, as well as many South Africans, know and appreciate the significance and the relationship between Freedom Day and Workers Day.
We are gathered here today, as South Africans, as workers, as people who fought hard to bring about freedom and democracy for ourselves. We have among us the men and women, the trade unionists who, over many years, have ensured that we use our collective power to bring about changes to improve the lives of the working people.
On this important day, I am honoured and pleased to convey to all the workers of our country the greetings and best wishes of our government.
I am honoured and pleased to salute the workers of our country for the struggle they waged to liberate our country from racial tyranny and oppression.
Those with short memories have already forgotten that less than ten years ago, the workers manned the barricades in a deadly confrontation to free all of us from oppression. The workers and the people won - this we must never forget!
I am honoured and pleased to salute the workers of our country for the role they have played to defend our hard-won democracy and to protect the peace among the people that we now enjoy.
Those with short memories have already forgotten that only a few years ago, workers were being killed by faceless murderers on the commuter trains. In many areas, residents in our townships and the hostels saw themselves as mortal enemies. Working people in some of our rural areas did not know when the killers would descend on them to take away innocent lives, hired and deployed by cruel men who were fighting to perpetuate our oppression and exploitation.
The workers and the people won against the faceless army of assassins and their criminal commanders - this we must never forget!
I am honoured and pleased to thank and pay tribute to our workers who have worked hard to ensure that we move forward to achieve the goals of the reconstruction and development of our country, and therefore to begin the process of the radical improvement of the lives of all our people.
Those with short memories have forgotten that not long ago, we had an economy that was in decline and shrinking. The future it promised was one of increasing misery and impoverishment and despair for the majority of our people. Through their labour, the workers of our country have made a decisive contribution to the turn-around that has given us a growing economy and the increasing wealth that we need to improve the lives of all our people - this we must never forget!
I am honoured and pleased to thank and salute our workers that as producers of wealth, they have given us the means to do what could be done to improve the lives of our people, who had been impoverished by a system that consciously treated millions of South Africans as surplus people.
Those with short memories have forgotten about the pitiful pensions that our grand fathers and mothers used to get. They have forgotten that not long ago, the African majority could not receive the child support grant. They pretend that they do not know that not so long ago, hungry children could get no meals at school unless they bought them with money they did not have.
They claim to be unaware of the fact that only a few years ago, the very poor had no hope that anything would be done to alleviate their poverty.
Our workers, as producers of wealth, have helped to provide the means so that we can begin the process of meeting the needs especially of the poor - this we must never forget!
I am honoured and pleased to thank and salute our workers as producers of wealth who have helped to generate the resources so that we can seriously begin the process of addressing the infrastructure backlog that defined many areas of our country, the residential areas of the majority of our people, as the underdeveloped half of South Africa, the periphery of the developed and modern half built on the sweat and blood of workers who were oppressed and subjected to super exploitation.
Those with short memories have forgotten that not so long ago, Africans in the urban areas did not own the houses in which they lived. They have forgotten that the construction of municipal housing had been stopped, leading to the rapid growth of shantytowns. They say they do not know that many African children had to learn sitting under trees, because there were no classrooms, that they had to study in dilapidated schools with no water, no sanitation, no electricity. They are not aware that access to clinics was the exception rather than the rule. They claim to be unaware that millions had no access to the infrastructure that would provide people with clean water, electricity and telephones.
Our workers, as producers of wealth, have helped to provide the means so that we can begin the process of meeting these infrastructure needs, to provide free houses, to build clinics close to where the people live, to build schools where there were none, to lay down water pipes to deliver clean water to the people, to build modern sanitation to address the central matters of health and human dignity, to launch the offensive to defeat the legacy of underdevelopment that will take time - this we must never forget!
I am honoured and pleased to thank and salute our workers as producers of wealth, who have helped to generate the resources so that we can end the humiliation according to which the majority of our people were defined only as cheap labour and consumers. Today we can assist all our people to become owners of productive wealth, including the land, to assume positions as managers and contribute to our country's development as professionals.
Those with short memories have forgotten about job reservation, about Bantu Education and Verwoerd's injunction that the majority of our people should have no access to the green pastures, about the obstacles put in the way of the majority to ensure it remains merely hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Our workers, as producers of wealth, have helped to provide the means so that we can begin the process to ensure that we deracialise our economy in all its elements, that we deracialise all the professions, that we deracialise access to skills and know-how and thus end job reservation and racism in the workplace -this we must never forge!
For these reasons and many more, we have gathered here on May Day, a public holiday dedicated to the workers of our country and the workers of the world.
But we have come here not only to carry out the important task of paying tribute to the working class. We do not celebrate May Day merely to salute the workers.
We observe May Day also to reaffirm our commitment that we will continue to do everything that can and should be done to protect and advance the interests of the workers, the millions of fellow South Africans who contribute daily to the realisation of the goal of a better life for all.
The pursuit of this goal, which we will never abandon, means that we must strive everyday to secure a better life for the working people of our country. We must measure the progress we are making to create a humane and caring society by the advances we achieve to improve the lives of the working people, in both rural and urban areas.
We are proud of the great advances we have made within a short period of time, with the direct involvement of the workers and their mass organisations, the trade unions, in many areas.
We have radically improved the general and basic working conditions of workers through the Labour Relations, the Basic Conditions of Employment, the Employment Equity and the Skills Development Acts.
Through agreed policy interventions, we have begun to reduce the marginalisation of workers on the basis of race and gender. Yet, more work still needs to be done before we reach the certainty that there is no discrimination on these bases, including disability. We are together engaged in a continuing struggle to secure the basic conditions of employment in all work places, as required by law.
We have entrenched the right to fair labour practices, the right to form and join trade unions, the right to organise, to and bargain collectively and to strike.
On this Workers' Day, we should be proud of what we have done to protect the rights of the most marginalized and vulnerable of our workers, the domestic and farm workers, by ensuring that they also benefit from the regime of minimum wages and the conditions of employment through various sectoral determinations.
We continue to focus on ensuring that we stamp out the resort to child labour by unscrupulous people.
Together we have fought for workers to work in a healthy and safe environment. Workplace fatalities have been drastically reduced. Government, Business and Labour have signed a historic Occupational Health and Safety Accord. This has raised awareness regarding the establishment of Health and Safety Committees at the workplace.
The progress we have achieved does not mean that we have achieved the objectives we must pursue, to ensure that the liberation for which the workers fought, leads to the continuous improvement of their lives and those of the children and families. On this May Day, at the beginning of the last year of our First Decade of Liberation, we must together say - the struggle continues! Victory is certain!
We must say this because there are many challenges ahead of us. These include the related and important questions of unemployment and low skills levels, as well as other challenges such as the casualisation of labour.
Our common commitment to eradicate poverty and to guarantee the dignity of all our people demands that we address these matters with the greatest seriousness and determination.
May Day is therefore a day on which we must reaffirm the principle that the masses of our people, the working people, are their own liberators. It is therefore a day on which we discuss with these liberators the tasks ahead of us, that are part of our collective work as we advance the democratic revolution.
Next month our government, the trade unions and business will meet together in the Growth and Development Summit. Our people believe that out of this meeting will come decisions that will make a material difference to their lives.
None of us - government, business and labour - dare not disappoint these expectations. By the time we meet just over four weeks from now, each one of these social partners must be ready to say what it is ready to do to contribute to the further growth and development of our country.
In this process, we will have to consolidate our social partnership for change, and ensure that we achieve concrete results in our efforts to improve the performance of our economy that would, among other things, help to reduce the number of the unemployed in our society, accelerate the process of poverty eradication, and ensure better social equity.
The workers of our country participated in the liberation struggle as freedom fighters. As these freedom fighters, they were driven by the confidence that none but themselves could bring about change. As these freedom fighters, they are determined to bring about the transformation of our country sooner rather than later.
Working together with them, with business and civil society, our government is determined that whatever obstacles or occasional setbacks we may encounter, we are moving forward steadily towards our common goal of a non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous nation, pushing back the frontiers of poverty and expanding access to a better life for all.
On this important day on our national calendar, Workers Day, we all say - Phambili nabasebezi, phambili!
We wish all the workers of our countries and their families a Happy May Day.
Amandla!
For more information contact Bheki Khumalo on 083 256 9133.