ADDRESS BY SAM SHILOWA TO FINANCE WEEK BREAKFAST CLUB

Issued by: Congress of SA Trade Unions

1ST DECEMBER, 1993

ADDRESS BY SAM SHILOWA, COSATU GENERAL SECRETARY TO FINANCE WEEK BREAKFAST CLUB

Sandton Sun 1st December, 1993

"THE COSATU AGENDA"

After April 27th next year the focus of all South Africans will have to be on ensuring that the phoenix of reconstruction arises from the social wasteland created by apartheid. This mammoth task does not rest on the shoulders of the trade unions or any one section of our people, but on the entire society.

COSATU has not sat back and blamed government and business for the mess they have made of our country. We have initiated an inclusive process aimed at harnessing the energies of all sectors of society to design and drive the vehicle which will deliver the social political and economic changes necessary to rescue our society from its downward spiral of stagnation and disintegration.

The process of building a nation will not be achieved through elections and setting up a democratic state alone. If that new state and its institutions is to have any legitimacy it will have to deliver meaningful and tangible changes in peoples lives. Perhaps even more importantly, the nation-building process will have to involve people in the formulation and implementation of solutions to their problems. Without this, the new society will be dashed on the rocks of unfulfilled expectations, and untapped energies.

The vehicle we have identified as necessary to drive this process is the programme of reconstruction and development. As many of you are aware, COSATU and other organisations have embarked on a range of initiatives to open up discussion on this programme. A draft document was debated at our Special Congress in September. The civic movement have formulated their own document. Next Friday a range of mass-based organisations will come together in a national conference to put their inputs into the melting pot. Next year we are planning to have an even broader conference in which those who have not yet fed their views into the process, including business and international experts, will have the opportunity to do so.

The point of all this is to ensure that even if we differ in some respects on methods, we achieve a broad national consensus on the goals of reconstruction and development, and time-frames to achieve these goals. Once we have moved in this direction, it then becomes possible to have a meaningful national debate, without degenerating into ideological mudslinging.

If to give two examples, if it is identified as a national priority to wipe out preventable diseases, such as typhoid, measles, and TB, and to electrify our townships and rural areas, we can then debate the best means to achieve these objectives, and set targets over the next 5 years.

Once we develop a needs-driven approach - that is, to start from identifying the needs of society as a whole we can break out of our old ideological log-jams which prevented us from developing a shared framework.

This is not to underestimate the size of the problem. The needs of our society are enormous, and to rise to the challenge, our solutions will need to be radical and far-reaching. I don't think even the most cosetted businessman believes any more than trickle-down economics will provide a solution to our problems. We can not feed our people on abstract economic `laws.' Our solutions must be concrete, coherent, and planned to deliver within acceptable time-frames. It is not through some divine powers that our people are poor, face starvation, live in squalid conditions. It is through persistant and sustained implementation of apartheid, which almost all business people have benefited from in one way or another. South Africa is a notorious example of a successful programme of affirmative action. We do not intend to reproduce Verwoerd's programmes, but neither should we pretend to be hearing the word affirmative action for the first time.

THE NEED FOR A DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL SOLUTION

Clearly, for such a programme to succeed, we need to put in place credible and legitimate political and social institutions. This can only happen once we have a democratic political settlement. COSATU has emphasised certain areas in this regard:

• THE APRIL 27 DATE FOR ELECTIONS IN NON-NEGOTIABLE. The most important advance in the democratisation process has been to set definite time-frames, to avoid those who have an interest in the continuation of apartheid, delaying progress indefinitely : The AVF have fired the first salvo at the process. Just as we were prepared to sacrifice in order to crush apartheid, so will we against any self-imposed Boerestaat. COSATU has clearly stated that we will resort to strike action if necessary to keep the process on course.
• THE `UNHOLY ALLIANCE' (FA), with the tacit encouragement of elements in the current government is attempting to hold the country to ransom, despite, according to all opinion polls, representing a tiny minority of the population. Intelligence reports indicating that the right is mobilising for war, with today the planned launch date of a terror campaign, have not been effectively acted on by the current government. This is despite the claims by Kriel and others that the government has infiltrated the right wing from top to bottom. All patriotic South Africans have a duty to isolate those who want to violently drag us back in to the past. We are hoping against all odds that none of you will associate with any of these lunatics whose primary aim is to sow hatred and to continue apartheid rule. We must never allow those who fear democracy to reduce this country into a wasteland.
• COSATU, together with other democratic forces of civil society will embark on a campaign to mobilise to ensure that all parties accept the result of a democratic election. The `Savimbi option' must be ruled out by making the political and other costs too high for those attempting to pursue it. Part of this process will be to expose the leadership of organisations such as the IFP and CP to their own rank and file, many of whom are genuinely misled into believing that their leaders are acting in a bona fide way. Many IFP supporters for example do not realise that they are in an alliance with fascist parties such as the AWB.

All South African supporting a democratic solution should consider mobilising under the banner of a pro-democracy, anti-fascist movement. If such a movement of ordinary South Africans was to sweep the country, those opposed to democracy would be isolated and exposed for what they are - war-mongers unconcerned with the interest of those they claim to represent. As the first step in this direction COSATU will be approaching other groups in civil society to support a declaration calling on all political parties to commit themselves to accept the results of democratic elections, whatever the outcome. Meetings will then be held with all parties, and their response to the Declaration will be widely publicised.

• At another level, COSATU has been campaigning for the new state to be able to restructure the apartheid bureaucracy. The current civil service is immersed in a culture of nepotism and corruption. It is not geared towards serving the needs of our people, but has rather been designed to suppress their aspirations. Therefore a democratic government will have to radically restructure all state institutions. COSATU is arguing that we need a new public service culture, which ensures that all public servants are oriented towards delivering services on the ground. This means minimum bureaucracy and the expansion of the service providers. Those from the old order who are prepared to fit into this new culture should on the whole be able to be accommodated. There will have to be new leadership, particularly at the senior levels of the civil service. Further, public sector workers, as well as the communities they are serving will have to be actively involved in the process of restructuring the state. We are against corruption and maladministration. We stand for a clean and transparent government and that includes the entire public service.

SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Our political settlement is doomed to failure unless it is underpinned by a coherent programme of socio-economic development. The greatest threat to democracy is not necessarily from the right-wing. The greatest threat is unemployment, poverty, disease.

But, just as these problems are man-made, so are the solutions. If we look at the so-called `economic miracles' this century, such as post-war Germany, none of them have in fact been miracles. These dramatic developments were the result of deliberate programmes implemented by the government, business, labour and other social actors. South Africa like these countries needs its own `war effort' for development and reconstruction. A few days ago Chancellor Helmut Kohl called on German business people to roll up their sleeves, to climb down from the ivory tower of criticism, and to soil their hands.

But we also have to accept that the route we travel while we learn from international experience, will not be a carbon-copy of any of these experiences. In particular, South Africans need to bury any notion of following the `cheap labour route' or the route of the authoritarian state as potential options for economic development.

I don't need to waste time dispensing with the cheap labour option. Successive National Party governments, and many governments before them spent decades attempting to `perfect' this route. For the majority, it meant abject poverty and degradation. For the minority, there was a spurt of economic growth in the 1960's. This apartheid boom soon became a permanent slump, as the growing manufacturing sector was unable to fill its changing labour needs, and the market for luxury commodity production for whites exhausted itself. If the cheap labour route became an economic cul de sac from the 1970's to the 1990's, there is little chance that it will miraculously open up a highway of economic opportunities going into the 21st century!

South Africa's militant and organised workers will not accept a formula for economic growth based on their exploitation,nor will they agree to an arrangement which tramples on their basic human and trade union rights. The example provided by the much-vaunted 1Asian Tigers' do not in this respect hold out any hope of economic progress in our country. Their use of authoritarian state measures would in our context be a recipe for widespread social and industrial conflict. If we are to learn any lessons from these countries, we should rather look to their emphasis on human resource development, R&D, and the developmental effects of selective, strategic state intervention in the economy.

We need to bury once and for all the myth that the road to economic development is paved with low wages and the destruction of labour standards. In a world where virtual slave labour conditions exist in Asian and other countries, it is unthinkable that some elements in South African business should seek to make this our `competitive advantage.'This is a prescription to take us backwards from apartheid to feudalism. Leaving aside moral considerations, those wanting to follow this route are living in a fool's paradise if they think it has a hope in hell of succeeding.

What then is the role of organised business and organised labour in the process of reconstruction and development in our country? Many have focussed - correctly - on the enormous social needs which a new society will have to address. But ultimately the engine of all development will have to be located in the productive sector of the