Dear Numsa NewsPutting our ears to the ground – About eight years ago, Numsa held local general meetings across the country to listen to members, and in some locals this campaign was used to revive the structures.

Although the attendance was not good, workers across the country said the same thing about the organisation, and especially Numsa's foot soldiers, the shop stewards.

Members said that shop stewards:* use their positions to bully workers* don’t have confidence amongst themselves to face the employers, instead they wait for the union official to lead them.* don’t attend union activities and regular general and workplace meetings are not taking place.* enjoy positions and fail to provide quality service to members* use their positions as a ticket to go to management* blame each other when they are faced with issues that are challenging.

As an individual I believe that workers are a source of power in the organisation, not a group of individuals or position mongers. For the union to be strong, communication from the factory floor to the national must be tightened because if things go bad, all union members must blame themselves for not reaching the required destination or expected destination.

Please always remember that if you don’t know where you are going, you can take any road, but you can't reach your destination. United we are strong, divided we fall. Aluta! Thomas E Maluleke, shop steward Kempton Park local

Dear Numsa NewsIt's so hard for me to see workers sometimes. They think they can act and behave like management.

It's always our own people and races, when they are in the presence of capitalists, they think they are also white.Members must learn and know that we as workers do not own the means of production. Any mistake from them, then capital will treat their same blue-eyed boys the same.

Members will prefer to believe capitalists when they speak, but when their leaders speak they will look at them like they don’t understand. You must learn to put your faith and trust in the union and not in capital.

We know that we as a union do not offer favours such as overtime. Members and workers of Numsa let us stop being the boys of capitalists and let them do their own dirty work. There's no time for gossip if we want to promote the working class through the 21st century.

RestructuringIt's hard enough when capitalists inform our structures when they want to retrench our members.

After they have retrenched us they also restructure – a nice name to make more profits and let us as workers suffer. Members of different companies are then told to do two people's jobs for the same pay.

Labour is targeted the most in capitalist restructuring. Workers do not own the means of production, that's why capitalists are less favourable. They only pay us a small wage in order for us to just survive.

The only way members can really survive is to go and make debt in order to drive a car or buy a house. Members must then go to capital and ask for extra hours in order to pay such debts.

Capitalists just get richer and richer, but when they hear workers cry about high prices of foods, they try to sympathise and make you think they will also start to struggle like we have been doing all these years! What do they know of the struggle anyway?Lucien Windwaai, Bell-Essex Engineering

Dear Numsa NewsTrade unions or affiliates under the federation Cosatu adopted socialism as the only policy of the future. Numsa also adopted socialism.

The question is, are we communists or are Numsa members, elected leadership or staff members, communists?Only a few individuals are communists in the organisation.

To achieve or realise our goal as a trade union, members must be communists first, understand the theory in order to practise policy and be informed by the ideas and perspectives of communism.

In the Numsa 8th National Congress delegates deliberated on reports and policies. We should check whether those resolutions are informed by socialist policies or ideas.

New leadership was elected and welcomed to the ranks of socialism, nothing else.The resolutions taken in the 8th National Congress or to be taken in the coming mini-Congress must be debated and transformed into socialism.

The SACP cannot come to Numsa but Numsa members must join the SACP in order to transform ourselves first and society to socialism.

Only trade unions can transform the economy or a country into a socialist state in favour of the working class and the poor but only if they are communists.

"This is a source of strength and more that heals the deepest wounds," said Che Guevara in 1965.Mkhonto "Mdu" Ntshangase, SACP member and Welkom organiser

Thoughts on being unemployedIt was on the 28th day of the eighth month. I woke up after what was a very haunting dream-sleep. My friend Ntsokolo with whom I shared the room that night was also already awake.

We had a chat of no significance, like many other chats I usually had with him. However, on this particular day I felt so pre-occupied with something that I didn’t know, to such a extent that he decided to leave me unceremoniously.

The time was half past seven. I did some little house chores. I filled up my stomach, to gain stamina, with the last two slices of bread in the house. I concluded on going to seek work irrespective of the humiliation of going to town on foot, of tramping the clean Port Elizabeth streets in a state of exhaustion. Just before 10, I decided to go home.

No employer wanted to employ me irrespective of my qualification because I could not speak or write Afrikaans.

As I passed a shop I realised that I was very hungry yet I hated that because I knew that I had nothing with me to fill my empty belly. I shed a tear and asked God to redeem those who trespass against others. I kept on walking along the main road.

My favourite English hymn came to mind – "Guide me, o thou great redeemer".I became embarrassed to notice that I was not miming anymore but singing my favourite hymn aloud!Vuyisile ka Fundakubi

Source

Numsa News