4th November 2012
NUMSA Headquarters
“To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the roots of racial supremacy and does not represent even the shadow of liberation.”
(ANC, 1969)
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) fully supports the sentiments raised by the South African Communist Party (SACP) in their advice to the Democratic Alliance (DA) not to push their luck too far, by taking a walk to Nkandla!
We are convinced, especially with all that has happened this year that Helen Zille’s white DA is still steeped in its white supremacist racist culture and thinks Black and African people are white people’s inferiors – how else would they plan to march to Comrade Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla Village?
Clearly, this stunt will earn the DA their badly sought for media attention. It will of course also serve to add ammunition to the undying white racist perception that Africans are inherently corrupt and cannot run South Africa. The global media which are largely white controlled will greedily feast on this story.
From the time Jacob Zuma was elected President of South Africa the DA has carried on a relentless and brutal attack on his person.
That attack has obviously been a not so cleverly veiled attack on the intelligence, political wisdom, culture and constitutional right of the majority of the voters – who are Black and African – who voted for the ANC and therefore for Jacob Zuma.
With a brutal and single minded dedication, we have seen the DA pursue the courts for the National Prosecution Authority (NPA) to release the evidence upon which the NPA based its decision to drop the case against Jacob Zuma. We have no doubt that the DA’s greatest political fantasy is to see Jacob Zuma in jail.
We saw the DA mobilise to demonstrate against Cosatu’s perfect constitutional right to influence social, economic, cultural and political developments in the country through the institutions created for that purpose such as NEDLAC.
The DA marched to Cosatu House to protest Cosatu’s right to reject the youth wage subsidy through NEDLAC and other perfectly legitimate channels. Violence was the result and many ordinary workers, largely African, were hurt.
Between the constitutional right to dignity of Jacob Zuma and the right to paint, we saw the DA protect the right to paint Jacob Zuma naked. There are several examples we can use to demonstrate the most obvious fact here: the Black and African person in the eyes of the DA is not worthy any human dignity.
The overarching right which flames and gives overall context to the 1996 South African Constitution is the right to human dignity – precisely because for more than 360 years, Black people in general, and Africans in particular, have been regarded and treated as subhuman beings by white people.
The DA and white liberals sought to teach us their white racist supremacist right to insult Black and African people’s dignity when they argued that painting a living, grown African man naked, who is the President of this country, was their right to freedom of expression.
Sooner than later, the DA, as the SACP so correctly warns, will tear the extremely thin ribbon that thus far has welded us together as a nation, post 1994. And the DA and its white political constituency, having sown the wind, must then happily reap the harvest.
NUMSA appeals to every decent, democracy and peace loving South African – Black, White and African – to stop this madness which has afflicted the DA – the madness of stoking racial tensions in order to score cheap political points. They will fail, with disastrous consequences for the entire country!
There are institutions of the state that have already been tasked with investigating the financings around Nkandla. What the DA wants to do is a clear racist attack and violation of Jacob Zuma’s and his family’s right to dignity and privacy.
Jacob Zuma is our President, the President of South Africa. Our patience with white racist attacks on his person is limited and wearing thin. We have a duty to defend him. And we will do so, by whatever means necessary, from the DA’s racist inspired violation of his dignity.
Governance by the DA in the Western Cape Province has done nothing to change the lives of the working class and the poor. Instead their preoccupation and focus is on the development of the inner city and white suburbs.
In defending whites, we should recall that they were shooting the poor coloured working class community of Houtbay out of the makeshift informal settlement.
How dare they lecture us on Nkandla when in fact Nkandla forms part of more than 20 rural development plans. If they push us too far, we shall go and camp out at Zille’s house until she attend to the needs of our people.
And to the Liberation Movement, we say, for as long as we leave intact the white monopoly of economic, social and cultural resources in this country, the white person will remain superior, to all other races. After Mangaung, it will be, it must be, time to finish the unfinished business of 1994.
Issued by NUMSA
Enquiries: Castro Ngobese, National Spokesperson – 083 627 5197