Cosatu’s 2014 May Day Program
If thruth be told, the right wing camp in Cosatu has hijacked the Cosatu 2014 program without so-much as a democratic discussion at the level of the Central Executive Committee (CEC) as to what should constitute the central message insofar as the state of the South African working class is concerned.
It became all too convenient to champion an ANC electoral message for those who are keen to enter parliament and cabinet rather than to honestly ask questions about e-tolling that was signed into law by the RSA President who is also ANC President and head of the ANC led Alliance, not a word about the ANC government’s failure to ban labour brokers, not a word about misappropriation of public funds benefiting the RSA President and his family in Nkandla to the tune of close to R250m.
South African workers in the struggle against Apartheid Capitalism fought hard, blood-sweat-tears and death, to have May Day recognized as a paid public holiday for workers. We had strikes, we engaged in saboteur work but most importantly we ignored the P.W.Botha’s gesture of calling May Day – Workers Day. Workers stood together under the banner and time tested slogan of – An Injury To One – Is An Injury To All!
On 15 June 1913, Lenin wrote this in a pamphlet entitled – May Day Action by the Revolutionary Proletariat: “The working class draws into revolutionary action the masses of the working and exploited people, who are deprived of basic rights and driven to despair…”
The fact that on May Day, 1 May 2014, there is no announcement on the introduction of a National Minimum Wage nor any reference to the most resolute implementation of the Freedom Charter is enough evidence that the Big Capital shall continue to be the main beneficiary of the first, second and third decade since the 1994 democratic breakthrough.
Members affiliated to Cosatu must work hard and actively to reclaim their Federation who in practice has now just become a conveyor belt and a toy telephone.
Karl Cloete is Numsa deputy general secretary