SUMMIT DECLARATION

1. We, the shopstewards from all the companies in which NUMSA organises in the Port Elizabeth Local, gathered in St Francis Bay from the 17th to the 19th of October 2014 to discuss and plan how best to improve services to our members, how to continue to grow our giant union, and how to work better to fast-track the implementation of our historic December 2013 NUMSA Special National Congress Resolutions and Decisions.
2. The Eastern Cape Region now has grown to more than 36 000 members.
3. We have rededicated ourselves to build, grow and deepen the unity of the union in our Local. We have rededicated ourselves to work to improve the quality of services our union delivers to all out member, in line with our NUMSA Service Charter.
4. We vow to work together to ensure that we defeat all efforts to weaken, divide or destroy the union by our enemies who are very unhappy with our historic Special National Congress Resolutions. United and guided by our revolutionary Marxism-Leninism, we know we shall defeat them!
5. We have been properly briefed by our Deputy General Secretary over progress on building and growing our Union and on national work to fully implement the December NUMSA Special National Congress Resolutions.
6. We welcome the union’s determination to formally launch the United Front in December this year.
7. We are determined to make Port Elizabeth, with its rich revolutionary community and working class history of struggles against our apartheid past and capitalism the centre of our United Front work in the Eastern Cape.
We will mobilise communities and community structures, and faith based organisations in struggles to unite the Port Elizabeth working class and their communities to fight to better their lives, resist neoliberalism and for the radical implementation of the Freedom Charter in our country.
8. We will work with our communities and their structures and organisations to fight for water, better health services, houses, sanitation, safe streets and safe schools, safe public transport, improved HIV and AIDS campaigns and services.
9. We are aware that some of the leaders of the affiliates of COSATU who are determined to turn COSATU into a useless toy telephone of the right-wing leadership of the ANC and the SACP will try and use the COSATU Central Executive Committee meeting scheduled for the 21 – 24 of October 2014 to either force an illegal suspension or expulsion of NUMSA from COSATU.
10. We, the shopstewards in the NUMSA Port Elizabeth Local are fully united behind our union’s SNC Resolutions and our leadership. We believe all the policies and resolutions our union is championing are fully well within the constitution, policies and resolutions of COSATU.
We challenge anyone in COSATU to prove us wrong. We will, therefore, rally behind our union to resist any attempts from any quarters to separate NUMSA from the 2.2 million members of affiliates of COSATU.
11. On the international front, we note that the world capitalist system continues to move from one crisis to another, and it is increasingly resorting to military wars, to sustain its global hegemony.
12. We condemn the recent savage and military attacks on Palestine by Israel. We condemn the illegal declaration of war by the US and several Western European countries in the Mid-East and on Muslim Lands. We urge the South African government not to be used by the US and Western European countries to fight their evil imperialist wars.
13. We live our Summit, united and resolved to galvanise the Port Elizabeth areas and communities to demand decent social services including housing and crime free communities.
…End…
Contact:
Phumzile Nodongwe
NUMSA Eastern Cape
Regional Secretary, 078 802 3140