NUMSA STATEMENT ON FEBRUARY 2, 1990 POLITICAL EVENTS!
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) joins the people of South Africa and the liberation movement as led by the ANC and the vanguard party of the working class - the SACP in commemorating the 20th anniversary of their unbanning by heinous and racist regime in February 2, 1990.
In the words of ANC President Oliver Reginald Kaizana Tambo "Last year, when we spoke to you on January 8th, we said that SWAPO of Namibia and the Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe had reached the very threshold of power. We said that power in our region was visibly changing hands and that days of the racists and their stooges were strictly numbered. The question how many days the racists and their stooges had in our region is today being answered practically in Zimbabwe" (ANC NEC January 8 Statement, 1980).
To the workers and the poor, February 2, 1990, was a poignant response to President Tambo's words and also a watershed in the struggle for a non-racial, non-sexist and a democratic South Africa. The latter date should be reclaimed by the masses who brought the apartheid regime down to its knees. It was the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola, the popular mass struggles led by the UDF, the isolation and sanctions imposed on apartheid South Africa by the international community, the infiltration and sabotage carried by the combatants of people's army uMkhonto weSizwe, mass struggles waged at the point of production and centers of knowledge production as led by workers and students and the rejection of apartheid system by the great majority of our people inspired by the victory of Swapo in Namibia.
Numsa publicly dispels the notion by the bourgeois media and those still obsessed with the past system as personified by the DA that National Party and FW De Klerk played a role in the demise of apartheid. It was the masses, not the racist leaders who brought the apartheid regime to an end. It was the Chris Hani's shed blood that brought April 27, 1994, for our first democratic elections and Nelson Mandela's ascendancy to the highest office in the land. The late Apartheid reforms such as the Wiehman labour reforms, tricameral parliament and Black Local Authorities were a response to the mass struggles against the system. These reforms were meant to save Apartheid capitalism which was in crisis due to mass struggles.
The bourgeois media and so-called gutter ‘political analyst' continuous overemphasis on the role of leaders, including FW De Klerk and his apartheid racist cabal as having played a major role in bringing about social change in South Africa perpetuate the ‘great person' theory of history, which emphasizes the role of leaders at the expense of masses. It is this mode of history that Adrian Verwoed's Bantu education propagated in schools. The F.W. De Klerk fanatics and liberal media must not try to re-write our history to distort our national memory.
The leadership and membership of Numsa salutes the role of our peoples organizations - the United Democratic Front, Congress of South African Trade Unions, South African Youth Congress, the South African National Students Congress, the Congress of South African Students, the South African National Civic Organization, and heroes and heroines of our struggles such as Jabulile Ndlovu who died fighting side by side with other Afrikaner heroes against oppression and exploitation of the working class.
In honour of these heroes and heroines for a society based on human solidarity, we call on the South African government to ban and outlaw the usage of labour brokers. We also call on government to nationalize the SA Reserve Bank in honour of Bettie du Toit for her role in the fight against the exploitation from which white monopoly business such as Anglo-American and its FNB generated enormous profits. It is Anglo-American and other businesses that did not only benefit from the racism and sexism, but also denied people such as Bettie du Toit to realize their potentials in sports and recreation because they had to spend their time in the fight against exploitation and oppression.
On this occasion, February 2, 2010, the 20th anniversary of the unbanning of peoples organizations, and the year of the 55th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter and beginning of a new decade - the workers and the poor should reclaim and make sure that the Freedom Charter is at the centre of the ANC - led Alliance government as part of advancing the aspirations and mass expectations brought by the demise of apartheid and racist regime.
As Numsa we will intensify our efforts as part of realizing our battle call for -One Sector, One Union, One Country, One Federation by mobilizing the white working class within the our ranks and Cosatu, in order to build on the human solidarity foundation laid by Jack Simons and eradicate De Klerk's racist and sexist legacy that continues to afflict different spheres of our lives. Our continued working relations with Solidarity are a giant step towards this direction.
Statement issued by Castro Ngobese, NUMSA national spokesperson, February 1 2010
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