NUMSA SOLIDARITY STATEMENT ON THE 100 YEARS OF THE ANC!

Saturday 07 January 2011

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) joins its federation - Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) - the revolutionary workers parliament, a genuine champion of workers rights,  a voice of conscience, shield and spear of the marginalised workers at the point of production, the voice of reason for the oppressed workers of Africa and the world, fearless opponent of capitalism and staunchest and reliable ally of Africa's oldest Liberation Movement hoist its red banners high on this august occasion of 100 years of the African National Congress's (ANC's) existence.

We join the struggling masses of South Africa, our mother continent Africa and the world at large in wishing the ANC well on this heroic milestone. This centennial takes place amidst the deepening crisis of capitalism in Europe, the United States and the world at large and its failures as evidenced by sharpening of the main contradictions of capitalism between the social character of production and the private capitalist appropriation.

This centennial is also taking place within the global context of the re-emergence of Left, popular, radical, mass rooted, revolutionary, anti-imperialist movements in Latin America such as in Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, Nicaragua and elsewhere capturing power amidst the threats posed by US imperialism and its rented agents and puppets regimes.

This centennial of the ANC is a breath of fresh air towards forging unity and solidarity amongst the progressive forces in Africa, Latin America and the world in order to build a better, humane and egalitarian world order and future.

The Metalworkers are proud to be part of this revolutionary pilgrimage to celebrate the existence of the ANC since January 8, 1912 until to date! The ANC is an embodiment of selfless, revolutionary, radical, militant struggles waged by the oppressed majority of Black South Africans for a free and democratic South Africa as envisaged in the Freedom Charter.

The ANC remains the historical archive of the humiliation and deprivation suffered by our people over 350 years at the hands of white minority rule. The ANC remains a mirror of a South Africa we all yearn to belong. The ANC is a cleansing sea of the backward, evil and ugly crimes committed against humanity by the racist regime of the Nationalist Party (NP) government. The ANC is a giant for desires of building a non-racial, no-sexist, united and democratic South Africa.

The Metalworkers also take this opportunity to salute the historical role played by our class and socialist orientated World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in providing support and assistance for the Revolutionary Alliance as led by the ANC to set-up its base and mission across the world immediately after was banned by the apartheid regime in South Africa.

This historical fact engraved in gold plates in the hearts and minds of the trade union movement in South Africa given the role played by our own trade union movement stalwarts such as Moses Mabhida, Michael Hamerl and many others.

The ANC is the home of workers and the poor. It was the workers and the poor that gave the ANC the correct tools of analysis of the revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism in order to interpret and find answers to our struggles for freedom, liberation, democracy and socialism.

It was the trade unionists and communists that ran night political schools in order to raise the high levels of class consciousness amongst the rank and file. It was the workers that volunteered in zig-zagging the country spreading ANC propaganda. It was workers and communists that were the first to be butchered by the oppressive regime such as Vuyisile Mini for furthering the work of the ANC. It was workers and communists that had to bite the bullet of the regime such as Johannes Nkosi, Basil February and Chris Hani.

It was workers that had to endure painful scars or death of their colleagues such as Jabulile Ndlovu as a result of the sponsored political violence by the racist regime. it was the workers and the poor that had to unban the movement in 1990 under the banner of the then United Democratic Front (UDF). It was the workers that had to suffer the pain of releasing some of its finest leaders or brains to serve the first democratically elected government such Steven Dlamini, Connie September, John Gomomo and countless others.

We are celebrating this centennial fully aware that the ANC is a trusted ally of workers. We know that our right to organise will never be trampled upon or muzzled by state organs. We are no longer in fear that our union offices will be sabotaged or bombed. We are happy that our union activist or organisers will no longer be harassed for carrying out union work by police.

We are extremely happy that workers no longer have to endure the humiliation of carrying dompass'es or deported back to homelands. We are in joyous mood because we are no longer being called by derogative names. We are in jubilation because we no longer have Bantustans and we can now reside in areas of our choices or close to where we work. We have all these rights thanks to our ANC and the people's government.

Indeed as Metalworkers, we have solid and strong reasons to celebrate the centenary of the ANC with the rest of our people, Africa and the world. Since the ascendency of the ANC into power which we characterize as the 1994 democratic break-through, serious gains have been scored by the workers and the poor.

We did not only have a new personnel at Union Building drawn from different components of the Liberation Alliance, not only did we change the flag and portrait of the past regime, including the anthem. There have been fundamental interventions introduced by the ANC democratically elected government to the benefit of our poor people, such as progressive labour laws, provision of free houses, sanitation and electrification of mainly poor working class households, the school feeding scheme, child-support grant amongst the many things done.

We are celebrating this centennial of the ANC without being blind to the triple crisis of poverty, unemployment and deepening inequalities in our country. We know very well that at the core of this triple crisis is the disastrous neo-liberal policies fostered and entrenched by the anti-working class leadership which assumed power in the state and the movement itself.

The effects of the neo-liberal policies have manifested themselves in different ugly forms in our society such violent service delivery protests in mainly working class areas, the xenophobic attacks directed towards our foreign class brothers and sisters, fierce and factional contestation of power in our movements Branches in order to use the local state for tenderpreneuring and looting of resources, the elimination or backstabbing amongst comrades.

As we celebrate the centennial of the ANC, the Metalworkers believe that the resolve of the ANC in Morogoro, Tanzania, 1969, should serve as a line of march or political directive as we advance to another century of our movement.

The ANC's Morogoro Conference made the following call as encapsulated in its Strategy and Tactics as adopted by the Congress:

"In our country - more than in any other part of the oppressed world - it is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without a return of the wealth of the land to the people as a whole. It is therefore a fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy. To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the root of racial supremacy and does not represent even the shadow of liberation....Our drive towards national emancipation is therefore in a very real way bound up with economic emancipation. We have suffered more than just national humiliation. Our people are deprived of their due in the country's wealth; their skills have been suppressed and poverty and starvation has been their life experience. The correction of these centuries-old economic injustices lies at the very core of our national aspirations. We do not understand the complexities which will face a people's government during the transformation period nor the enormity of the problems of meeting economic needs of the mass of the oppressed people. But one thing is certain - in our land this cannot be effectively tackled unless the basic wealth and the basic resources are at the disposal of the people as a whole and are not manipulated by sections or individuals be they White or Black".

This resolve of the Morogoro Conference is the answer to all the socio-economic challenges faced by workers and the poor of our country. We cannot allow our people to be reduced to voting cattle every after five years, whilst the bulk of the wealth of our country still resides in the hands of the White minority with a few sprinkling and emerging Black capitalist class.

Long Live the ANC of Vuyisile Mini, Basil February, Dora Tamana, Lilian Ngoyi, Dorothy Nyembe, Elijah Barayi, Moses Mabhida, Ruth First, Albertina Sisulu, Harry Gwala and Chris Hani Long Live!!!

Statement issued by Irvin Jim, NUMSA General Secretary, January 7 2011

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