Numsa pays tribute to the heroes and heroines of 1976
15 June 2016
On this 40th anniversary of the historic uprising of the young people of South Africa on 16 June 1976, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa pays homage to those young South Africans who sacrificed their lives, and all the thousands of others who put their lives on the line, as they fought back against the sjamboks, tear gas and bullets of the barbaric Apartheid dictatorship.
We must never forget the debt we owe to these heroes and heroines of the revolutionary struggle for democracy and freedom, who laid the foundations for the mass movement which arose in the following years and led to the defeat of racist tyranny.
The best way to remember and appreciate the central role they played in the struggle is to renew the fight for the principles for which they were prepared to die, many of which we have still failed to achieve.
Today, 22 years since the defeat of apartheid and the ANC’s election victory, the struggle continues. In 1994 we established a form of constitutional democracy, with the right to vote and guarantees, at least in words, of basic human rights. But we are still far from achieving economic freedom and democracy and all the demands of the Freedom Charter which called for South Africa to belong to all who live in it.
Four decades after the uprising South Africa’s wealth does not belong to us all; far from being transferred to the African majority, it is concentrated in the hands of an even smaller and even richer, still mainly white, capitalist elite in what is now the world’s most unequal society.
The youth are paying a heavy price for our failure to complete the revolution they inspired and defeat the economic apartheid which remains largely unchanged since 1976.
Unemployment among 15-24 year olds is 67.3%, compared to the national average of 36.3%. South Africa has the world’s third worst unemployment rate for those in the 15-24 age group - 5.9 million people unemployed under the age of 34, around two-thirds of all the unemployed.
And this is not just a problem for those without educational qualifications, but those who have struggled to pass exams, as a survey by the Institute of Race Relations 2016 South Africa summed up with these grim statistics:
- Chance of being absorbed into the workforce with matric - 51.1%
- Chance of being absorbed into the workforce with tertiary education - 76.7%
- Number of unemployed South Africans with matric - 1.7 million
- Number of unemployed South Africans with tertiary education - 405 000
And what makes this even more of an insult to the fighters of 1976 that the apartheid legacy remains in the racial disparity in the statistics showing the percentages of those 15-24 year olds who are unemployed:
- Black - 53.7%
- Coloured - 46.4%
- Indian/Asian - 23.5%
- White - 25.0%
These statistics are the backdrop to the recent student protests and the students’ absolutely justified demands for free, quality public education for all, and to end the commercialisation of tertiary education which remains a commodity exclusively for the rich, just as it was I 1976.
As the above statistics show, a huge number of those who overcome all the financial obstacles and manage to graduate, there is no guarantee of employment or an escape from poverty. Far worse is the crisis facing those earners who fail their matric and those 50% of all children who drop out of school without even writing matric exams.
The ANC government has made no progress in implementing the 2007 Polokwane conference resolution “to progressively introduce free education for the poor until undergraduate level”, let alone the Freedom Charter’s pledge that “the Doors of Learning and Culture Shall be opened!”
But even if South Africa increases its expenditure on education at all levels and improves its quality, even this will solve little for young people as long as the economy is in the desperate crisis we see today.
An employment outlook survey of 754 South African employers by human resource consulting firm Manpower released this week found that only a handful of surveyed employers plan to employ more people in the coming three months, leaving SA’s 5.7-million unemployed people with little hope of finding work. Only 12% of employers expected to hire more people, while 6% anticipated retrenching. The rest said they would keep staffing levels unchanged.
This is a consequence of the alarming fact from Statistics SA data that the economy shrank 1.2% in the first quarter of 2016 and that there were 355,000 job losses over the same period.
Numsa therefore calls on the protesting students, young workers and the 5.7 million unemployed youth to join with us in fighting the common enemy of South African workers and students: the neoliberal economic policies being championed by the ANC government on behalf of white monopoly capitalism.
We call on working class and poor communities to rally behind the students’ protests for free education and to condemn the use of repressive organs of the State, particularly the police using excessive force to criminalise and undermine students who are understandably angry. They have a right to protest and demand that elected public representatives deliver on their electoral commitments to the poor.
We repeat our call on the ANC government:
1. To accept the demand of the students for an immediate moratorium on fee increases. Zero per cent, not six per cent.
2. To end immediately all exclusions from tertiary institutions on the basis of failure to pay fees.
3. To put an end to the buying and selling of education and to deliver free public tertiary education for all those who qualify paid for by a tax on the rich.
4. To create decent jobs, including jobs for graduates, by nationalising, under democratic workers’ control and management, our strategic minerals and key strategic companies including the whole value chain of coal, manganese, iron ore, chrome, and vanadium, which must be beneficiated to create jobs for the majority who outside the labour market.
That is what the students of 1976 demanded and it is our duty to take up their banner and continue the fight that they so bravely began.
The Numsa Youth Forum are called upon to engage with the horror stories and daily realities of working class youth who are poorly paid, unemployed and denied the opportunity to grow their potential to become skilled and employable citizens in a country rich in mineral wealth.
Issued by Patrick Craven, Numsa Acting Spokesperson, 15 June 2016
