COSATU President, Sidumo Dlamini's address to ANC Centenary Gala Dinner, 7 January 2012, Mangaung
On behalf of the over 2 million members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and all its structures, I bring congratulations and best wishes to the ANC as it reaches this historic milestone - your centenary.
COSATU is extremely proud to be in alliance with Africa's oldest liberation movement, the fountain of hope to millions of the oppressed and exploited masses of our people, a giant whose track record in the struggle is unparalleled anywhere in the world.
We are celebrating not just the institution called the ANC, but the struggle whose collective experience it embodies. We are celebrating the unity of the African people, which extended to all the oppressed, and white democrats who hate oppression and love freedom. We owe the cohesion and unity we currently enjoy to the principles and struggles of the ANC.
The history of the working class and the history of the ANC are intertwined. As the working class grew from strength to strength, so did the ANC. It is one of very few liberation movements that evolved towards a class perspective, understanding that black people's oppression was not only based on their colour, but on the inherent exploitative nature of the colonial capitalist system. The ANC's policies and actions reinforced it as a pro-working class and pro-poor anti-imperialist liberation movement.
When we sing "Hamba nathi mkhululi wethu" we mean this literally. The ANC promised to liberate us. It may have taken longer than many other African countries; it may have been more costly, with far too many casualties, but, as the ANC promised, it brought political freedom in our lifetime. The 27 April 1994 breakthrough will always be remembered fondly not only by South Africans but also by the peoples of the world, whose own contributions to our freedom should never be underestimated.
Under the leadership of the ANC we have made tremendous strides in building a better life for all South Africans. We are celebrating the protection of workers' rights, in the Constitution and a range of progressive labour laws, that have helped us to address one of the three interrelated antagonistic contradictions - class oppression and exploitation.
We are celebrating improved healthcare, with the progressive introduction of National Health Insurance. We are particularly pleased that 1.4 million are in government's ARV programme and 15 million will be tested for HIV by June this year.
We are celebrating improved access to education, and the improvement in this year's matric pass rate. We shall be celebrating the fact that 15 million South Africans have a roof above their heads, and that millions receive support in the form of grants without which they would simply die of starvation.
Our task is to consolidate and multiply these advances. The biggest challenges we face are unemployment, poverty and inequality. With 36% or 7 504 000 people still unemployed, South Africa's rate of unemployment is higher than any other middle income country.
Between 40% and 50% of the population live in poverty. We have become the most unequal society in the world, with 50% of the South African population living on 8% of the national income.
COSATU agrees with the ANC that we can only overcome these economic challenges if we restructure the economy inherited from our ugly past and end its domination by mining, finance and heavy chemicals. We must end ownership and control of strategic sectors of our economy by a handful of people, be they black, white, foreign or domestic.
We must prioritise the expansion of manufacturing industry so that we beneficiate our own resources, using them to add value by turning them into manufactured goods and begin to reach the government's goal of creating five million decent jobs in the next ten years.
And we must return to our time-tested values and principles of selflessness, and promote integrity and honesty, particularly among leaders of the Alliance, whose leaders must be beyond reproach! One of the biggest challenges of our time is the cancer of greed and selfishness within our ranks, which is eating away the heart of our democracy, driven by the capitalist culture of ‘me first' and ‘get as rich as possible as fast as possible'.
Together we must reverse the spread of crass materialism, fraud and corruption and defeat the ill-discipline, political arrogance and ideological backwardness that is compromising our revolutionary movement. We must draw a line in the sand on revolutionary morality that no one will cross.
Our task is to defend the space we created for ourselves in the historic 52nd national conference, continue to campaign for full implementation of all that conference's resolutions and defend the current leadership collective from those who would put it on the back foot, undermine its authority and create divisions.
Notwithstanding all these and other challenges, we salute a movement that has led so gallantly for over 100 years. Happy birthday to the people's movement - may you grow stronger and last for another century! Long Live the ANC! Long Live Nelson Mandela and all our stalwarts! Long live the memory of all our heroes and heroines! Long Live Oliver Tambo and all soldiers of our glorious army Umkhonto we Sizwe. The ANC Lives - The ANC Leads!
Issued by COSATU, January 7 2012
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