Certainly we hope that as a generation of trade unionists we plan to fulfill and not betray our mission. To appreciate the moment we invite delegates to spare some moment thinking about previous congresses in particular the historic eighth and ninth National Congresses of the Federation.

1. Recall that as we met to adopt the 2015 programme in our eighth National Congress in 2003, the Alliance was on the brink of collapse. The Alliance was effectively marginalised and reduced into a crises manager. The drivers of the 1996 class project were provoking a walk out by the left as they were driving a systematic campaign to transform the liberation movement, which is a home for all progressives, into a narrow centre-left political party and election machinery. At this stage a growing number of our cadres, in particular in the unions organising in the state, were calling for the severance of relations. Labelling and trading of insults was the only thing written in the newspapers about the Alliance.
2. Recall the job loss blood bath of the period between 1997 until 2002, which was the period in which GEAR was imposed as non-negotiable, a culture that was alien to our movement.
3. Recall one of the lowest points in our democracy which involved a Minister of Safety and Security and the then Deputy President, making wild, dangerous and untested allegations that other leaders of our movement were planning to overthrow the state, in a bid to marginalize comrades and thereby divide our movement, so that they can clear a way for themselves towards positions of power.
4. Recall the days when the then President of the Republic frequently declared with arrogance that he has not seen anybody dying of HIV and AIDS. This was contradicted by his government's statistics that showed that close to 1000 people were dying a day from AIDS-related diseases. In this period 365 000 people died unnecessarily. Do you remember the paper written by the fictitious Castro Hlongwane? Do you remember the days of massive confusion when the then Minister of Health acted with impunity telling desperate parents that their sick and dying children must use 'ubhejane' and beetroot in stark contradiction of ANC policy to HIV and AIDS, namely prevention, treatment including thorough introduction of anti-retrovirals and continuous search for a cure.
5. Recall the long and chilly nights outside the Pietermaritzburg Court, when we were protesting against the persecution of comrade Jacob Zuma. Recall the anger amongst our delegates in the 4th Central Committee when it was reported that the police raided and searched the houses of comrade Jacob Zuma and his lawyers. These raids were ostensibly undertaken to search for evidence in a case comrade JZ was already facing charges on. Do you recall that this easily could have caused a civil war and disintegration of our ranks?
6. Recall that none of us spoke freely in our phones, preferring to dismantle our cell batteries and cards in fear that our conservations were being listened to. If Nelson Mandela's homes were tapped - what about us ordinary mortals. This use of state institutions had placed the ANC on the route to 'Zanufication'.
7. Recall that all this was done for an accumulation agenda of those connected with the class project. Foreign cultures visited our movement including crass materialism, selfishness and individualism, personality cult, patronage and so on. In the process a movement renowned for its traditions of robust debate was being reduced into a choir of praise singers, where dissent was brutally suppressed and crushed. Do you remember how Nelson Mandela was humiliated by the class project elements in the ANC NEC? Do you recall how this hurt him?
8. Recall that we declared the first decade of freedom as a bonanza for capital and resolved that the second decade must belong to the workers.
9. Do you recall that the COSATU CEC just like the ANC could not have any confidential leadership discussion without this making its way to newspapers, leaked by the faceless sources? Do you recall the spread of rumours and scandal-mongering, accompanied by wild allegations against leaders the 1996 class project sought to discredit and destroy? Do you recall how divided our congress was? Do you recall the politics of regionalism and tribalism being used in factional battles that threatened to consume our glorious movement of workers, the movement of Elijah Barayi?

This is where we are coming from. We fought a good fight! At the end of that fight no one could dare contradict us when we proudly declared that this Federation of Elijah Barayi and Leslie Masina is a conscience of our young democracy; a voice of the voiceless and marginalised; a champion and fearless spokesperson of the most downtrodden within and outside our borders.

For choosing to stand up when others were intimidated into silence and turned into the blind that did not see injustices committed in front of their own eyes, and for choosing to fight and resist we took lots of punches and knocks. We all have deep political scars in our foreheads, which we will take to our graves and with pride to show them to Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Chris Hani and Joe Slovo. We will tell them the story that very few are prepared to write about, that is the moment when an elitist club tried to highjack our great movement of liberation. We will tell them of the moment in Polokwane in that rain and mud when we succeeded to save our movement and return it back to its members in the branches of the ANC.

This congress must appreciate this moment - this occasion - this conjuncture. We must appreciate the moment when:

• We have dislodged the 1996 class project. Instead of succeeding to force a walk out by the left, it is they that perished into political wilderness.
• The movement is back to its rightful owners - its members. When the democratically elected NEC fosters a new spirit of collectivism that inspired millions of South Africans through a simple message that underscores the new moment - working together we can do more, better!
• Comrade Jacob Zuma is now the President of the ANC and of the Republic of South Africa. He is the worst victim of the politics of backstabbing and use of state institutions tempered by existence of tapes and videos demonstrating the extent to which the NPA and other institutions were manipulated for political ends.
• The deputy President is Kgalema Motlanthe, the former General Secretary of the NUM, a leading and respected member of the COSATU Central Executive Committee. The Secretary General of the ANC is Gwede Mantashe also a former General Secretary of the NUM, a leading member of the COSATU Central Executive Committee. In the ANC NEC and in the cabinet there are countless former unionists who mostly have retained their loyalty to the basic principles taught in the trenches of the school of Marxism - the university and a factory whose wheels continue to turn, producing some of the finest leaders for our society.
• Ebrahim Patel, that untiring voice of clothing and textiles workers, is now a first ever Minister of Economic Development whose responsibility is to ensure that government's policies works to create decent work. Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya is now the Minister responsible for uplifting women, people living with disabilities and children. Membathisi Mdladlana is the Minister of Labour. Angie Motshega is now the Minister for Basic Education. Ednar Molewa is the Minister of Social Development. Susan Shabangu is the Minister of Mineral Resources. Blade Nzimande is the Minister of Higher Education. Nkosazana Zuma is the Minister of Home Affairs, Sbu Ndebele and Jeremy Cronin, Ministers of Transport. There is a new Minister of Finance, Pravin Godhan. In November there will be a new Reserve Bank Governor - comrade Gill Marcus.

If we cannot make the relationship with our Alliance to work under these conditions then we simply have no capacity to make a relationship to work with anyone else. If we can't make our relationship with government to work then there will be something wrong with all of us in the Alliance. Equally there will be something wrong with all these comrades in government if they allow the relationship to collapse.

If we cannot succeed with the agenda of decent work and poverty eradication with Jacob Zuma as the President, Kgalema Motlanthe as the Deputy President responsible for poverty eradication, Gwede Mantashe as the ANC Secretary General, Ebrahim Patel as the Minster of Economic Development and Rob Davies as the Minister of Trade and Industry, then there is little possibility that we can succeed to make any next period that of workers and the poor. This is the moment that comes once in a long while. We the leaders of the generation largely responsible for this political climate so pregnant with real possibilities cannot afford to squander this moment.

This is an extract from the political report to the Tenth COSATU National Congress, September 2009.

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