Zwelinzima Vavi, COSATU General Secretary's, address to the Daily Maverick Conference, Nelson Mandela Square, Sandton, November 4 2010

Ladies and Gentlemen

Thank you very much for your invitation to address this conference. I congratulate the Daily Maverick on reaching its first birthday and I hope you keep South Africans informed and entertained for many more years.

As I am sure you all know the name of your publication derives from the surname of Samuel Maverick, a Texas lawyer who refused to brand his cattle. It is now defined as "one who does not abide by rules or who creates or uses unconventional and/or controversial ideas or practices".

The Daily Maverick has an important role to play. We will not always agree with you but we urgently need more such unconventional and controversial players in our media, in particular more diversity of ownership, access and opinion in our media, so that it speaks for and to all South Africans.

In particular I hope you will continue to challenge the stifling monopoly of the three huge companies which own 95 per cent of our print media, and which impose a generally conservative and neoliberal consensus view of the world.

COSATU is absolutely committed to the freedom of expression, as enshrined in Clause 16 of the South African constitution, which declares that everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes: ­

a. freedom of the press and other media;

b. freedom to receive or impart information or ideas;

c. freedom of artistic creativity; and

d. academic freedom and freedom of scientific research.

We believe that the Protection of Information Bill, as currently drafted, clearly breaches this clause. It will severely restrict all the media, but particularly publications like the Daily Maverick which seeks to probe more deeply into controversial issues.

But it will also threaten would-be whistle-blowers in the trade unions, workplaces and communities, who could face prosecution and jail for revealing incriminating evidence of corruption or incompetence by public officials who can simply classify the relevant information as ‘top secret' and intimidate those trying to expose their wrong-doing.

Trade unionists, in for example SAA, the SABC and various municipalities, have been the most successful whistle-blowers, but could be forced to keep their mouths shut by this new law.

It is vital, given the daily allegations and revelations of corruption and misuse of public resources, that government, the media and the general public have access to all the information, so that the allegations can be thoroughly investigated and action can be taken against offenders, while the innocent who have been wrongly accused can be exonerated.

We welcome Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan's commitment that the government "will clamp down on crooks by introducing new public disclosure rules for all prospective government contracts and imposing stiff penalties on companies and individuals involved in tender corruption". The problem however is that so far there have been very few actual prosecutions for tender corruption.

One reason for this is the difficulty in getting the evidence. Even without the Protection of Information Bill, this week we saw the Gauteng North High Court granting the SAPS an interdict preventing the Sunday Independent from publishing allegations of nepotism within its Crime Intelligence Unit. This was granted despite the fact that the newspaper was not even legally represented. Their lawyers were stuck in traffic and did not even get a chance to present their side of the story.

How can we say we are serious about fighting corruption if we, as a society, place such restrictions on the public's right to be informed about the activities of the very organisation which is supposed to be enforcing the law?

The crux of the problem is that while everyone agrees in principle that corruption is a cancer that will undermine our democracy and destroy social cohesion if it is not cut out, we seem to be paralysed when it comes to identifying the culprits and punishing the guilty.

This has emboldened the gang of tenderpreneurs, who seem to believe they are invincible and untouchable. It was this sense of impunity of the part of the warlords in the 1980s that ravaged our communities in KwaZulu Natal and later in Gauteng.

Our people must at all times have confidence in law enforcement institutions of our country. They must believe that they are reliable and themselves people of high integrity. Our people must believe that all their leaders, whether they are in government, political formations and civil society are men and women to whom they can report allegations of corruption and nepotism. Members of our organisations must believe their leaders are genuine and not the fakes masquerading as honest when they are prime predators looking for opportunities.

Once we remove this fear, once criminals and corrupt gang knows that they have nothing to fear and once all have been intimidated, as was the case during the apartheid regime-sponsored violence, then our country will descend into a jungle for the predatory elite. All of us have a responsibility to stop this from happening.

That is why COSATU has decided to set up an anti-corruption task team, to turn words into deeds, and, working with the investigative structures which the government has already set up, to follow up on every allegation. That is why we are still calling for lifestyle audits, as a powerful weapon to spot the first indications that money has been acquired by improper means.

This brings us to the very topical issue of conspicuous consumption and ostentatious displays of wealth. I certainly do not intend to respond to some of the highly personal insults made by a certain wealthy individuals, but must comment on some of the issues that this controversy has highlighted.

Anyone has the right to amass wealth, as long as it is done within the law, and of course not all rich individuals have amassed their wealth illegally. We accept that the National Democratic Revolution and the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment will of necessity create both a middle strata and new black capitalists. It is utter rubbish to suggest that we are jealous of the few blacks that have made it to be capitalists. It also utter nonsense to say that only those who stay in shacks have a moral authority to champion the cause of the marginalised.

Having said that, we insist that BBBEE should be interpreted to mean primarily creation of decent work for all and a decent life for all. At the same time we must never forget that the bosses are not ‘wealth creators' as the media often describe them. All wealth is created by the toil of millions of exploited workers deep in the mines, on the farms, in the car factories and elsewhere.

Their employers are at best clever managers who can expropriate that wealth, make profits and enjoy the benefits that they bring. In all too many cases however the richest business tycoons do not even have managerial skills, but the right colour during the apartheid era and in some cases today the right political connections. This would appear to be the case with the owners of the Aurora Empowerment, who has been super-exploiting their workers at their mines in Grootvlei and Orkney by not paying them for ten months.

Yet so often the employers, and their spokespeople in the media, still complain about unions making ‘excessive' wage claims and being an obstacle to them making even bigger profits. As a result, they are casualising their workforces and using the services of labour brokers to dodge their moral and legal obligations to give their workers the benefits, job security and minimum wages they are entitled to.

This leads not just to massive levels of inequality between workers and employers, but inequality that is seen to have no justification. CEOs' bonuses are paid regardless of how hard the top managers worked or the performance of the companies they are managing, for example the inefficient and uncompetitive banks. Last year Nedbank paid its CEO Tom Boardman a package of R43m when he resigned. The Standard Bank CEO Jacko Maree raked in R18, 2m and Absa CEO Maria Ramos R13, 5m.

To us, these obscene levels of salaries reflect one of the fundamental problems of our society today - immorality! It is this immorality that has led to some defending their right to eat from the half naked bodies of hired black women in their effort to demonstrate their newly acquired power. It is this power that makes some to believe it is OK to exhibit wealth in the face of the catastrophic levels of poverty and inequalities in our country.

Inequality is not just a moral issue, but also one, which impacts on the future of society. It is not a sustainable way for a society to operate.

Ladies and Gentlemen

We are already sitting on a ticking bomb. The poor are already getting restless. They are tired of watching and reading about the elite blacks or whites parading wealth few kilometres away from where they leave in squalor. The more we delay intervening strongly guided by a new growth path that will end poverty, worsening unemployment and inequalities, the more we risk that one day this poor majority will simply walk to the suburbs to demand the same living standards. No walls will be high enough and no electronic fences will be strong enough to stop the overwhelming majority.

Those at the lowest levels of income and wealth, the workers whose labour created the wealth that pays for these huge salaries, bonuses and sushi parties, and even more so the unemployed who do not even have the opportunity to earn anything, will feel more and more angry and marginalised at the gap between their meagre incomes and the millions going to a small - and still mainly white - elite, particularly when wealth is being ostentatiously flaunted.

They see the same inequalities in the provision of services, with a two-tier regime in healthcare, education and housing. Top-class services and big mansions for the elite; pathetic healthcare and educational services and shacks for the poorest and most marginalised.

Already we see angry community protests which all too often become violent and destructive. That they are directly linked to inequality is shown by the fact that they usually take place not in the very poorest communities which are in the deep rural areas, but in peri-urban shack communities which are next door to some of the wealthiest suburbs. Such proximity of extreme poverty and extreme wealth are a recipe for social breakdown, which we all want to prevent.

That is why last week's Civil Society Conference was so important. The 66 organisations represented there, from labour, communities, churches, street traders, traditional leaders, taxi associations, NGOs with special interests in education and many others, can provide the voiceless and marginalised in our society with a powerful but peaceful vehicle to bring about change.

It can revive the spirit of the mass democratic movement which played such a crucial role, alongside the unbanned ANC, in the struggle for political transformation, and play a similar role in the struggle for economic transformation which will create a far more equitable and just society. There is absolutely no truth in the accusation that COSATU is trying to set up a new party

We are not creating a coalition in opposition to the ANC government. We instead want to work with the ANC and the government so that we can put flesh on last year's election slogan that said 'working together we can do more'.  Our relationship with the government is contradictory in the sense that we support it and praise it strongly when it takes the interests of the poor forward and condemn it strongly when it acts only in the interests of the powerful vested interest of the elite. This we will continue to do, irrespective of whether someone out there has a thin skin or not. COSATU is not a government labour desk but an independent organisation governed by its own constitution with mandates drawn from over 2 million members who pay their dues monthly. We won't seek permission from anybody to advance our class interests.

We remain fully committed to our alliance with the ANC, SACP and SANCO. United together, the liberation movement and civil society are an invincible force for change and national liberation. Let us unite and work together to achieve our common aims!

In particular we have to tackle the overriding problem of our intolerable levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality. Government and business have to join labour and civil society in adopting and implementing a completely new economic growth path.

COSATU has already spelled out its proposals in its ‘Growth path for Full Employment'. The government has agreed in broad principle with a similar strategy contained in its own growth path proposals, with ambitious target of creating five million new jobs in the next decade.

There is broad agreement that we have to escape from the economic straitjacket, imposed by the colonialists, of dependence on the export of raw materials and build an economy anchored on manufacturing industry, which is the only way we can create those five million new jobs.

The problem we face however was brought into focus the very day after the government's announcement, when the Minister of Finance gave a very cautious, conservative medium-term budget statement. It contained some good points but overall was yet again a ‘business as usual' statement, which failed to provide the radical shift we need if the government's own ambitious targets were to be realised.

COSATU is fully committed to working with government to achieve these targets, and we hope that the Daily Maverick will help us to get the message across to every South African.

Issued by COSATU, November 4 2010

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