The Congress of South African Trade Unions joins the provincial organiser of the Food and Allied Workers' Union, Abubakah Fredericks, in condemning the actions of the two brothers who have appeared in the George magistrate's court on charges of attempted murder for dragging a farm worker's relative by his hair alongside a bakkie. (The Herald, 10 March 2008).
According to Southern Cape police spokesman Captain Malcolm Pojie, one of the two grabbed Willem Paulse by the hair and dragged him beside the bakkie for 50m. During this time the bakkie drove over Paulse's leg but the brothers drove off, and did not help him. Paulse managed to get to hospital on his own.
We demand that the alleged offenders are brought to trial and punished severely if convicted. COSATU, like FAWU, will not tolerate farm workers being intimidated or treated as less than human.
This is just the latest in a long, seemingly unending list of racist atrocities committed by South African employers against their workers and their families. Almost every day reports come in from COSATU affiliates and provinces of employers who abuse their workers in a blatantly racist fashion. On 7 March 2008 municipal workers' union, SAMWU, reported that "all 150 workers at the Lenasia Depot of City Power have downed tools and are holding a very big picket against the Electrical Team Leader, who regularly uses racist abuse against the workers. Apart from abusing the workers with racist language, he treats the workers like children and continually shouts things like "fuck you" at the workers in front of customers.
Two days earlier the same union reported that in Tzaneen, members (black workers) are frequently told that they "stink" by white workers, who also dish out other insults. According to SAMWU Local Chairperson Andries Sebeela, "recently in the transport division, SAMWU members were harassed by their white head of department who used abusive language against them, and apart from humiliating them, also threatened them with dismissal if they complained. Black workers are continually being told that they are corrupt. The municipality should stop talking about eradicating these elements but should take action against the perpetrators of these heinous acts."
Even before these incidents, South Africa was in the international media spotlight for the racist video made by students of the University of the Free State. COSATU unions have been in the forefront of the protests at the university.
The video itself was appalling enough - especially the abuse and exploitation of elderly women workers - but even worse was the justification given for making the video - to argue the case for racially segregated halls of residence.
Why, fourteen years after the defeat of apartheid, are any South Africans still wanting to live in racial ghettoes. That issue should have been resolved years ago, but it has not, and there is plenty of other evidence that racism is not just an isolated occurrence, perpetrated by a few disgruntled relics from the apartheid era. It is still very much alive, lurking in our workplaces and communities beneath the surface of our 'rainbow republic'.
To understand why racism has not disappeared as most South Africans hoped it would after 1994, it is not enough to look at the attitudes and prejudices through which racism expresses itself - but at the socio-economic balance of power, which has changed little since 1994 and still mirrors the racial divide which existed in the past and persists today.
Apartheid was always the product of the prevailing economic system of capitalism and imperialism - colonialism of a special type as the ANC categorised it. The racial segregation of society was enforced to facilitate the bosses' greed for profits through the super-exploitation of the workers in their mines, farms and factories. The white South African capitalists refined all the tools of exploitation into an organised and legitimised system - apartheid.
Today that is supposed to be a thing of the past. But the repeal of all the apartheid laws has not changed the power relations. BEE and affirmative action, vital though they are, have made only a marginal difference to the distribution of wealth and power - on the basis of both race and gender.
A 2005 survey of the top 200 South African companies showed only five had black ownership of 50% or more, and that all the black-owned companies put together only own 1.2% of the total market capitalisation of the Johannesburg Securities Exchange. This meant that 98.8% of the JSE's ownership is still in white hands. Despite the Employment Equity Act, the number of white men at the level of senior managers and company directors has actually increased.
Our country is getting richer but more unequal, with many of the working poor, unemployed and poverty stricken communities not reaping any benefit of economic growth. Transformation of the economy has stalled and is even going backwards.
That is the setting for the continuation of racism and sexism. While we are all theoretically equal, the reality is that there is a pyramid. At the top are the minority of super-rich and powerful white males, while at the bottom are thousands of poor blacks. The arrogant feeling of superiority among the former, contrasts with the legitimate sense of anger among the latter.
If we are to finally eradicate racism from our society the starting point must be to enforce the laws which are supposed to promote black economic empowerment and affirmative action far more rigorously, to show that we are serious, but meanwhile pursue economic policies that will eradicate the economic system which is so unequal and racially skewed, and perpetuates the very power relations which spawned apartheid and racism in the first place.
Statement issued by Patrick Craven, COSATU National Spokesperson, March 13 2008
