COSATU applauds State of the Nation Address
The Congress of South African Trade Unions congratulates President Jacob Zuma on his excellent State of the Nation address to Parliament today. It is totally consistent with the ANC's progressive election manifesto and sends a message of hope to workers and the poor of South Africa.
COSATU was impressed with the speech's insistence that "the creation of decent work will be at the centre of our economic policies" and in particular that the government takes as its starting point "the framework for South Africa's response to the international economic crisis, concluded by government, labour and business".
This agreement contains numerous positive and practical ways to minimise the impact of the crisis and save jobs, but has so far not been implemented by the Nedlac task teams which were charged with taking it forward. Now that the President has spoken we expect the government officials to join the union leaders in Nedlac to kick-start the implementation.
While the President frankly acknowledged that we have entered a recession, he did not use this as an excuse for abandoning ambitious targets, especially to create EPWP 500 000 job opportunities by December 2009 and four million by 2014.
Among many other welcome commitments are:
- A programme to fund companies in distress
- The government to buy more goods and services locally
- Fast-tracking of the Community Work Programme
- The increased effort to step up ECD programmes for children
- Improved access to higher education for children from poor families
- A National Health Insurance Scheme
- A unified public service
- Speeding up the Land Use Management Bill
- The roll-out of rural development initiatives, which should assist vulnerable farm workers and dwellers.
There are areas where more details will be needed to clarify what is intended, for example the move towards "a single integrated business registration system in order to reduce the cost of doing business". This must not be at the expense of workers' legal rights or working conditions.
One remarkable feature of the speech was the emphasis on monitoring the implementation of all the policies. Too often in the past State of the Nation addresses have not led to real change on the ground, as commitments got lost in the government bureaucracy. This time there is a clear strategy to follow up and ensure that promises are kept. COSATU will play its full part in assisting government in this.
Even more potentially revolutionary is the government hotline to a call centre, which will give every South African the chance to complain when services are not delivered or their rights are not being respected.
The only disappointing section of the speech is on international issues. It failed to mention the huge dangers posed to developing countries if the terms of the latest draft of the WTO Doha Development Round of negotiations are adopted. It will entrench the dominance of the rich and powerful nations and threaten to mire the developing world in economic colonialism.
The President also failed to mention the scandal of Swaziland, whose absolute monarch, King Mswati III, routinely tramples on human rights, has jailed opposition leader Mario Masuku since November 2008, and has just arrested his lawyer, Thulani Maseko, on charges of ‘terrorism'.
Overall however COSATU promises its full support to the President and government as they confront the challenge of implementing the bold promises in this brilliant speech.
Issued by COSATU, June 3 2009
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