Numsa statement on the Court Outcome - for immediate release
6 November 2014
Numsa was forced to court today because COSATU, the Federation, that Numsa helped to found has called a special central executive committee, tomorrow, where it wants to expel us based on a variety of issues that keep changing all the time. It must be noted that the CEC had already voted on our expulsion on 23 October 2014 and is simply going to use this meeting to implement this pre-emptive decision (see report).
The union in the interest of fairness has asked COSATU to indicate why it is being expelled so that it can defend itself but the federation has refused since February 2014 to date. It cannot be in the interests of justice that NUMSA faces charges which includes the words but "not limited to".
Today Numsa emerges victorious as Cosatu for the first time has been forced to declare its case against Numsa in that Numsa must now respond to the following five (5) issues;
1. The call by Numsa that Cosatu should break the Alliance
2. Numsa's decision to organise a march to Cosatu
3. Numsa's decision to hold back on paying affiliation fees
4. Numsa's decision to cease payment of the political fund meant to benefit the SACP
5. The decision to extent Numsa's scope of operation
What pains us is that a judge in a court of law had to force the Federation to deal with its own affiliate through a process of administrative justice.
Workers are always the losers when the Federation uses their valuable subscriptions to fight its own affiliates. These are subscriptions which are paid to the Federation to fight the triple scourge of unemployment, poverty and inequality.
Numsa proceeds to the Cosatu Special CEC scheduled for 7 November 2014 confident that the issues we must answer to has no basis upon which Numsa we can either be suspended or expelled from Cosatu. We are ready to reclaim Cosatu as an independent, militant, worker controlled, democratic and socialist orientated Federation.
Statement issued by Castro Ngobese, NUMSA national spokesperson, November 6 2014
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
