Numsa Response to Frans Baleni NUM General Secretary, on his suggestion that Numsa will recruit Boko Haram and all sorts into the United Front

Nothing best captures and illustrates the levels of intellectual, ideological and political bankruptcy that has befallen the NUM under the leadership of General Secretary Frans Baleni if his most recent reported attack on Numsa and its United Front is anything to go by.

In terms of media reports, Baleni is reported to have said:

"Numsa says the ideological orientation or religious affiliation shall not be a condition for denying or preventing people from joining its United Front. This is written in black and white. This means that Numsa was likely to have EFF, Boko Haram and AWB in its United Front."

Whatever Baleni is smoking, and suffering from, must be very strong and quite clearly mind damaging!

It is precisely this narrow misunderstanding and misapplication of the simple fact that trade unions, working class civil society formations and community issue based organisations organise workers and non-workers into their structures not on the basis of their ideological orientation or religious beliefs, but on their desire and willingness to participate in the common struggle against identified obstacles to their lives. 

It may now very well be that NUM's General Secretary suffers from an acute anxiety syndrome occasioned by the implosion of the NUM at his hands.

We further note the deafening silence of the custodians of the so-called ceasefire in Cosatu, more specifically the Cosatu National Office Bearers, which confirm our belief that the ceasefire only applies to Numsa with the express aim to liquidate Numsa.

Nevertheless, and be that as it may, Numsa is undeterred by these mindless and moronic attacks.

Statement issued by Castro Ngobese, NUMSA national spokesperson, July 9 2014

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