POLITICS

Wealth still in hands of tiny racist white minority - NUMSA

Irvin Jim says calls for redistribution should be intensified

ANC- ALLIANCE LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTORAL VICTORY MUST BE ABOUT A RADICAL DEPARTURE FROM OUR COLONIAL AND APARTHEID ECONOMIC PATTERNS!

Tuesday 24 May 2011

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) as a strategic component of the National Liberation Movement as led by the African National Congress (ANC) takes this opportunity to salute the South African workers and poor people for their continued confidence in the ANC-led Alliance by retaining it to power in just ended local government elections.

These 3rd democratic local government elections have taken place in the middle of the 1, 17 million jobs being lost in our economy. This has plunged more than 5,5 million working class households to the gallows of poverty, we have observed with our eagle eyes the unprecedented and violence ridden service delivery protests in mainly ANC-led Alliance strongholds, deficiencies in many local municipalities to deliver basic services to the poor, the embarrassing ‘open-air' toilets built by ANC-led local governments in Free State and Khutsong respectively and the sustained offensive launched by the un-elected bourgeois media against the ANC-led Alliance.

These elections have confirmed the ANC-led Alliance as the only reliable force that is better positioned to address the challenges in our working class communities imposed and inherited from the heinous apartheid regime and colonial rule.

This will require the ANC-led Alliance to champion a radical programme that seeks to transfer the bulk of the wealth of our country into the hands of the people as a whole as dictated by the Freedom Charter and the historic 1969 Morogoro Conference of the ANC.

We must turn local government into a strategic site of power in reversing the ugliness of joblessness faced by the poor in working class communities. This ANC-led Alliance electoral victory imposes on us to further intensify the call for land redistribution and economic redistribution of wealth that is concentrated in the hands of a tiny racist White minority; and intensify our demand for nationalization of mines, banks and other monopoly industries.

Our support for IPAP2 is about the realization  of a vibrant industrial strategy that ensures beneficiation  of our minerals. That's part of the reason NUMSA calls on the Minister of Finance to accelerate the implementation of an Export Tax on our exported minerals.

As NUMSA, through the forthcoming COSATU CC scheduled for June 27 - 30, 2011, we will call for the ANC-led Alliance to convene an Alliance Summit to critically look at the challenges faced by local government towards delivering basic services faster to working class and poor communities.

Lastly, we salute all members and our Shopstewards who went factory to factory, hostel to hostel, village to village, squatter camp to squatter camp, door to door, church to church, shebeen to shebeen, stokvel club to stokvel club as part of spreading NUMSA's message on why workers and our communities should vote ANC of Chris Hani to power. Through these interactions NUMSA has been empowered by workers and our communities on the real challenges that need to be addressed by the people's government as led by the ANC.

As the late SACP General Secretary Cde Chris Hani once said "a new South Africa will be meaningless if we do not address the social living conditions of the majority poor". But our observations are clear that we need to close the huge gap that exists between Diepsloot and Knysa in the interest of our revolution and her people.

Statement issued by NUMSA General Secretary Irvin Jim, May 24 2011

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