Shopsteward,+05-06,+CRUSH+RACISM

From: The Shopsteward (COSATU), June 2005
=Crush racism!=

Eleven years into our democracy, racism is still stalking our land. It is one of the biggest challenges facing the trade union movement. Evidence can be found in both official reports and in the daily experience of our members

When COSATU General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi visited workers in Mpumalanga in March this year, he came face-to-face with the kind of everyday racism that is still rife in many workplaces.

At the Khuthala mine, near Witbank, as he was leaving the company premises where he had met the workers, the security guards, unaware of who he was, asked him, and two other COSATU officials, to submit to a ‘random’ test of their urine ‘for alcohol and drugs’. They were asked to take a ball from a closed box. If the ball was black, you had to take a drugs test; if it was white you were allowed to go through the gate.

All three drew black balls but angrily refused to take the test, when it became clear that these ‘tests’ are only done to black workers and visitors. The arrogant security guards tried to insist but were told that this was an intolerable affront to the human dignity of black workers.

Vavi told mineworkers: “I have toiled as a farm labourer, for a long time earning nothing. My family was thrown out of the farm and I had to go to school only at the age of 11... To date I do not even know my correct age. I have also seen such a practices or outright racism in farms when I visited KwaZulu Natal last year. Farm bosses do as they please there…they rape women workers day after day and nothing is being done about them.

“We saw what happened with Nelson Chisale in Hoedspruit. That is why we are saying in this recruitment campaign that we should organise strongly so that we are able to have a muscle to fight this scourge,” he said. He added, to the roars of appreciation from the workers, that he will join other union leaders if need be, and expose such racist practices.

Denel
In May, 1 200 workers at arms manufacturer Denel held daily protests over the removal, and intended demotion, of affirmative action appointees by the current general managers and group directors. One black manager was removed and four were targeted. The chairperson of the board resigned because of unending tensions between black managers and white directors.

Since the appointment of the current CEO, things have gone from bad to worse, says the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA). There is no effective strategy to deal with the current problems, and in the process the union has been marginalized and undermined in its attempts to find solutions. “We want the company to quit thinking short-term and stop the removal of black managers,” said NUMSA spokesperson, Dumisa Ntuli.

NUMSA believes that the company has begun a process of excluding unions in the restructuring process, and directors streamlining divisions at the direct detriment of black managers. All these elements undermine the unions to engage meaningfully and result in the negative performance of the company. The workers feel that there is a shift towards paternal authoritarianism and strongly feel that it is a race factor.

Recently the General Secretary visited Vryburg, and once more came face to face with racism at a hotel. Black workers are not allowed to drink the tea they make for their guests yet their white counterparts may drink it with impunity. Black workers have to use backyard filthy, smelly toilet facilities which have water all over the floor, yet their white counterparts use the toilets of the hotel.

Racism in South Africa
Racism in South Africa was the product of the colonial powers that invaded Africa from the 17th to 20th centuries. They dispossessed the African people of their land and property through conquest, and made them slaves in their own land. Ownership of land led to the ownership of slaves, mines and industries.

Racism is thus a product of both colonialism and capitalism. The white minority who owned and controlled the means of production retained and then refined the racial subjugation of the African people. Those at the receiving end were the unemployed or workers in lowest paying jobs, farm labourers and women.

Apartheid
Later racism was institutionalised in law and imposed through the state apparatus. Black people were denied the vote or any control over government. In rural areas they were thrown into Bantustans under imposed leaders. In the urban and mining areas migrant workers were forced to live in single-sex hostels or townships, as reserves of cheap labour. Movement to townships and hostels was strictly controlled through laws and the state security forces.

Blacks were not only oppressed because they were black but as workers. They were denied a stake in the economy and used as wage-labourers with no right to ownership and limited to jobs that ensured they remained at the bottom of the economic and social ladder.

1994 – the end of racism?
The 1994 democratic elections marked a turning point in the history of our struggle against racism, a victory after decades of struggle to get rid of apartheid. Since then, South Africa has put in place a constitution and many laws which decree that people must no longer be discriminated against on the basis of colour, creed, sexual orientation or social standing.

Acts such as the Employment Equity Act (EEA) are supposed to ensure that all employers train and promote workers so that the demographics of the workplace reflect the racial and gender composition of the country.

Institutionalised racism however has left a deep-seated legacy. While the system has been defeated politically, its economic and social ravages are still highly visible. In rural areas in particular, the majority African population still live in poverty and fear, while their white employers prosper as before and use violence to impose their power.

The biggest obstacle still to be overcome is the continuing racial inequality in the distribution of wealth, power and influence. The problem is typified by the implementation of the EEA. A report by the commission for employment equity in 2002 revealed that up to 60% of designated employers flagrantly violated the EEA’s provisions. Jerry Vilikazi, managing director of the Black Management Forum (BMF), addressed the parliamentary portfolio committee on labour on 1 June 2005. He suggested that the Department of Labour lacked the necessary operational and human resources capacity, including the quality and quantity of its inspectorate, which led to a general state of non-compliance in the country by employers.

Virtually no cases, he said, have been taken through the inspection process, the director-general review and eventually the labour court. There was a lack of any serious precedence in employment equity compliance, enforcement and the imposing of fines. The BMF has called for a presidential commission of inquiry to look into racism and other forms of unfair discrimination in the workplace. The inquiry should look at all the so-called high-level professions and occupations in South Africa.

Vilikazi said that this was necessary to probe “racism and other forms of unfair discrimination” in the workplace, and establish the extent of progress, or lack of it, in the racial diversification of the workforce, the elimination of discrimination and the promotion of blacks, women and people with disabilities into all levels and professions of the economy.

“More than 10 years after democracy,” he said, “corporate SA was far from reaching targets for affirmative action. In 2000, a blueprint called for 20% of executive directors, 30% of senior managers, 40% of middle managers and 50% of junior managers and professionals to be black.

This report reinforces the view that the white minority still holds nearly all the economic power they acquired over the last few hundred years through land dispossession and the exploitation of African workers through low wages and the migrant labour system. While Africans make up 76% of the population, their share of income amounts to only 29% of the total. Whites, who make up less than 13% of the population, take away 58.5% of total income.

Within the poorest 53% of the population, a third live in shacks or traditional dwellings, about 80% have no access to electricity, about 70% have no access to piped water to their premises, and more than 80% have no access to modern sanitation. Inequalities in education and health care are striking. Even a World Bank study in 2001 admitted: "While only one in a hundred white children dies in infancy, ten of every hundred African children do - five of them from easily preventable conditions. Of African children who reach the age of five, more than half suffer stunted growth because of inadequate nutrition.

Among those who manage to enter school, only one in seven reaches standard 10, after many years of repetition. "Of adults, fewer than half work in the formal economy. For those who become parents, the maternal mortality rate is 70 times higher among Africans than among whites.

“The cumulative effect of such inequity carries through life. Per capita, whites earn 9.5 times the income of blacks and live, on average, 11.5 years longer. In sum, South Africa exhibits that most bitter of social outcomes: destitution amid plenty."

These inequalities are not accidental but the outcome of low-wage policies followed for years by the private sector and the deliberate policies of the apartheid governments to under-spend on social services for black people.

All this produces a society of two nations - one powerful, wealthy and white, the other powerless, poor and black. These problems are perpetuated since blacks are not adequately trained. Whites still mainly hold most highly skilled jobs, such as managers, accountants, highly specialised artisans and technicians.

COSATU will not rest until the scourge of racism has been purged from our society. Our 7th National Congress resolved, “to reject the notions of racism, tribalism and xenophobia, and to maintain the unity of the oppressed masses of our country, to develop a solid class analysis of racism, tribalism and xenophobia and to develop a coherent national public campaign against racism, tribalism and xenophobia”.

When we begin our campaign on the 18 June, we should target companies that still practices racism and discrimination of women and people living with disabilities as well as worker that are HIV positive. We can no longer allow apartheid to live where we work. Our freedom is not complete until we defeat it where it matters most – where we work.