2005-11-23,+Vavi+to+SADTU,+Balance+of+Forces

= Input to SADTU Eastern Cape Congress, Port Elizabeth =

Dear comrades and friends,

Thank you for the opportunity to be here at this important Congress. SADTU is now the largest union in the public service, and one of COSATU’s largest affiliates.

Moreover, the Eastern Cape has long been a centre for militancy, vibrancy and solidarity, not just for our labour movement, but for the democratic movement as a whole. This Congress can therefore play an important role in affirming COSATU’s traditions of internal democracy, militancy and solidarity.

I have been asked to discuss the current balance of forces. Certainly the comrades in the Eastern Cape know better than anyone that both the political and the economic situation are complex.

The key problem remains that we achieved political democracy without any real change in the nature of big business or indeed much of the state. Since then, we have been engaged endlessly in contestation in an effort to bring about a more far-reaching transformation of power in our society.

There is an intense contestation between the forces for change led by the working class and those want to maintain the status quo but who want to change only its complexion. The forces who want to retain the status quo have recruited new forces from the former third coach of apartheid into its camp.

It is in the nature of such contests that the liberation movement, the ANC and the state are subjected to so much pressure from opposite ends that, depending on the global balance of forces, it can end up developing contradictory policies and zig zag between liberal and right/left wing policies.

Largely this has been the nature of our situation. Today you may listen with pride to a government policy articulated on radio, yet in the afternoon you can’t believe your ears when another policy is announced that makes capital’s champagne cocks to pop. This also reflects in the nature of the liberation movement, where there is also an intense contestation between contending factions and different class interests.

Taking into consideration the unfavourable global balance which has been effectively been used by the other side to blackmail the working class, overall the working class has through bitter struggles managed to largely keep the ANC on the left, thus helping retain its bias towards the workers and the poor.

The implications of this contradictory situation however, emerge clearly in the fact that wages and salaries have been declining as a share of national income. In other words, profits are up while workers are earning less.

Moreover, unemployment has soared to 40%, with little sign of any decline, despite economic growth in the past two years. The rampant increase in the jobs that are casualised has meant that our aim of creating decent jobs remains a distant dream. This I know is close to your hearts, in that we saw the dismissal of about 5000 temporary teachers in your province recently. We join you in demanding an end to this exploitation of educators.

Overall inequalities have increased in the past eleven years.

It is for these reasons that COSATU and the SACP have declared that business has benefited the most from the first ten years of democracy. We have pledged to do more to reverse this situation in the coming ten years.

We declared this second decade as the decade of workers and the poor. Our campaigns must consciously respond to that declaration, in particular the Jobs and Poverty campaign. In the future, democracy must benefit workers and the poor, not only the rich.

Highlighting these setbacks at the economic level should however not lead us to another extreme, which is the failure to acknowledge and celebrate the tremendous advances we have made in the first decade of freedom.

In the past five years for example, the government has at least begun to expand its own spending, making possible a substantial improvement in the budgets for the major services, including education. We hope that the proposed accelerated shared growth strategy will help shift the economy toward a path of job-creating, equitable growth. But most of these policies so far remain little more than words on paper. As I pointed out earlier these policies face consistent opposition from business and the historically privileged. We must continue to keep pressure on the state, in order to counter the blackmail and threats of economic disaster put forward continually by sections of business.

This is why we need the current rolling mass action. SADTU has played a leading role, including here in the Eastern Cape, in making this action a success. We are also looking to this Congress to give us feedback on how we can manage this campaign on Jobs and Poverty, not as a short-term event, but as a long-term strategy to give workers and the poor a voice in shaping the future of our economy and our country.

We have also had a rough demonstration in the past year of the fact that the contestation with capital also affects our closest allies and friends. These divisions and conflicts place serious challenges before COSATU as well. We need to ensure that we adhere to three basic principles as we face up to these difficult times.

First, we must always adhere to our principles, which place the interests of the working class and the poor above everything else.

Second, we must ensure that we engage based on policies for the working class, and do not get involved in debates about personalities. Our job is to build the unity and strength of the majority, not to get pulled into divisions and cliques.

Finally, we must make sure that political divisions do not affect the unity of the working class. The strength of the union movement has always been that it opens the door to every worker, no matter what their beliefs, religions, race or gender. Critically, to maintain our strength we must deal with disagreements through internal democracy and openness, rather than intrigue and backbiting. We must make sure that every union member and activist feels they have had a fair chance to give their opinions and have their say, even if they did not win the debates. Only on that basis can we avoid the formation of factions and cliques.

Comrades and friends,

All of these difficulties emerge when we look at the education sector. Above all, the massive inequalities inherited from apartheid largely persist in this area. In this context, we need to ask what we as the democratic movement and in particular as organised labour can and must claim as the way forward.

The fact is that the apartheid legacy persists in huge inequalities between schools, although the lines are now drawn in part by class, not just by race. These inequalities mean that schools in poorer provinces like the Eastern Cape still face underfunding, lack of materials and poor staffing levels, especially in the rural areas.

The figures show that where you were born and how much money your parents have still largely determines your future.


 * In provinces built largely on former homeland areas, like the Eastern Cape, the state spends about 10% less per learner than in the richer provinces like Gauteng and the Western Cape.
 * In these poorer provinces, the pass rate for matric in 2000 was between 40% and 50%. In contrast, in the Western Cape, which under apartheid enjoyed relatively high levels of spending on education, the pass rate is closer to 80%, and in Gauteng is it around 60%.
 * To this day, one in five schools has no toilets and two out of five don’t have electricity. Virtually all of these schools are primary schools in the former homeland areas.

Thanks largely to SADTU, the distribution of state-paid educators between schools is now more equitable. But that equality does not extend to other staff. The fact is that the former white schools still have a virtual monopoly on clerical and other support staff, while educators and principals in many former black schools must battle on their own. In richer provinces like Gauteng and the Western Cape, there is an administrator for every three educators; in the Eastern Cape and other poorer provinces, there is one for every eight educators. That in itself means the burdens on teachers are higher in poor regions.

Finally, as COSATU we are increasingly concerned about the poor match between our education system and the needs of our democracy and our economy. This emerges most graphically in the fact that the average unemployed African youth has 11 years of education – and two thirds of the unemployed are under the age of 30. Clearly, we are not equipping our youth to engage with society or with the economy.

This situation points both to the inequalities in resourcing and to the failure to ensure a quality education in important subjects for all our children, especially those in historically oppressed communities. A specific problem remains the fact that historically black schools do not have the facilities for maths, science, computers or cultural programmes. Yet these subjects are crucial for the modern economy and to build our society.

Comrades and friends,

As you can see, this Congress must address many critical questions for our country and for education. For SADTU, the key questions remain building its organisation, including both recruitment and service to members, and managing public service transformation better.

The challenge of service to members cannot be separated from the work of strengthening internal democracy. We need to make sure that all our unions encourage members’ participation, with stronger mandating and report back at every level. We also need to strengthen our recruitment campaign. For SADTU, that means two things in particular. First, we have resolved as COSATU that we need to either merge with other unions or that we will regard their members as unorganised.

Second, SADTU has to become serious about recruiting non-educators. Otherwise it will remain only a craft union, which runs contrary to our principles of solidarity and unity across industries.

At the same time, the labour movement must continue to act as the voice of the working class in policy debates at all levels. From SADTU, we expect leadership in formulating claims about this critical issue of education, which affects every worker and every worker’s family.

Finally, SADTU must support educators’ struggle to improve education on a day to day basis. Critical claims and campaigns in this regard are to ensure better in-house training, resourcing and support systems for all educators, especially those in black and rural communities.

Comrades and friends,

This congress has many important challenges to face. We wish you well in your deliberations.

Paul Notyhawa (Spokesperson), Congress of South African Trade Unions 1-5 Leyds Cnr Biccard Streets, Braamfontein, 2017 P.O.Box 1019, Johannesburg, 2000, South Africa

Cell: 082 4911 591, Tel: +27 11 339-4911/24, Fax: +27 11 339-5080/6940, E-Mail: paul@cosatu.org.za