Zwelinzima+Vavi,+COSATU+General+Secretary,+salutes+FAWU



=Zwelinzima Vavi, COSATU General Secretary salutes FAWU=


 * //on the occasion of its 65th anniversary - 8 April 2006, Cape Town//**

//President Phillip Khage// //General Secretary Katishi Masemola// //Leadership and membership of all FAWU members// //Leadership of the Alliance//

I bring you greetings and congratulations from the CEC of your federation, COSATU and all its members, on this extraordinary occasion to celebrate your triumph and successes.

FAWU’s history goes back to the time before the creation of SACTU, COSATU’s predecessor. FAWU was one of the unions that gave birth to SACTU in 1955. It also played a pivotal role in the establishment of COSATU. FAWU will therefore go down in the history as the union that gave birth to the first two democratic and non-racial trade union federations in our country.

Directly and indirectly, through close working relations and later a formal alliance between workers and the liberation movement, FAWU played a pivotal role in ensuring that the ANC was transformed into an organisation that analysed our conditions from a working class perspective. You helped establish the historic relationship between workers and the liberation movement led by the ANC. In the process you provided that liberation movement some of the finest leaders it has known in its history that spans over nine decades.

The working class bias of the ANC and therefore our National Democratic Revolution is not something that fell like manna from the sky, FAWU and others worked tirelessly to help ensure that the ANC developed that bias towards the working class and adopted a more militant and uncompromising stance in its fight for the total liberation of the oppressed majority. The lessons of this for our present day are huge. Our 2015 programme relates to these lessons of history and calls on us to implement them in our time and under new conditions.

When the apartheid regime launched its brutal campaign of repression following the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, FAWU took a beating, yes, but it never really died. Following the 1971-1973 Durban strikes, FAWU was once again on the forefront of efforts to revitalise the non-racial and democratic trade union movement.

Drawing on its experiences of the 1940s and 1950s FAWU helped to cement an alliance of workers and students that led to the 1976 Soweto uprising whose 30th anniversary we will be celebrating this year. As I have pointed out already, FAWU played a critical role in the protracted unity talks that led to the formation of COSATU in 1985. The very first General Secretary of COSATU, Jay Naidoo, and the first 1st Deputy President came from this union. This was not a result of some clever lobbying or lack of leaders in other unions, but recognition of the unique role played by FAWU since 1941.

FAWU played a vital role in ensuring that COSATU did not just become a gumboots, helmet and wages federation but one that recognises that the struggle to improve wages and conditions and the struggle for liberation are intertwined. FAWU made us to recognise that we faced three forms of oppression - national, class and gender oppression which must be defeated simultaneously. Thanks to FAWU we now know that there can be no true liberation if any of those three forms of oppression has not been wiped out from the face of the earth.

Thus COSATU, not only at its launch but throughout its existence, recognised the link between workplace battles and broader struggles for liberation and a better life for all. The battles to impose a hegemony of the Congress movement on this new but giant baby, COSATU, was led, amongst others, by FAWU.

It was the correctness of FAWU policies and its ideological clarity that helped our struggle to give birth to the Congress of the People and the Freedom Charter. It helped to achieve the formation of the Alliance, and to ensure that COSATU joined that alliance after the unbannings. We owe the return of our dignity as the people to the heroes and heroines who led FAWU over the past 65 years.

Hail to Ray Alexander, Vuyisile Mini, Oscar Mpetha, Chris Dlamini, Jan Theron, Mandla Gxanyana, Mike Madlala and countless others who over a long period ensured that this colossal ship delivers to us a new Constitution that contains a Bill of Rights with workers’ rights one of the cornerstones. We praise the name of FAWU and all its cadres for the progressive laws that have been enacted by our democratic parliament led by our ANC.

We salute the hundreds of thousands of members who have been there on different times during FAWU’s 65 years of existence. Without members there is no organisation, there is no dynamism and there is no movement forward.

We would have not heard of people like Ray Alexander but for the important role your members play in all our organisations. We raise our red flags, from whose shades we live and die, to salute FAWU staff - past and current - for ensuring that FAWU has reached this milestone.

Our task today is to produce more Alexanders, Minis and Mpethas. Our responsibility is to ensure that we give dignity to food manufacturing workers, and particularly to FAWU’s newest members – the farm workers. They are the most oppressed and exploited. They are vulnerable in the true meaning of the world. Mostly they reside in the premises of the employers, their children attend schools provided by the employer, they drink water provided by the employer, it is the employer who decides whether they are sick enough to see a doctor, and their transportation depends on their employer. The list goes on.

Basically the employers have unfettered power over the farm workers that their whole lives revolve around their employers. Farm workers remain trapped in a feudal and master-and-slave relationship. They hear us talk of freedom and democracy on radio but their experience is that of daily humiliation at the hands of racist farmers.

The only way we can save not just the estimated 1 million farm workers but their entire community of more than 5 million people residing on the farms is to ensure that FAWU remain strong and united. We must recruit them to FAWU, improve their wages and other conditions and be the spear that Chief Albert Luthuli said the trade union movement should be.

The 12 years of democracy has not changed the reality that farm workers occupy the lowest position in our society. At the other end of the scale are the still, mainly white, billionaires who own most of our industry and finance, and they are getting richer every day. This real elite and ruling class took a lion’s share of all benefits of economic transformation and integration of our economy to the global economy.

Now they are being joined by a small number of black BEE millionaires, and, scandalously a number of public officials who instead of dedicating themselves to the service of the people, are seemingly using their positions to enrich themselves.

We are sick of the growing number of allegations of public officials, from government ministers downwards, who have failed to declare that they have interests in private businesses. This is creating a clear conflict of interest. Only yesterday, the Mail & Guardian published allegations that five senior judges have stakes in businesses. One was the Judge President of the Labour Court, a court which deals with disputes between workers and employers. If there is a suspicion that the presiding judge has business interests, the impartiality and integrity of the court is bound to be questioned.

COSATU is demanding a thorough investigation into all these allegations, and firm action against any who may have broken the law. But more than that, we are calling for a return to the traditions and values of the liberation movement. We talk here about solidarity and willingness to serve without expecting any material gain in return.

FAWU members and workers in general did not lead the struggle for liberation so that leaders can scramble on to the gravy train of personal wealth. This frightening level of greed and a developing culture of crass materialism threatens to put to an end to the very National Democratic Revolution whose objectives are still to be fully realised. A danger now exists that these noble objectives may be abandoned as the leaders enters the race to get rich as quickly as possible through whatever means possible.

We must hasten to say we have no problems with black people getting rich. But we have a serious problem if all those we elect to take forward our aspirations end up enriching themselves whist we remain trapped in grinding poverty and unemployment. We have a problem if all our leaders would use their positions to enrich themselves and their families.

Individuals see the world from the point of view of how they as individuals are impacted upon by political and economic processes. Changing lifestyles and living standards so that they become well above those who elected you makes anyone to be a pretender. Acquiring new friends who also enjoy the same material conditions eventually leads to ideological floor crossing.

And believe me comrades, the most prevalent floor crossing, as Zanoxolo Wayile says, is not the periodic political floor crossing so hated by the IFP, but the ideological floor crossing that happens daily. It happens during golf tournaments, in the cigar association meetings, in the cosy dinners with expensive wines and whisky bottles offered freely and in conferences convened by the powerful multinationals and their political representatives from the north.

Before it is too late, let us again reiterate the call we have been making. The people’s representatives, in particular those serving in parliament in the trade union movement, must choose between two things: being people’s representatives or business men or women. No one can be both!

There is an inherent contradiction from being both! No one is capable of serving a lion and a lamp in the same kraal at the same time. You can’t be a people’s hero championing the aspirations of the working class and the poor during the day and at night exploit those very same workers as a business man.

The best way we can honour and protect the legacy of FAWU is to follow the example set by its forerunners. FAWU taught all of us that the true and real freedom for workers would be the attainment of a society where workers and the poor gain political power and use that power to control the means of production for the common benefit of all in particular the working class.

We remain committed to achieve our strategic goal of socialism. But FAWU taught us to understand that this objective can only be achieved from a successful and thorough going process of social transformation. But FAWU also taught us to reject stageism and to pursue our demands for fundamental transformation whilst consistently challenging the market domination in the economy and in political life. True worker control means consistently tilting the balance in favour of the working class.

In the trade unions one of our chief responsibilities is to preserve unity. No organisation can ever realise its objectives if its leaders are at each others’ throats, rather than being a nightmare to employers and the workers’ class enemies. Unity and cohesion has been dodging FAWU in the recent past.

The only way of preserving unity is a militant programme channelling all our energies towards the real enemy. Once we have no programme for improving conditions, for recruitment, for educating and politicising members and leaders, for strengthening the liberation movement, we will find out that our energies are channelled against one another and petty squabbles.

Unity was identified by the FAWU NEC bosberaad held last year as the biggest challenge facing FAWU. We must continue to ensure that we deepen the unity of the leadership, members and staff. Our energy must be channelled into developing a well-defined and resourced organising strategy to improve our service to the members, support shop stewards and organisers, drive recruitment and take forward mergers with other unions that exist in the food manufacturing and agriculture sectors.

FAWU’s declaration says: “We have allowed a death of politics in the NEC. This has led to stagnation. We have not ensured that the NEC maintains a high standard of analysis and discussion of the challenges we face as workers, as a union. We have not debated the issues in ways that help us build workers’ power.”

As we celebrate this milestone, guided by this correct analysis, we need to be inspired by our own history which provides the best lessons for our practise.

The same declaration called on FAWU National Office Bearers and COSATU National Office Bearers “to ensure that Naledi undertakes a comprehensive review of internal union systems’ and further calls for the establishment of “a systematic organisational review programme with dedicated staff and resources”. If we are to be able to look at Ray Alexander in the eye and tell her that she did not make all the sacrifices she made in building this union in vain, we must begin now with this process. It is the only guarantee of our future.

Let us reaffirm our commitment to COSATU’s coordinated campaign to recruit at least 10 percent more members per annum. The only way we can recruit more is when the current members are happy with the service we provide.

One of the issues that FAWU cannot be proud of is that it does not have a national centralised bargaining structure with the food manufacturers and farm owners. We must improve our bargaining systems and structures. Our historic demand for centralised bargaining, covering the whole of the food processing and agriculture sectors must be pursued more vigorously.

Only when we do this, will we be able to guarantee another 65 years of FAWU and play our revolutionary role. We dare not fail the memory of its founders - the heroes and heroines from which we inherited this giant. COSATU joins you to say happy birthday FAWU and long live FAWU!

Amandla ngawethu - kopano ke matla - umanyano ngamandla

Congress of South African Trade Unions 1-5 Leyds Cnr Biccard Streets Braamfontein, 2017
 * Patrick Craven (Editor, Shopsteward Journal)

P.O.Box 1019 Johannesburg, 2000 South Africa

Tel: +27 11 339-4911/24 Fax: +27 11 339-5080/6940 E-Mail: patrick@cosatu.org.za**