THE General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (Giwusa) and the South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) are gearing up for resistance against the government of national unity’s (GNU) neoliberal privatisation and anti-trade union law plans, as well as falling wages and worsening working conditions.
This follows Giwusa’s recent national conference held in Germiston.
The organisations said political parties that joined the GNU suggest that deregulating capitalism and lowering labour standards should be the way forward.
This was after President Cyril Ramaphosa recently announced that the GNU would be bound by certain fundamental principles and would undertake a basic minimum programme of priorities as articulated in the statement of intent, in which the parties signed for restructuring and improving state-owned entities.
This was supported by many cabinet members, including Ramaphosa, who recently highlighted private sector assistance as the main driver to save South Africa from economic decline.
This could be linked to the DA’s vision of reform, which included privatisation of state-owned entities and scrapping empowerment regulations and cadre deployment. The party has called for changes in labour laws and the industrial bargaining system to create more jobs.
However, the unions said for the working class that means extending the current period of continuous decline in the standards of living, erosion of social safety nets, fewer legal protections of labour rights and attacks on working conditions which only a determined struggle and resistance from the working class could check and even reverse.
Giwusa president Mametlwe Sebei also warned that the GNU programme of privatisations could include electricity, water services, ports and railways, as well as outsourcing of prisons and provisions of social grants.
“These reflect the desperate search for markets domestically by capital that stands over-accumulated and closed from investments in other areas of the world – especially since the 2020-22 minerals price uptick has reversed – and since the South African economy remains monopolised and glutted with excess capacity,” he said.
Sebei said the new rounds of privatisation would not only roll back the gains of the past 30 years already witnessed in the self-rationing of electricity, with more and more people including middle-class families no longer able to use heaters, geysers and many other appliances despite being connected to the grid. He said this would soon apply to water and other municipal services.
“Above all, they will raise the cost of living as capitalists will also pass down increased costs of logistics – access to increasingly commercialised ports and railways, etc – to the working- and middle-class people through higher prices of food, clothing, and every other good and service they sell.”
Sebei also warned of the rising pressure from the state and capital to carry out these attacks, including proposed labour law amendments before the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) which would restrict the rights to strike and to collective bargaining, and further paralyse trade union movement.
He also called on Giwusa to outline a clear fighting strategy for itself, Saftu and the working class and a political strategy for taking out the GNU and its neoliberal attacks.
Saftu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi echoed the same sentiments and warned of the seriousness of the threat of the privatisation programme and attacks on labour.
Vavi also highlighted the scale of the attacks on labour rights underway, saying the meaning of the two-pot system for workers, and the fact that this takes place at a time when the unions, including Saftu, are at their weakest moment and extremely divided.
Vavi further pointed out the need for Saftu to overcome its internal crisis and part of that was honesty and openly debating its political policy and strategy to determine whether the federation is still aligned on these issues including on the resolutions around its independence and workers’ party.
During the conference, the delegates also raised concerns about the rising cost of living, and slave wages which do not last for a month, leading to workers getting into debt to cover basics. The high unemployment rate was also pointed out as a major burden on the cost of living for workers, many of whom support big families which are in dire poverty.