THE South African workers expect a solid political and economic programme to kickstart the economy, end poverty and accelerate economic transformation, COSATU said at the start of the second leg of the ANC’s 55th national conference in Mangaung, Free State, on Thursday.
“We expect the ANC NEC to come out with urgent solutions to address the scourge of poverty and degradation that exist side by side with lavish wealth. We hope that the ANC will reflect on its government’s growing inability to grow the economy, fix electricity loadshedding and reduce unemployment and poverty,” said COSATU national spokesperson Sizwe Pamla.
The trade union federation, which is in a tripartite alliance with the governing party, said it was also looking forward to the upcoming ANC 111th anniversary celebrations and the accompanying January 8 Statement on Sunday.
The trade union federation said the ANC is increasingly presiding over a nation that is politically unstable, experiencing periodical rioting, suffers from rampant crime levels and is hungrier with a high disease burden.
COSATU said the ANC must be alive to this urgent reality and develop interventions.
A report by the World Bank on Inequality in Southern Africa showed that South Africa is still the world’s most unequal country in the world.
COSATU said the findings in the report are “scandalous.”
“It is the triumph of the Verwoerdean model of isolating blacks from any meaningful economic participation and keeping them impoverished and enslaved to their white counterparts,” Pamla added.
The strategic mission of regaining the unity of South Africans, COSATU said, will not be possible without the ANC advancing a more radical economic transformation programme to overcome systematic features of growing unemployment, obscene inequality, and mass poverty.
The labour federation said the only proven solution is a solid programme aimed at ending monopoly capitalism, accelerating state-led industrialisation, overcoming apartheid spatial inequality, and advancing a massive education and training programme.
COSATU also wants the ANC led-government to deal urgently with intensified mechanisation of work, casualisation and retrenchments amidst the persistence of the triple-crises of unemployment, poverty, and inequality.
“Within government the conservative bureaucrats, particularly in the National Treasury drive old policies and block new ones supported by some leaders in Cabinet; Treasury continues to use the budget to impose its conservative economic policies and to frustrate the mandate of the ANC in aligning economic policies with the manifesto,” COSATU said.
The federation also said workers were expecting to see various measures being introduced to crack down on corruption and defeat the predatory elite.
The federation said it remained concerned about “tenderpreneurs” using access to the state to drive their accumulation agenda.
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