T he Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) will hold its 9th National Congress from 18 September. We take this opportunity to extend our best wishes to the Congress and all the delegates. Together with the rest of the ANC, our fraternal delegation to the Congress will convey the official message of our movement and looks forward to its comradely participation in the work of the Congress, which should further strengthen the long standing bonds that have kept the ANC and the progressive trade union movement together, over many decades, in one revolutionary alliance.
As before, the ANC will await with great expectation the results of this important Congress, which will surely not only help to promote the interests of the organised workers, but also contribute to the further advance of the National Democratic Revolution. This is particularly necessary given the ever-increasing expectations of the masses of our people that our Alliance will further accelerate our country's progress towards the achievement of the goal of a better life for all.
Twenty years ago, on 5-6 March 1986, an important meeting took place in Lusaka. This was a meeting of the ANC, the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) and COSATU. Among other things, the Statement issued after the meeting, on 7 March, said: "The respective delegations were led by Comrade Jay Naidoo, General Secretary of Cosatu, Comrade John K Nkadimeng, General Secretary of Sactu and Comrade Oliver Tambo, President of the ANC...The meeting resulted from the common concern of all parties arising from the fundamental and deep-seated economic, social and political crisis into which the Botha regime and the apartheid system of national oppression and class exploitation have plunged our country.
"There was common understanding that the Pretoria regime and the ruling class of South Africa are powerless to provide any real and meaningful solutions to this general crisis, that lasting solutions can only emerge from the national liberation movement, headed by the ANC, and the entire democratic forces of our country, of which Cosatu is an important and integral part.
"In this regard it was recognised that the fundamental problem facing our country, the question of political power, cannot be resolved without the full participation of the ANC, which is regarded by the majority of the people of South Africa as the overall leader and genuine representative.
"The meeting recognised that the emergence of Cosatu as the giant democratic and progressive trade union federation in our country is an historic event in the process of uniting our working class and will immeasurably strengthen the democratic movement as a whole...
"(The delegations) agreed that the solution to the problems facing our country lie in the establishment of a system of majority rule in a united, democratic and non-racial South Africa. Further, that in the specific conditions of our country it is inconceivable that such a system can be separated from economic emancipation.
"Our people have been robbed of their land, deprived of their due share in the country's wealth, their skills have been suppressed and poverty and starvation have been their life experience. The correction of these centuries-old economic injustices lies at the core of our national aspirations. Accordingly they were united not only in their opposition to the entire apartheid system, but also in their common understanding that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy...
"Cosatu is seized with the task of engaging the workers in the general democratic struggle, both as an independent organisation and as an essential component of the democratic forces of our country...The ANC emphasised the need for the greatest possible mobilisation of all the people of our country to join in united political action against the apartheid regime, equally and in combination with the mass political struggle...It is the duty of the democratic forces to work together and consult one another in order to establish maximum unity in action by all our people."
Nineteen years after the meeting in Lusaka, our Alliance convened in a Summit Meeting in Ekurhuleni on 22-23 April 2005, and adopted a Declaration of the Alliance Summit. In part this Declaration, issued on 23 April, said: "Senior delegations of the ANC, SACP, COSATU and SANCO met in our second Ekurhuleni Alliance Summit from 22-23 April 2005. We have convened in a period that is characterised by important advances and major challenges.
"On the one hand, as an ANC-led alliance, we have consolidated and expanded our overwhelming electoral majority, we have advanced and deepened democratic governance, we have entrenched extensive social and economic rights and we have rolled out significant social resource transfers. In the recent period, government has shifted to a more expansionary fiscal stance and has begun to implement a programme of significant public investments. As an Alliance we collectively salute and claim these achievements.
"On the other hand, deeply entrenched poverty and inequality continue to characterise our society and, above all, we have an economy that is not generating nearly sufficient jobs. As we meet, another devastating wave of mass retrenchments is striking the mining and manufacturing sectors. As an Alliance, we acknowledge our collective responsibility for addressing the unemployment and job-loss crisis. It is our Alliance that must provide the decisive strategic leadership to our country on these challenges...
"Our review of the work of our Alliance since our 2002 Summit suggests that we have functioned effectively in the midst of electoral campaigns, our local level structures unite dynamically and there is a general unifying sense of purpose. Outside of election periods, and despite a great deal of ongoing Alliance interaction, we have not always been able to consistently carry through our unity and our popular mobilisation. We acknowledge several problems and challenges.
"Unconstructive public attacks on each other have not helped and we have agreed to conduct our debates and air real differences, where they may occur, in ways that build unity, and enable the Alliance to provide leadership to our society in general. We have also agreed that each of us need to strengthen our organisations, especially at the community and shop-floor level so that we are able to strengthen each others' campaigns...
"Our discussions over these two days have confirmed for us a growing strategic convergence among our formations on the key challenges facing our society, and, above all, on the key short and medium-term measures that are required to address these. We reaffirm the 2002 Ekurhuleni Summit declaration that states that ours is a strategic alliance founded on the agreement that the primary task of the current period is the implementation of the national democratic revolution, a perspective that has been forged in struggle over more than seven decades."
In addition to its Declaration, the 2005 Alliance Summit also adopted a Programme of Action. Among others, this Programme says: "The Alliance is fully aware of the critical responsibility we have to lead the process of transformation in our country and contribute to the strengthening of efforts to build a humane world order. Unity, a sense of common purpose, the depth of understanding of our historical mission, activism, loyalty to the people - especially the poor - and commitment to international solidarity and joint action are some of the critical attributes that have placed the Alliance at the head of the forces of change in our country.
"We are duty-bound by the realities of our history, the yearning of our people for a better life and the confidence that they have placed in the ANC and other components of the Alliance to ensure that these qualities continue to characterise the relationship among ourselves and our interaction with the motive forces of change, and with society at large."
Obviously, conditions in our country, Africa and the world have changed in many significant respects during the nearly 20 years that separate the Lusaka meeting of 1986 and the Ekurhuleni Summit of 2005. Not least among these changed circumstances is that the democratic revolution triumphed in 1994. This confirmed the prediction made by the Lusaka meeting that "victory over the system of white minority racist rule is not far off".
The changes during these last two decades have also included such critical developments as the collapse of the Soviet Union as well as socialism in Europe, the emergence of a uni-polar world, the acceleration of the process of the global integration of the largely capitalist world economy, and the dominance of neo-liberal ideology in the global discourse about the building of human societies.
And yet, despite these important changes, including our common victory in 1994, the strategic framework that defines the relationship between the ANC and COSATU, (and other members of the Alliance), has not changed to any material degree.
As we did in 1986, and using the words in the 2005 Declaration, we remain convinced that "ours is a strategic alliance founded on the agreement that the primary task of the current period is the implementation of the national democratic revolution, a perspective that has been forged in struggle over more than seven decades".
In 1986, we said that, "the correction of...centuries-old economic injustices...(and therefore our economic emancipation)...lies at the core of our national aspirations." In 2005, we said, "we acknowledge our collective responsibility for addressing the unemployment and job-loss crisis. It is our Alliance that must provide the decisive strategic leadership to our country on these challenges... (which include) deeply entrenched poverty and inequality (that) continue to characterise our society."
Correctly, in 1986, we said that the Alliance had to lead both the struggle for democracy and the fundamental transformation of our country saying, "lasting solutions can only emerge from the national liberation movement, headed by the ANC, and the entire democratic forces of our country". We continue to maintain this position as reflected in our common statement in 2005, that, "we are fully aware of the critical responsibility we have to lead the process of transformation in our country."
Throughout these two and more decades, we have, together, understood this vital vanguard role of the Alliance in the national democratic revolution, and therefore the strategic importance of its unity.
That is why in 1986, even despite the illegality of the ANC, we spoke of "the duty of the democratic forces to work together and consult one another in order to establish maximum unity in action by all our people". We reiterated this in 2005 when we called for "unity, a sense of common purpose, the depth of understanding of our historical mission, activism... and joint action...(and) agreed to conduct our debates and air real differences, where they may occur, in ways that build unity."
We have similarly understood and accepted the fact born of our history and the objective conditions in our country, that the ANC has the task to lead the Alliance and the broad democratic movement. In 1986 we spoke of "the national liberation movement, headed by the ANC", and referred to ourselves in 2005 as, "an ANC-led alliance".
The historic alliance in our country, between the national liberation movement and the progressive trade union movement, emerged from the fact that the black workers in our country were oppressed and exploited both as a class and as a nation or black people. Thus they could not fully realise even trade union demands, without attending to the central matter of their national emancipation.
At the same time, as in all other countries that have experienced national oppression, the people, oppressed as a nation across all classes, including the workers, had given birth to their own movement that would lead them in the struggle to secure that national emancipation.
The masses of the oppressed and organised workers understood that it would be strategically wrong for them to separate themselves from the rest of the oppressed masses, refusing to accept the political leadership of the people's movement, in our case the ANC. At the same time the ANC understood that the working class needed to organise itself into trade unions and act to advance the interests of the union members.
It viewed all gains in this regard as an essential part of the overall emancipation of the black oppressed. It therefore saw it and sees it as one of its tasks to help to strengthen the progressive trade union movement, in the same way as this trade union movement knew it had to use its organised strength not only to advance the economic interests of its members, but also the overarching objective of the people as a whole of national liberation.
The challenge to eradicate the centuries-old legacy of colonialism and apartheid stands at the centre of our continuing struggle for fundamental social transformation. The defeat of apartheid rule in 1994 opened the way for us to address this challenge, or in the words of the 1986 Statement, to provide a solution to the "fundamental and deep-seated economic, social and political crisis into which the Botha regime and the apartheid system of national oppression and class exploitation have plunged our country".
Necessarily, therefore, the forces that shared an interest in, and therefore combined to defeat white minority rule, would therefore continue to share an interest and seek to combine to use their common victory to confront the legacy of racism that had brought them together as freedom fighters.
That is why the strategic framework that unites the Alliance is the same today as it was two decades ago. Both the workers organised in the progressive trade union movement and the masses of our people, now both black and white, members and followers of the ANC, know that it would neither make sense nor is therefore any objective basis for the separation of the progressive trade union movement and the national liberation movement, COSATU and the ANC.
That is why, at Ekurhuleni in 2005, we said: "We reaffirm the 2002 Ekurhuleni Summit Declaration that states that ours is a strategic alliance founded on the agreement that the primary task of the current period is the implementation of the national democratic revolution, a perspective that has been forged in struggle over more than seven decades."
A strong COSATU remains fundamental to the achievement of this task. It is therefore important that the ANC and the rest of the broad democratic movement continue to do everything possible to ensure that, as was said in 1986, COSATU remains a "giant democratic and progressive trade union federation in our country...uniting our working class and...immeasurably (strengthening) our democratic movement as a whole".
