VOICES, [05/05/2022 22:28]
Logical Considerations 56

I came across this quotation by one George Carlin, but herein borrowed a part of it, which I find relevant to the topic I am sharing today. It says: Governments don’t want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept the situation. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you…”

The truth in these words above has been there for ages. In some countries people revolted and to some extent their living conditions somewhat improved. But they are still being owned by these entities called governments. They are not entirely free. If they were, we wouldn’t be having as many problems around the world.

In South Africa, like the rest of tbe world, we have our own predicaments. What with our country said to be owned by other people, not as a country but registered as a corporation! The whole of our wealth shared among people who don’t give a hoot about us, or the future of our children and their children, as well as generations to come.

Our wealth is being exploited and, according to the recent Carte Blanch report, even by illegal, unregistered companies who extract chrome, daily reeking millions in untaxed income.

Those legal, registered mines make billions at the expense of the exploited mineworkers, who do not get protection from government. Except the laws that keep them conditioned as indentured slaves, who are given just enough to eat and gather strength to go back in the belly of the earth. To extract some more wealth which, ironically, keep them as perpetual beggars in the land that is supposed to be theirs, but now being traded to foreign investors and governments.

This continued exploitation is made possible courtesy of the African National Congress (ANC) and its government. A former ANC MP, Ronnie Kasrils, is recorded giving testimony as to how various of his ANC comrades have had meetings with others from foreign lands, talks about how the rest of us should get screwed, to put it bluntly.

But this past weekend workers seemed to be making a mark to say this exploitation must come to an end. That they cannot continue to be used for children’s play toys. They signaled that as citzens of this country (might one say this corporation?) have had it with the ANC and its government. But like a stubborn donkey the ANC wants to hold on, still hoping for a miracle that somehow people bwill cast another favourable vote, despite everything.

It does not, at all, seem like the ANC really gets the message. Even at the workers’ May 1 rally at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium, President Cyril Ramaphosa was not allowed to finish his speech. In fact, it had hardly started, after workers demanded to speak with him, and all he could say was: “Okay, we have heard you.” But the workers would hear none of that, followed him, and booed him off the stage. For what he was about to tell them would have been the same song the president, his predecessors, his party and its government have been saying.

It is obvious that President Ramaphosa miscalculated this time around, that he was going to address the section of the alliance as usual. That they would be the usual “dumb” and “obedient workers” who would, without question, “passively accept the situation”.

Indeed, the Rustenburg rally showed that it was a total misreading of the situation by Ramaphosa, who had totally forgotten that the workers were not merely members of the Tripartite Alliance, but also constituted a prototype of the South African society. This society that has been feeling the pinch of a constricting economy — high food prices, escalating fuel prices, rising cost of living… Yet their salaries have remained the same!

The workers at Royal Bafokeng Stadium are together as one with those from the Sibanye Stillwater mines, who had endured close to three months strike, demanding R1000 salary increase. They rejected the R800-R850 that management was offering.

VOICES, [05/05/2022 22:28]
Meanwhile, 4 executive directors of JSE-listed mining companies were reported duly to receive bonuses in excess of R700 million. The CEO of Sibanye, Neal Froneman, would alone get R300.3 million. What did he do to deserve this massive payout — except making sure that the slaves were in line in creating that wealth? Whereas people who daily risk their lives underground digging out this wealth can hardly get a mere living wage!

In 2020 Froneman pocketed R62.73 million. This is supposed to be alright while, according to reports, Sibanye claims “…the salary increases that the striking workers are demanding are not justifiable…”!

Logically, what would make Froneman’s obscene payout “justifiable”?

Don’t Ramaphosa and the ANC alliance see this disparity? What was Ramaphosa goingbto tell the workers other than the same tired tirade of ANC prowess and empty sloganeering? Haven’t Ramaphosa and his government been witnesses to this blatant slave-like conditions of the mineworkers?

Surely, Ramaphosa is aware. That is why he was cajoling the workers, telling them he was one of them. He is aware because he was one of those who fought on the side of the workers as leader of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Now they feel betrayed. In his position of influence, he suddenly is no longer on their side. Hence, they are angry and would not listen to him, because his talks have not yielded positive results for them.

But Ramaphosa, who is generally viewed as pro-capitalist, and non-supportive of workers, still has a debt to pay for what happened at Marikana close to a decade earlier. Many have not forgiven him for the loss of life of mineworkers who were shot because they demanded a R12,500 badic salary. The Marikana massacre will remain as albatrisd around his neck. And workers are determined to remind him about this every opportunity they get. And he probably knows it; perhaps why he was escorted by nyalas (apartheid-era police trucks). He is obviously feeling guilty…

They booed him at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium, telling him, in a song, “You must go…”, and he was whisked away, lest his presence agitated the workers. Not even the president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), Ms Zingiswa Losi, was able to calm the workers. Clearly, the workers are sending a message that they have been toyed with for a long time and it was now enough! In one YouTube video a worker is heard saying, “Kudlalwa ngathi” — We are being used as toys.

Many of their comrades have list jobs, and they are aware that they too risk losing theirs, and there is nothing that their federation is doing to save these jobs.

Workers and critics alike argue that workers are better off as independent entities unattached to the political alliance wgich has since proved to be ‘unholy’. The alliance has distracted the working class from effectively fighting for workers’ interests. It was generally expeced that a workers party could be established to effect that, but interests of leaders have been misaligned with those of the workers they represent. It seems now it has dawnwled on thebworkers that they have always been on their own, but may have not been aware of it. Now membership of COSATU has been dwindling over the years due to unabated retrenchments.

VOICES, [05/05/2022 22:28]
What is happening now could as well be signs of a new consciousness, which will eventually see the dismantling of the alliance. Indeed, it does not make it any better that the other member, the South African Communist Party (SACP), has been quiet for some time. Even as its seemingly lifetime Secretary-General, Minister Blade Nzimande, pledged his party’s support for Ramaphosa in Polokwane this past January, it’s sitting quietly in its corner when it should also be making noise in support of the working class. After all, what is a communist party without the backing of workers, or when it does not support a natural ally, which is the workers? Or maybe it should simply be said that by supporting a self-confessed capitalist ANC the SACP had written itself off as a communist party? Hence, it is not supporting the workers’ concerns?

Quite a peculiar situation, indeed!

As for the leaders of the union federatiins, they must consider their positions in the alliance, if they do not want to die with already moribund ANC. The rising consciousness of the workers will soon make them realise that the insistence to remain bedfellows with a corrupt ANC and its government means that they are in cahoots with the corrupt, therefore, not wholeheartedly with the workers. After all, the union leaders are also getting rich from subscriptions. Thus, they may as well be viewed as part of those who enrich themselves at the expense of the workers.

The workers could be asking themselves if these leaders have been listening to them, or merely saying “we heard you”, as Ramaphosa was saying, yet doing nothing regarding their plight. Would they soon be heard saying, ‘ We are on our own, we had been on our own all along!’?

On May 1, the workers indicated they no longer believed what COSATU has been telling them. If they did the workers would have allowed the union president to address them. COSATU’s pre-ra(ly statement was that it wished to “tackle the fundamental obstacles to economic growth, namely, corruption, unreliable and unaffordable electricity, the devastating crippling Transnet and Metro Rail and failure by municipalities to provide basic services…” These are legitimate issues. The question is, why wait until this late hour to “tackle” them? And not saying how it will deal with these issues COSATU does not command confidence for anybody. They seem not to be sure they would do that, for they have always promised but never executed. Perhaps because they do not want to upset the alliance interests.

Over all, COSATU has basically gambled away its power by insisting on being part of the alliance. And regaining that power will prove to be difficult.

A worker federation is not supposed to be propaganist as COSATU has been. With the 2022 theme; “…building strong, vibrant and militant unions that servive members”, one only wonder why COSATU has not been working to achieve this. Why would their unions watch as jobs were being destroyed — destructiin of infrastructure — and hoping that the ANC-government’s propaganda create jobs will succeed? If this is what they call overhauling the public service, it must be really smart and logical — destroy with the hope of starting afresh….

Rescuing the alliance is but just another pipe dream. It has failed many times before. The workers must now realise they have power only outside the alliance. They will fail themselves if they are tempted to be drawn by any other pretentious political party. Parties which, like Ramaphosa and his ilk, pretended for so many years to be hearing the cries of the workers, while feeding them to the wolves.

They don’t seem to hear anybody. It is not in their nature to hear. How could they begin to hear now if they failed to hear Marikana? They only hear their own empty slogans. It doesn’t make sense…

Vusumzi Moyo✋🏾