Open World Conference of Workers

In Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights

South Africa

South African Workers Stage General Strike Against Privatizations

August 29 Independent Workers Conference in Durban Charts Fightback Strategy

Final Resolution of the Independent Workers Conference in Durban initiated by the International Liaison Committee for a Workers' International (ILC)

[Note: The following articles on the South African general strike and the Aug. 29 ILC-sponsored Independent Workers Conference in Durban are reprinted from Informations Ouvrieres (Labor News), the French-language weekly of the Workers Party of France. The Workers Party is affiliated with the International Liaison Committee for a Workers' International (ILC), which is one of the conveners of the Open World Conference.]

South African Workers Stage Three-Day General Strike in August Against Privatizations

By FREDERIC THUILLIER

DURBAN, South Africa - As the 14,000 delegates began arriving in Durban for the UN-sponsored World Conference Against Racism and Discrimination (WCAR), the atmosphere could not have been more tense. More than 6000 soldiers and police patrolled the city night and day, fully armed with machine guns and other rapid-fire weaponry deployed from the rooftops.

The police deployment was not primarily for their security. They were there because the COSATU trade union federation, together with two other union federations, had issued a call for a two-day general strike for Aug. 29-30. Though COSATU is part of the ANC coalition government, it issued the strike call against the policy of privatization implemented by the government in which it participates.

Pressure on COSATU to pull back

Everything was done by the government and by the parties that support it to pressure COSATU to withdraw its call for a general strike or, at the very least, to postpone the strike until after the World Conference Against Racism. The daily newspaper The Citizen ran a front-page article on Aug. 27 under the following headline: "COSATU betrays the workers."

The government paid for full-one page ads in all the newspapers titled: "Regarding the strike against privatization, what are the facts?" The article began: "COSATU has issued a strike call against what it calls privatizations. Is this really necessary? What are the facts? Restructuring is necessary for a better life for everyone." The article ended as follows: "Why, therefore seek to organize a paralyzing strike on the eve of the World Conference Against Racism and Discrimination when all the delegations will be arriving in Durban?"

In a letter from the ruling party - the ANC - South African President Thabo M'Beki wrote the following about the leaders of COSATU: "Whose interests are served by those who abandon their revolutionary morality and use the workers as cannon fodder to launch an offensive aimed at imposing a defeat on their very own liberation movement?" On all the radio stations, government ministers took turns to accuse the leaders and members of COSATU of "committing suicide." They all urged COSATU to pull back "before it is too late."

The press of international finance capital formed a united bloc in support of the ANC government. Business Daily published an editorial titled: "A battle M'Beki must win."

But the greater the pressure on COSATU to call off the general strike, the larger the front of those who added their names to the strike call. Other trade union federations and independent unions joined the call for the strike, notably the teachers and students, who had been mobilizing in large numbers because they understood they were the first targeted by the massive privatization drive.

On Monday, Aug. 27, an emergency meeting was held, with representatives from the government, the ANC, and COSATU in attendance. The purpose was to compel the trade unions to withdraw their strike call. Throughout the afternoon, the media kept announcing the possibility that COSATU might retreat. But, on the evening of the 27th, COSATU decided to maintain its strike call.

A massive general strike

The next day, with just one day remaining till the strike, the government and the ANC unleashed an impressive media blitz aimed at intimidating and isolating the strikers. Anti-strike ads were placed in all the major papers. Statements issued by the bosses and the government were distributed far and wide, all with the purpose of breaking the strike.

The editorial of The Citizen (Aug. 28) explained: "These people are toying with the economy of South Africa. The organized labor movement cannot shirk its responsibility for the negative impact this anti-privatization strike will have on the national economy ... [T]he actions undertaken by COSATU this week will only discourage productive investments." Economists announced in the Business Report of Aug. 28 that the strike could cost the country 1.3 billion Rand in lost production, that is approximately US$250 million.

But all the government's efforts were to no avail. Despite the media barrage, millions of workers heeded COSATU's strike call, many of them taking to the streets in mass protest actions.

In Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, demonstrations of 30,000 to 40,000 workers were commonplace. The strikers carried banner with slogans such as, "No to Privatization!" - "Privatization Is Our Enemy!" - "ANC, We Love You But Not Privatizations!" - "Privatized Services Cannot Help the Poor: Stop All Privatizations!" - "To Help the Economy Create Jobs, Stop the Privatizations!" - "We Didn't Wage Our Liberation Struggle Only to Sell Off Our Assets to the Highest Bidder!"

In fact, though initially called for only two days, the general strike extended into Friday, Aug. 31.

Understanding the strike

During the afternoon of Aug. 27, Lybon Mabasa, president of the Socialist Party of Azania (SOPA), held a press conference to announce the Independent Workers' Conference, which was slated to take place in Durban on Aug. 29 at the initiative of the International Liaison Committee for a Workers' International (ILC). [See accompanying article on this conference.]

At the press conference, Mabasa was asked the following question:

"The ANC, AZAPO, the Pan African Congress all condemn the general strike called by COSATU and the other union federations. With the exception of the Communist Party - to which the main leaders of COSATU belong and which supports the strike, apparently though with a lot of reservations - only SOPA supports the general strike. Don't you consider that the timing of this strike, at the very moment of the World Conference Against Racism, is poorly chosen?"

Mabasa responded:

"We support without any reservations, unconditionally, the general strike of the workers against privatizations. The strike is perfectly legitimate insofar as it seeks to preserve the hundreds of thousands of jobs and public services targeted by privatization that are essential to the population. Privatization is the creator of poverty and destruction.

"There are 8 million homeless people in this country, all of them Black. There are 350,000 public sector workers who have lost their jobs as a result of privatization - again, all of them Black. We've been told that apartheid has ended, but this government of 'non-whites' is implementing policies that protect the interests of the small minority of white capitalists and speculators linked to the international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF.

"The timing of the strike, quite the contrary, is well chosen in that representatives of governments, multinational corporations and international institutions - all of which implement privatization in their own countries - arrive this week in Durban. Indeed, it is a very appropriate moment to bring to world attention the massive protest and repudiation of the policies of privatization."

Asked to explain the dynamic in the union movement that had forced the COSATU leadership to break with the government to the point of issuing a general strike call against privatizations, Mabasa replied:

"It took the enormous rejection of this privatization onslaught by the union rank and file - by the teachers, transport workers, university workers and students - to force the issue up through intermediate bodies of the trade union federations all the way up to top union officialdom. The ranks understood that their very livelihood, their very survival as wage earners, was at stake. It was this anger, this pressure from below, that forced the COSATU leadership to take action."

Government doesn't budge

On Aug. 28, the day after COSATU reiterated its strike call, radio commentators and political analysts pondered out loud: How was it possible for COSATU to call for a strike when central leaders of the union federation were also members of the South African Communist Party (SACP), a party occupying a number of cabinet positions in the ANC government, including the Ministry responsible for carrying out the privatizations?

The revolt from below against privatization is, of course, the first explanation for the union's break with the government on this issue. But another factor that explains this break can be found in an interview with the deputy general secretary of COSATU published in The Sowetan on Aug. 28:

"COSATU has not called for an end to the process of restructuring. But we have asked that the state be restructured to meet the needs of the majority of our people." The COSATU official continued, "The union leaders and delegates spent countless hours negotiating and mobilizing to support a good restructuring plan. Despite this, the government over the past few years began to implement privatizations as the sole means of restructuring. We have sought, through all the legal channels available to us, to engage the government in a serious discussion of its policy of privatization, but no positive outcome ever resulted. On the contrary, the government did everything to resist our demands."

In an interview published the same day in Business Daily, the general secretary of COSATU echoed this sentiment: "We voted for this government. We are in an alliance with the ANC, and we would gain nothing by destabilizing the government. But we have had no redress to our grievances."

Hence, the refusal by the government to modify its course - even the slightest - pushed the union federation to act in a way that seemed incomprehensible to many observers.

"We will not retreat on the matter of privatizations," declared government and ANC leaders on Aug. 28 - to which the workers responded with new-found support for the general strike. "The harder the stance taken by the government, the wider the call for the general strike," proclaimed the press headlines on Aug. 28.

Independence of the unions!

This was the context in which the Independent Workers' Conference organized by the ILC took place in Durban on Aug. 29. The same choice was posed to the workers who took to the streets in Durban and throughout South Africa on Aug. 29-31 as was posed to the organizers and participants in the Independent Workers Conference:

* Either safeguard the independence of the workers' organizations as the sole means to defend workers' rights, and beyond this, all the gains of human civilization,

* or follow the path toward the integration of the trade unions - that is, the NGO-ization of the workers' organizations - into coalitions with the governments, thereby participating directly in the destruction of foundations of human civilization.

Between these two alternatives there is no middle ground.

The massive mobilization of Black workers with their union organizations in South Africa marked an important step toward a break of the bonds of subordination that have tied COSATU to the governmental coalition. The significance of this massive strike far exceeds the borders of South Africa. What happened across South Africa on Aug. 29-31 poses with full force for workers internationally the central need for the trade union organizations to remain independent from all governments and States.

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August 29 Independent Workers Conference in Durban Charts Fightback Strategy

"It is extremely significant that our conference is convening at the very moment when a powerful general strike is mobilizing millions of workers across South Africa against the policies of privatization implemented by the government."

With these words, Lybon Mabasa, president of the Socialist Party of Azania (SOPA) and one of the main organizers of the International Tribunal on Africa, opened the plenary session of the Independent Workers' Conference in Durban on Aug. 29, 2001. The conference, which brought together trade union and political delegates from 14 countries, was organized at the initiative of the International Liaison Committee for a Workers' International (ILC) and the Permanent Committee of the International Tribunal on Africa.

Convened as the extension of the work of the International Tribunal on Africa to judge those responsible for the deadly situation threatening the workers and peoples of Africa (Los Angeles, February 2002), the Independent Workers Conference's stated objective was to put the spotlight on the real roots of racism and discrimination, and to help to organize the fightback across Africa and beyond against the policies of privatization and deregulation and against all the attacks on workers' rights.

In his introductory report, Lybon Mabasa underscored the significance of the general strike unfolding that day across South Africa. [See accompanying article.] He then went on to differentiate the Independent Workers Conference from the NGO Forum also held that day in Durban.

Mabasa stated:

"Our conference is totally separate and independent from the UN Conference and from the NGO Forum. In our view, the first minimum act required to fight racism and discrimination is the total and unconditional cancellation of the debt, which is crushing the oppressed peoples - which is not their debt.

"In South Africa that debt was contracted by the apartheid regime. Today, the government of 'non-whites' is continuing to pay back the apartheid debt. This only legitimizes and extends the policies of apartheid insofar as debt repayment is attacking, just as in the past, the vast majority of the exploited and oppressed: the Black majority.

Mabasa went on to highlight the three points that distinguish the ILC-initiated conference from the other gatherings in Durban that week:

1) independence of the workers' movement,

2) preparation of the International Conference Against Privatizations and Deregulation, to be held in February 2002 in Berlin, Germany, and

3) the understanding the racism cannot be divorced from its economic and social roots; that is, the system based on the private ownership of the means of production.

Regarding the NGOs, Mabasa continued:

"This conference is open to all who accept the framework of the Open Letter we have addressed to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. [See previous postings of the OWC.] But we are clear, as well, about the role of the NGOs, which are financed by, and therefore dependent upon, the international financial institutions, the churches, the governments, the multinationals, and so on.

In the rich discussion that followed the opening report, this role of the NGOs was illustrated further upon examination of the documents of the NGO Forum. The role of the United Nations was also highlighted - particularly the UN role in Somalia, Sierra Leone and the region of the Great Lakes.

Speakers from Rwanda and Burundi noted the direct responsibility of the UN in the preparation of the massacres between the Hutu and Tutsi in 1994 in the Great Lakes Region, as well as the UN-promoted institutional reform in Burundi today, based on the distribution of posts according to ethnic backgrounds - which can only open the door to new massacres.

A number of presentations to the conference reviewed the mass mobilizations and class battles which in every country are witnessing the workers rise up against the policies of privatization and deregulation, much like the workers in South Africa in their massive general strike.

In the initial report a question was posed to the conference participants: Is it possible to respond to the vital needs of the workers and oppressed peoples without preserving the independence of the working class organizations? In response to this question, a young South African student stated:

"To those who invite us to present our point of view in the NGO Forum we say, 'Neither Liberia, Somalia or Sierra Leone are present physically at the UN Conference on account of the intervention of the United Nations, which was responsible for erasing these countries from the map. How can the struggle against racism and discrimination find a point of support within that framework?"

The Independent Workers Conference concluded with the unanimous adoption of a resolution. [See below.] This conference resolution was taken by an independent demonstration organized by the SOPA to the headquarters in Durban of the UN Conference Against Racism.

At the request of the conference organizers, a representative of Kofi Annan came down from his office to receive officially the final conference declaration as well as the two letters addressed to Kofi Annan - one on Mumia Abu-Jamal, the other on the more general themes of debt cancellation, reparations and the fight against the IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment Policies. In the presence of the UN representatives, Lybon Mabasa read the conclusions of the conference as well as the full text of the final declaration. - F.T.

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FINAL DECLARATION
AUGUST 29 INDEPENDENT WORKERS CONFERENCE
(DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA)

We, the undersigned, representing labor, political, working class organizations and militants from many countries, met in Durban on Aug. 29, 2001, at a Conference convened jointly by the Permanent Committee of the International Tribunal on Africa, the International Liaison Committee (ILC) and the Socialist Party of Azania (SOPA).

We had a mandate from tens of thousands of workers and people who, around the world, endorsed our Open Letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

On the eve of the United Nations' World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), to be held here in Durban, we state once again that Mr. Kofi Annan has not responded to the official request we made for him to receive us. He did not reply to the letter we sent him.

We, the undersigned, solemnly declare that we cannot accept this seemingly blatant refusal to meet with us. The issues we raise are far too serious to be disregarded, and we therefore ask again to be received. Mr. Kofi Annan must receive us!

Everything that has happened so far clearly illustrates that the problems and issues we have raised in our Open Letter will not be part of the UN-organized Conference later this week.

We ask again the simple questions, whose answers are known by the workers and peoples of the world:

- Is it possible to fight against discrimination without fighting against all forms of privatization, without fighting in defense of all public services and for the renationalization of all the public services which have been privatized thus far?

- Is it possible to fight against discrimination without clearly defending all the social protection systems (health benefits, pension schemes)?

- Is it possible to fight against discrimination without standing clearly for the total and immediate cancellation of the debt, which strangles the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America? This debt is not the peoples' debt; they don't have to pay it.

- Is it possible to fight against discrimination without defending and preserving the labor codes in every country and without demanding the ratification of ILO conventions, such as ILO convention 111, which bans all discrimination based on race, religion, gender, etc.? ILO Convention 111 has not been ratified by such countries as the United States - which to date has not attended a single conference organized by the United Nations to address issues of racism and discrimination. It is particularly necessary to defend and demand the implementation of ILO Conventions that are in the process of being jettisoned; namely, ILO Conventions 89 (banning child labor) and 103 (on maternity rights).

- Is it possible to fight against discrimination without demanding that an end be put to the Structural Adjustment Policies and IMF plans that organize the plunder of the peoples and nations of the world?

- Is it possible to fight against discrimination without clearly standing for the unconditional release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been on death row for nearly 20 years in the United States for a murder he did not commit, as well as others like him on death row whose only sin is their race? This is the demand of hundreds of thousands of people who around the world have endorsed or supported an Open Letter to Mr. Kofi Annan asking him that a United Nations resolution be passed to save Mumia.

- Is it possible to fight against discrimination without denouncing the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the European Union, etc., as responsible for the preparation of the so-called "ethnic wars" that are tearing up the world? These wars are the direct result of the competition waged by the main capitalist powers and multinationals to control zones of influence and natural resources.

- Is it possible to fight against discrimination without questioning the role played by the UN in these conflicts; for instance in Iraq, the Balkans, Somalia, Rwanda and Burundi? The evidence readily available clearly shows the complicity of the United States, France and the United Nations in allowing a genocide to proceed without doing anything to stop it.

- Is it possible to fight against racism in Burundi via the auspices of the UN, when the UN is transforming Burundi into a protectorate, carving up the institutions along ethnic lines, implementing privatizations and sending foreign troops, thereby preparing a genocide on an even-greater scale?

- Is it possible to fight against discrimination without reaffirming the rights of all the peoples to self-determination - in particular the right of return for the Palestinian people, as well as their right to their land and to their sovereignty?

These questions and many more highlight the call we are making to workers and peoples all over the world to continue their fight against these big international financial institutions and the countries that are backing them with such determination and vigilance.

>From the documents published in preparation of both the UN Conference Against Racism and the NGO Forum - which, for all intents and purposes, is part of the UN Conference - it is clearly established that none of these questions will be addressed, nor will there be forthcoming any answers that respond to the vital needs of workers and peoples.

We can see that the only "solution" they propose consists in "demanding" a closer association of the peoples and their organizations to the plans of the IMF and World Bank. The only "solution" proposed consists in a total association of labor organizations in the enforcement of the plans of privatization and deregulation. This appears to be the main function of this UN World Conference and of this NGO Forum.

Nevertheless, we can say that at the very moment the UN Conference is held, the General Strike of South African workers called by the trade union organizations shows that more than ever before the society we live in is marked by the confrontation of social classes with antagonistic interests.

On the one side, there is a minority of exploiters, speculators and profiteers who concentrate within their hands the private ownership of the means of production and constantly use the international institutions in order to try to associate the workers and their organizations to the mechanisms of their own exploitation. On that same side, one also finds all the international institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and European Union, etc., as well as all the governments - whatever their political stripe - that accept to be the tools of these institutions.

On the other side, however, stand the large majority of the exploited and oppressed, whose only means of action is the defense and strengthening of their organizations, their independent labor action and their ability to defend themselves by fighting back against those whose plans are to destroy and liquidate their gains - all won through bitter struggle - and in the process divide them.

This is why we the undersigned hereby decide:

a) to renew our demand that we be received by Mr. Kofi Annan here in Durban. He must receive us! We have been mandated by representative organizations from all over the world. Democracy dictates that we be heard and answered.

b) to call on the workers and their organizations on an international level to prepare the International Conference Against Deregulation and Privatization, to be held in Berlin, Germany, in February 2002. For our own part, we volunteer ourselves as provisional delegates to this conference.

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