The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) is anticipating the forthcoming opening of Parliament, with the decisions of the Government of National Unity (GNU) Cabinet Lekgotla taking the centre stage. The decisions of the Cabinet Lekgotla, a meeting that took place a week ago to determine the government’s Medium-Term Strategic Framework will be communicated this evening at the Opening of Parliament Address (OPA).
SAFTU does not trust that this government will pursue progressive pro-working class policies because the parties forming a multi-party government are pro-business and neoliberal. Despite this, we have our expectations. Our expectations, which are long-standing demands, include broadly a commitment to social justice, industrialisation, fiscal expansion, and combatting of crime and corruption.
The areas that need immediate protection and which we expect from the parliament opening address today:
a. Foreign policy
DA’s policy for the Middle East tails that of the US government. In the Israel-Palestine case, the DA has despite the mass slaughter of Palestinian men, women, children and the elderly, supported the racist Benjamin Netanyahu and the Zionists. The comments on the DA leader, John Steinhuisen, on SABC that “One side’s genocide could be another side’s freedom fighting” were not only bewildering, but reaffirmed their racist attitude towards the Middle East.
The new administration of the state which has been set in motion by the constitution of the new cabinet, should not reverse the processes that have been initiated in the international courts to hold Israel accountable for the Genocide in Gaza. This government must further support the arrest of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his lunatics.
b. National Minimum Wage
Most parties in the GNU believe in market liberalism and think that decent wages are the enemies of employment. They blame the National Minimum Wage (NMW) for high unemployment. The new government should not review the NMW policy. Instead, it should empower the National Minimum Wage Commission to review the rate and increase it to R72 per hour to guarantee SA workers a national minimum living wage.
c. Employment Equity
Different organisations of white privilege that are aloof from the legacies of racial capitalism, including the DA and FF+, have opposed employment equity regulations. They approach market liberalism from a historically aloof perspective, which cannot comprehend that apartheid and colonialism have distorted the labour market to the disadvantage of traditionally marginalised racial groups. SAFTU supports the employment equity targets and wishes not to see them repealed. The recent employment equity report showed that the historical legacies of apartheid and colonialism continue to distort the labour market.
d. Right to strike
The pro-capitalist commentators and organisations have classified the labour laws as restrictive and giving “disproportionate” powers to the trade unions in bargaining. Parties like DA, Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the Patriotic Alliance (PA) have openly attacked trade unions. In one of the preposterous propositions, the DA wanted an independent fund to be created into which unions must pay before embarking on strike. SAFTU calls for the right to strike not to be tempered with or restricted. In the same breadth, we do not want the labour regulations changed to favour the bosses. The tendency to say there are restrictive labour laws is an attempt to carry a butchering the labour laws in favour of the bosses.
e. Industrialisation
South Africa has been on a deindustrialisation path measured through the share of manufacturing employment and the idling manufacturing capacity. Financialisation, trade liberalisation and export-led extractive industry have contributed to this. The consequence has been that interest rates are kept high to incentivise the capitalists to store their money in interest-bearing assets instead of investing in the productive sectors whilst the minerals are taken out of the country to create secondary industries elsewhere, thus exporting jobs in the value addition sectors. SAFTU wants the new government to stop export-oriented extractivism and incentivisation of financiers, and focus on beneficiating minerals here. In addition, we want government to invest directly in creating those industries.
f. Fiscal expansion
The bourgeois economists and government have peddled the lie that the government has run out of money, citing debt-to-GDP as a concern. Consequently, they advocate for lower budget allocations in the provision of public service and the production of public goods. This has led to underfunding, paralysing public institutions through infrastructure backlog, shortage of equipment and other goods, and understaffing.
SAFTU wants the new government to spend money into public institutions so that we can build infrastructure, close all the vacant posts and expand the staff establishment in the public service.
