The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) condemns President Cyril Ramaphosa’s launch of Phase 3 of the Government-Business Partnership as confirmation of what we have warned workers about for years: big business is no longer merely lobbying the state, it is increasingly being invited to help run it.
When Cyril Ramaphosa, himself a multibillionaire with deep roots in corporate South Africa, became President, SAFTU warned against illusions that his administration would place the interests of workers above those of big business.
When the so-called Government of National Unity (GNU) was formed, we warned again that worse days were coming for the working class.
Phase 3 of the Government-Business Partnership confirms our worst fears.
What is unfolding is a full-blown nightmare and an intensification of the class assault on workers and the poor.
BIG BUSINESS HAS BEEN GIVEN A SEAT AT THE CONTROLS
SAFTU is not opposed to government meeting business. But this has gone far beyond consultation. Corporate South Africa now enjoys structured access to the Presidency, Ministers and senior state officials and participates directly in programmes covering electricity, rail, ports, water, infrastructure, mining, agriculture and other strategic sectors.
Yet organised labour is not a party to this bilateral.
Workers are expected to accept the consequences of economic decisions negotiated between government and business while their organisations remain outside the room.
This is not social dialogue.
It is certainly not the social compact envisaged through NEDLAC.
It is the increasing capture of economic policymaking by big business.
The contradiction could not be more obscene. Corporate executives sit around tables with the President discussing the future of the economy, while workers demanding insourcing in Johannesburg have marched and even slept outside the Mayor’s office, only to be ignored.
Business gets a partnership.
Workers get barricades and closed doors.
OPERATION VULINDLELA IS THE VEHICLE
The President’s speech makes clear that Phase 3 will deepen the structural reforms driven through Operation Vulindlela.
The programme is unmistakable: complete Eskom’s unbundling, deepen the electricity market, expand private train operations, increase private participation in infrastructure and increasingly turn public services and strategic state assets into fields for private accumulation.
Workers must understand what is being packaged under innocent-sounding words such as “reform”, “partnership” and “private-sector participation”.
This is a fundamental transfer of economic power from the democratic state towards private capital.
Eskom and Transnet were built as national strategic assets. Electricity, rail, ports and water are not commodities whose development should depend upon where private investors can extract the highest returns. SAFTU rejects the transformation of the state into a mere facilitator of private profit.
43.8% EXPANDED UNEMPLOYMENT AND THEY OFFER MORE OF THE SAME
The greatest indictment of this economic model is the unemployment catastrophe it has already produced. South Africa’s expanded unemployment rate is 43.8%, while the broadest measure of labour underutilisation, LU4, stands at 46.3%.
Almost one in every two people in the extended labour force is underutilised.
Yet President Ramaphosa tells the country that this same economic direction will now deliver one million additional jobs by 2030.
Why should workers believe this?
For decades we have been told that fiscal discipline, inflation targeting, investor confidence, liberalisation and structural reforms would produce investment and jobs.
Instead, factories have closed. Manufacturing has declined. Communities have been deindustrialised. Poverty wages have spread. Inequality remains obscene and millions have been condemned to unemployment.
Now we are told that another dose of the same medicine that helped create the disease will provide the cure.
It will not.
SOUTH AFRICA CANNOT PRIVATISE ITS WAY OUT OF MASS UNEMPLOYMENT
The missing centrepiece of the President’s programme is a serious industrialisation strategy. South Africa cannot mine, consume and tourist itself into prosperity.
We need manufacturing. We need beneficiation of our minerals instead of exporting raw materials and importing finished products. We need localisation, technological development and the reconstruction of domestic value chains.
We need massive public investment and a capable developmental state.
Instead of rebuilding that state, the GNU increasingly outsources its responsibilities and then celebrates private capital for performing functions the state has deliberately weakened its own capacity to perform.
Public-private partnerships cannot substitute for state capacity.
Wage subsidies cannot substitute for industrialisation. Investor confidence cannot substitute for decent jobs. And privatisation cannot substitute for development.
THE WORKING CLASS MUST NOT PAY FOR THE GNU’S PROJECT
SAFTU warned that the GNU would shift the political centre of gravity further towards the interests of capital.
Workers should now judge it by what it does, not what it calls itself. The Government-Business Partnership reveals whose voices carry the greatest weight. When big business speaks, government creates structures through which CEOs can directly engage the Presidency.
When workers demand permanent jobs, insourcing, decent wages and functioning public services, they are told there is no money, subjected to austerity or simply ignored. That is class politics.
SAFTU therefore rejects Phase 3 of the Government-Business Partnership as a substitute for genuine democratic social dialogue and economic transformation.
We demand a radically different path: state-led industrialisation, public ownership of strategic infrastructure, beneficiation and localisation, massive public investment, an end to austerity, decent work and the rebuilding of Eskom, Transnet and other SOEs as powerful developmental instruments.
Above all, organised labour and working-class communities must have a decisive voice in determining the economic future of this country. With expanded unemployment at 43.8% and labour underutilisation at 46.3%, the working class cannot remain outside the room while billionaires, CEOs and politicians decide its future.
We warned that worse days were coming.
Phase 3 tells us that those days have arrived.
The answer cannot be despair.
The working class must organise, unite and fight back.
A statement was issued on behalf of SAFTU by the General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi.
For media inquiries, contact the National Spokesperson at
Newton Masuku
newtonm@saftu.org.za
0661682157
Media Officer
Asive Dyani
0719019564
