Contents
- WFTU Trade Union International Public Service & Allied [Tui-Ps&A] Message For Wftu 03rd October 2022 International Action Day
- NEHAWU Statement On The 77th Anniversary Of The World Federation Of Trade Unions
- COSATU wishes the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) a revolutionary 77th Anniversary
- SACP statement of support for World Day for Decent Work on 7 October 2022
- MP Bacede Mabuza’s representative to officially open pro-democracy Gogo Mathuntjwa’s new house.
- International support needed for pro-democracy campaign in Swaziland
- Venezuela and Palestine ratify solidarity and bilateral cooperation
WFTU Trade Union International Public Service & Allied [Tui-Ps&A] Message For Wftu 03rd October 2022 International Action Day
Monday October 03, 2022
The World Federation of Trade Unions [WFTU] Trade Union International Public Services and Allied [TUI PS & A] joins millions of workers from across the world in the family of the World Federation of Trade Unions [WFTU] as it commemorates its founding through the intensification of working class struggles across all fronts, and in all aspects of social life.
In this epoch workers are confronted by the ongoing capitalist crisis resulting from the crisis of over-accumulation, the failure of governments to prepare and respond to pandemics such as COVID-19, imperialist wars driven by capitalist greed, the deteriorating working conditions, decreasing wages, attacks on their pensions and divisive actions from the yellow trade union movement – it is an opportune time to mobilise under the WFTU general slogan:
- We will not pay for the capitalist crisis and the imperialist wars
- Wage and pensions increase now
- Struggle in solidarity – Internationalism
Even before the outbreak, workers and the working class broadly were already confronted by deteriorating living conditions brought about by their pauperisation through the informalisation of work, declining livelihoods resulting from the decline of real wages over time, the privatisation of essential state provided social services, under staffing in the public health sector, health problems brought about by capitalist driven environmental degradation etc. So, as the red trade union movement, we are fully aware that the present patterns of economic crisis confronting the world predate the pandemic.
The increasing energy prices and deteriorating economic outlook that confront many ordinary people across the world does not necessarily result from the war in Ukraine, but from imperialist completion for resources and spheres of influence that manifest in illegal sanctions, regime change wars, trade wars, sponsor of terrorism etc. It was in this context that the world has witnessed the outbreak of wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine. The common denominator in all of this is the US led NATO alliance which the Americans use to expand and preserve its global imperialist agenda in the name of “democracy” and “human rights”.
Under such conditions all progressive working class organisations must support the struggles of all working class peoples from all corners of the world in every country. Indeed, as Marx said; the working class has no country – the working class in every country has the primary responsibility of confronting and fighting first and foremost the bourgeoisie of its own country. For it is the bourgeoisies of our own countries in collaboration with international capital that are responsible for the hardships we are faced with. As we engage in such a struggle we are also called upon to do international work through engagement in solidarity work against imperialist and all its ugly manifestations.
Domestically; we are called upon to intensify the struggle against capitalist imperialism through our struggles for better working conditions, living wages, the centrality of the state in providing services to the people, protection of our environmental habitat and many other struggles that are crucial for obtaining a quality life for the working class.
The WFTU 77th anniversary, to us, serves as a reminder of the struggles we have waged and the responsibilities that lie ahead for the working class and its organisations.
Long Live WFTU!!!
77 Years of Unbroken Working Class Struggles against Capitalist Barbarism for Socialism!!!
Long Live WFTU - Long Live
END
Issued by Zola Saphetha: General Secretary (WFTU-TUI-PS&A)
Media Enquiries: Clever Banganayi (Information & Publicity) 0721426625 clever@nehawu.org.za
NEHAWU Statement On The 77th Anniversary Of The World Federation Of Trade Unions
Monday October 03, 2022
MEDIA STATEMENT - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] conveys its militant salute to the World Federations of Trade Unions [WFTU] on the occasion of its 77th anniversary.
WFTU was established on the 3rd October 1945 in Paris, as a militant international class-oriented federation fighting against capitalism and imperialism for a society without exploitation of man by man.
This year’s international day of action marking the 77th anniversary of WFTU makes the clarion call for demands concerning health, collective bargaining, trade union freedoms and rights, protection of the environment, elimination of racism and xenophobia, solidarity of the workers under the slogan:
- We will not pay for the capitalist crisis and the imperialist wars
- Wage and pensions increase Now
- Struggle in solidarity – Internationalism
The 77th anniversary is taking place against the background of international geopolitical and economic developments which have created challenges for the working-class and principal among these is the complete failure of the barbaric global capitalist system.
Equally, this year’s anniversary takes place on the backdrop of a successful WFTU 18th World Congress held on 6-8 May 2022. The 18th congress emerged with resounding resolutions which seek to further propel the class oriented revolutionary struggles with a primary task of building WFTU and continuous strengthening of WFTU lines, which is fundamental so that the organisation continues playing its role as the most consistent and steadfast defender of workers' rights.
The congress emerged with imperative interventions which included amongst others; the fight to improve living standards of workers, defence of collective bargaining; social security, fighting unemployment, defending the rights of immigrants, health and safety at the workplace, and the end to imperialist wars.
Lastly, as NEHAWU we are fully committed and rally behind WFTU in implementing the outcomes of the 18th congress. We will work shoulder to shoulder with our international class-orientated federation [WFTU] to wage a relentless struggle in defence of workers and the working-class in general.
We congratulate our international class-oriented trade union federation for this historic milestone of 77 Years.
Long Live WFTU!
END
Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat
Zola Saphetha (General Secretary) at 082 558 5968;
December Mavuso (Deputy General Secretary) at 082 558 5969;
Lwazi Nkolonzi (NEHAWU National Spokesperson) at 081 558 2335 or email: lwazin@nehawu.org.za
Visit NEHAWU website: www.nehawu.org.za
COSATU wishes the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) a revolutionary 77th Anniversary
October 3, 2022
Special Note: Happy 36th Anniversary to COSATU. Formed December 1985
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) wishes the militant worker’s movement, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) a successful 77th Anniversary.
This anniversary takes place during a very difficult period for workers of the world, who are heavily affected by the COVID-19 inspired economic crisis and anti-workers measures taken in most countries.
For close to eight decades, WFTU has been at the forefront in leading the class-oriented struggles of the world working class and we still look at it to provide that leadership in a period of sharpening of the workers’ problems, social injustice, and imperialist rivalries.
The recently convened and successful WFTU 18th World Congress shaped the wayforward for the working class and adopted solid revolutionary decisions that will give new momentum to the workers’ struggles and the development of our big, class-oriented trade union family.
The rising unemployment in the country and the world remains a big problem. This massive unemployment creates a reserve army of cheap labour which is inherent and beneficial to the capitalist system South Africa has. Capitalism views labour as a cheap commodity to be exploited for profit maximization.
COSATU reiterates its commitment to working hand in glove with the WFTU, to push back against a capitalist onslaught and defend collective bargaining. We wish the class-oriented federation another seven decades of revolutionary activism and radicalism on behalf on the global working class.
Long Live Workers Struggle!
Long Live International Solidarity!
Issued by COSATU
Sizwe Pamla (Cosatu National Spokesperson)
Tel: 011 339 4911
Fax: 011 339 5080
Cell: 060 975 6794
SACP statement of support for World Day for Decent Work on 7 October 2022
7 October 2022
South African Communist Party
The South African Communist Party (SACP) fully supports the workers of our country in marking the World Day for Decent Work on Friday, 7 October 2022. We support the countrywide marches as led by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
The SACP adds to COSATU’s voice in calling upon workers, across all union and federation affiliation, as well as community members, to support the nationwide action in their respective provinces. In particular, the SACP supports the action for a change in policy direction to create decent work and radically reduce unemployment, poverty, and inequality. The unity of workers is essential. We must all promote and build it through united action.
The SACP, coming out of its 15th National Congress in mid-July, committed itself to continue pursuing wide working-class unity. This includes deepening the efforts to achieve greater trade union unity, build popular left fronts around the immediate interests and aims of the working-class, and a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor to take care of the future in the here and now.
The SACP also expresses its unwavering solidarity with the workers in bargaining processes across the economy, in the private sector and in the public sector alike. We call on workers to unite behind their common demands.
The SACP has just launched the Red October Campaign 2022–2023. The campaign focuses on Land, Food and Work. Through this campaign, the SACP seeks to strengthen the struggle against the widespread lack of access to land and water affecting the workers and poor, to accelerate land redistribution, build sustainable livelihoods through worker- and community-owned co-operatives, and foster self-employment initiatives, all based on productive land-use and integrated human settlement development in both rural and urban areas.
Through the Red October Campaign, the SACP is building the capacity to advance rapidly towards the right of all to work. We are defending workers’ rights—for both employed and unemployed workers.
We are against retrenchments and neoliberal workplace restructuring. As employed and retrenched workers alike know from lived experience, every capitalist boss wants to produce more output and maximises profits with fewer workers at every moment than the previous one.
Equally important, by defending workers’ rights for unemployed workers, we emphasise that decent work is about the access to productive work to support one’s life and dependents and to make progress in life.
Our Red October Campaign is against unemployment and the rising cost-of-living, including the increases in food and other consumer goods prices affecting the workers and poor. Not unrelated, the Red October Campaign takes forward the struggle for a universal basic income grant.
We campaign explicitly for a universal basic income grant to reach all adults, without a means test, to avoid unfair discrimination and exclusion through bureaucratic measures. A universal basic income grant will also give women, most of whom are black women in townships, in squatter camps, in underdeveloped rural areas, in historically disadvantaged communities, some relief towards meeting their basic financial needs. This will contribute to their empowerment.
The SACP will continue to strengthen its programme to forge popular left fronts and build a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor. This is important to defend the gains and advance the aims and interests of the working-class.
It is essential for workers to unite and deepen the struggle for decent work, to push back against retrenchments and corruption, to improve health and safety, ensure work and income security, and protect the hard-won social dialogue processes and institutions, such as collective bargaining and collective agreements. Workers must stand up and unite to advance and protect their rights and fight for opportunities for young workers, who have the highest unemployment rate of all age groups, with young black workers the most affected.
The SACP has fought side by side with the workers against capitalist exploitation. We will continue to do so. The SACP does not have any separate interests apart from the interests of the working-class. Indeed, our aim is the same as that of the working-class, to end the system of capitalist exploitation and replace it with a socialist society, the only sustainable solution.
The gains of the working-class struggle, such as the overthrow of the capitalist regime and recognition of workers’ rights in our constitution, are visible and speak for themselves. However, so much still needs to be done to overcome capitalist exploitation of workers and domination of society, including divide and rule tactics affecting workers not only based on race and gender but based on nationality as well.
Capitalist bosses have over the years taken advantage of the vulnerability of immigrants, employing them under super-exploitative conditions akin to slavery and doing nothing to safeguard their rights as workers. Capitalists’ inherently insatiable thirst for maximum profits manifests itself in the hunt for the super-cheap labour available. This is why the capitalist bosses in almost every region take advantage of desperate, sometimes undocumented, immigrant workers who receive no real benefit for giving their labour power to the capitalists. World Day for Decent Work must benefit all workers regardless of their nationality and in every country.
The road towards social justice must include organising all workers into unions regardless of their nationality and building not just a national but an internationalist popular left front movement. This must find expression in all countries in our region, Southern Africa.
The fight for decent work goes beyond decent pay and general health and safety. The decent work agenda is a platform to wage the struggle against gender-based violence and gender and racial discrimination in the workplace, to achieve equal treatment of all workers regardless of their gender, race and sexual orientation.
Let us actively defend the right to all workers, not to mention women workers and LGBTQIA+ community members, to equal access to decent work, equal protection from discrimination and from harassment in the workplace.
The capitalist system has not done away with the subjugation of women and with racism in the workplace and the economy. Women and Black workers, young workers included, are the most affected by gender-based and racial discrimination in the workplace.
While the public sector has made noticeable progress through employment equity, affirmative action, the private sector is still white dominated, with white males leading in better positions and the higher you go in the workplace. This goes hand in hand with untransformed patterns of ownership and management control. Only the working-class struggle has the potential to eradicate gender-based violence and racial and gender discrimination in the workplace and in the economy.
Together, let us build a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor towards an equal and just society.
ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY | SACP
EST. 1921 AS THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA | CPSA
1921–2022: 101 YEARS OF UNBROKEN STRUGGLE
TOGETHER LET’S BUILD A POWERFUL, SOCIALIST MOVEMENT OF THE WORKERS AND POOR: SOCIALISM IS THE FUTURE—BUILD IT NOW!
Solly Mapaila, the SACP General Secretary
MP Bacede Mabuza’s representative to officially open pro-democracy Gogo Mathuntjwa’s new house.
Wednesday, 5th October, 2022
By Wendy Magagula
HOSEA:Incarcerated Hosea Member of Parliament(MP) Bacede Mabuza is highly expected to officially open a new house belonging to his staunch supporter Gogo Mathuntjwa.
Through a representative, the MP will be a Guest Speaker during the official opening of the house that was built by members of editor Zweli Martin Dlamini’s Fans Club.
Reached for comments, Siboniso Mkhabela, the People’s United Democratic Movement(PUDEMO) Head of International Relations who doubles as the Chairperson of the Coalition of Community Organizers(CCO)said the date for the official opening of the house would be announced soon.
"As community organizers we are glad to be part of this humanitarian initiative.The organisers from Hosea have committed themselves to ensure that gogo Mathunjwa's house is finally completed.We shall soon announce a date for the official handover of the house which is most likely to be early next week,” he said.
PUDEMO’s Siboniso Mkhabela is the overseer of the project.
Editor Zweli Martin Dlamini said they were engaging with one respectable traditional leader within the Umphakatsi to represent the MP.
“We are engaging one traditional leader within the Umphakatsi to represent the MP as a Guest Speaker. Bacede is an MP for everyone hence we need a neutral person to represent him and the area,” said the edit
International support needed for pro-democracy campaign in Swaziland
Rachel EvansLuna Michaels September 28, 2022
Issue
1362
SwazilandEswatini
Rachel Evans spoke to Luna Michaels from Friends of Swazi Freedom, an international activist group working in solidarity with the people of Swaziland, about the struggle for democracy and an end to absolute monarchy.
What is the biggest campaign in Swaziland?
All campaigns in Swaziland tie back to one simple demand: “Democracy now!” To reach democracy, campaigners are calling for an abolition of the last absolute monarchy in Africa. To form a democratic government, activists call for a reversal of “Proclamation No. 7”, or the Act to Ban All Political Parties — which was introduced on April 12, 1973.
You do see two names in the corporate media about Swaziland. The monarch, King Mswati III, declared a new name for Swaziland — Eswatini — to celebrate independence from the British. Progressives don’t use this name.
Right now there are textile workers on strike for a wage increase to (South African Rand) R15.00 per hour, which translates to AU$1.35/hr. Their current hourly wage is said to only be enough to pay for a loaf of bread.
The Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS) is leading a campaign to reopen schools because they were closed due to anti-government protests. SNUS are also campaigning to have student allowances paid as well as fighting to decolonise the curriculum. Currently, the curriculum is very pro-monarch.
Teachers are working on unionising the school staff, with the Swaziland National Association of Teachers as they are understaffed, underpaid and working without sick leave or holiday pay.
The government is refusing all these demands which is just strengthening these movements further.
Which democracy campaign groups are challenging the monarchy?
There are two main groups campaigning against Africa’s last absolute monarchy. They are the Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) and the People’s United Democratic Movement. They are the two most active groups.
The Friends of Swazi Freedom group formed in November 2021, a few months after the mass crackdown of the democracy movement in June-July in 2021.
What other campaigns has the group been involved in?
We had a “Hands Off CPS” campaign, because in March 2022, the government kidnapped a number of CPS militants and their children. The adults were tortured. The Hands Off campaign was a successful campaign, everyone was returned. But we continued with this campaign so the government's actions could be widely condemned and to raise funds for the families who were being targeted.
We also led a campaign for activists to send Marxist books to comrades in Swaziland, because the internet is patchy and surveilled.
[We] also finished a campaign to fund a healthcare clinic. The clinic is to be able to give health care to the community. They want psychologists for families who have lost family members in the democracy movement. In protests there is a lot of violence from government forces so the CPS wants a clinic to be able to provide basic health care to activists.
How can the international movement help the democracy campaign?
Please join the local committee of Friends of Swazi Freedom in Australia by filling out our volunteer form on our Twitter account, @friendsofswazi, talk to friends and neighbours, post about it on social media, follow us on Instagram and Facebook, donate money and texts to students.
You can support our campaigns including #handsoffCPS as well as attend any events Friends of Swazi Freedom host here in Sydney.
Venezuela and Palestine ratify solidarity and bilateral cooperation
10/05/2022
Written by Enio Melean on 10/05/2022.
The ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the Lebanese Republic, General in Chief Jesús González, received on Wednesday the representative of the Political Affairs Office of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, Jamal Khalil, at the Embassy headquarters.
During the meeting, the current Lebanese crisis was addressed, noting that the entire world is undergoing a historical change that goes from imperialist unipolarity to sovereign multilateralism.
Ambassador González pointed out the fervent desire of the Eternal Commander, Hugo Chávez, to help the Palestinian people, especially in the area of education, providing hundreds of scholarships to young people of that nationality to develop their studies in Venezuela.
He also highlighted that said legacy has been successfully transmitted and adopted by President Nicolás Maduro. Additionally, he mentioned the respect he has for the ideologies of Yasser Arafat, which resemble those that characterized Commanders Chávez and Fidel Castro of Cuba.
Similarly, they agreed on their perception of the strengthening of the East against the weakening of the West, especially after the beginning of the Ukrainian aggression towards Russia. Similarly, they agreed on the strengthening of the anti-imperialist current in Latin America with the victory of Gustavo Petro in Colombia and the high chances of victory for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil.
Within the framework of the conversation, Khalil informed the Ambassador about the upcoming internal Palestinian negotiations that will take place in Algeria, scheduled for October 10, in order to unify the decision and trajectory of said people.
Finally, the irrefutable interest in bilateral support and cooperation was corroborated, as well as the desire to put an end to the internal problems plaguing the development of both countries, both in the political, economic and social sectors.
Embassy of Venezuela in Lebanon
WFTU solidarity statement with the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons
05 Oct 2022
30 Palestinian prisoners continue their hunger strike for the 11th day in the Israeli prisons in a demonstration against their illegal detention and detainment conditions.
The detainees started their strike on the 26th of September against the so-called “administrative detention” which is used against the Palestinian people in order to detain trade unionists and other militants for long periods of time without trial.
This policy is being continuously implemented against Palestinians to justify the detention without accusations of crimes for unspecified periods of time with many Palestinians being detained for years without any trial.
According to the latest statistics the occupation authorities ordered since the beginning of this year 1365 “administrative detentions”, including several children. Also, during the detention period detainees suffer from physical and psychological torture.
The WFTU expresses its internationalist solidarity with the militant struggle of the detainees and demands the immediate release of the Palestinian political prisoners. The WFTU demands to put an end to these policies that constitute a violation of all international treaties in regard to detention and imprisonment conditions.
Issued by NEHAWU International Service Centre
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