Friday 16 October 2015
The
National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, on behalf of its 365
000 members, fully backs the ongoing class struggle by Wits University
students. We are opposed to the 10,5% fee hikes and continued
commodification of education, a reflection of how aspects of the 1994
negotiated political settlement are wrecking our society’s public goods.
The policy of fiscal austerity, agreed to with the International
Monetary Fund and world financiers as early as December 1993, has taken
on new dimensions, with Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene failing to grant
our university students the tuition and survival funds long promised our
up-and-coming leaders.
This
ongoing struggle is happening at the backdrop of deepening levels of
poverty, unemployment and inequality, mostly affecting Black African
working communities, as a result of the disastrous and failed neoliberal
policy choices being championed by the fast-fading ANC/SACP governing
Alliance.
Without
better national subsidies, Wits’ excessive tuition hikes are going to
be a huge socio-economic burden to the workers, who are responsible for
the education of their children. Already, workers are feeling the pinch
as a result of Apartheid colonial wages they are being paid; but most
importantly they have a burden of taking care of the vast army of the
unemployed in our Townships; squatter and former Bantustan areas. The
out-sourced workers at Wits are a clear example, with Vice Chancellor
Adam Habib refusing to undo the damage of prior administrations, and
heeding the October 6 Movement’s demand that the lowest-paid people at
Wits be “in-sourced” and paid a living wage.
The
struggles by students for free, compulsory and public education, as
promised in the Freedom Charter, will also require launching an
offensive on the neoliberal trajectory of the ANC, that denies the
entire working class and poor citizenry of our country access to
essential basic goods, especially quality health-care and free
education.
The
working class and youth coalition not only played a key role in
dismantling the Apartheid system, but also regularly swamped the streets
of our country to reject the mis-named Growth; Employment and
Redistribution Strategy (GEAR) imposed on the working class of South
Africa by the ANC in 1996, and worsened with the stewardship of the
aloof President Thabo Mbeki after 1999.
The
continued failure by the ANC/SACP governing Alliance to deliver free
education will have the effect of reproducing cheap, uneducated Black
African labour in the interests of the exploiting class and their
friends in imperialist and foreign-owned Stock Exchanges in New York,
London and Melbourne.
We
call on the fighting students not to soften their demands, but to
continue supporting Wits workers’ fight against out-sourcing, and to
remain resolute until the State concedes to their demands, and so many
others being tabled by our working class. The lack of political will by
the governing ANC/SACP to roll-out free education, as promised in
successive elections, should be a wake-up call to the working-class
youth to forge a Youth-Worker Alliance within the emerging United Front,
in order to force the State to concede to their demands and
aspirations.
As
Numsa, we remain committed to jointly work with all progressive youth,
student and worker formations towards the realisation of all the key
demands of the Freedom Charter. It is through collective actions and
struggle we make sure that our demands are met. Now is the time for all
these formations to tear down the walls erected by neoliberalism, which
serves to divide students/youth struggles and workers on the shopfloor.
Contact:
Sizwe Dlamini
Regional Secretary
Jack Charles Buizendenhout (Wits Central)
M: 071 874 8228
E: sizwed@numsa.org.za
