Date: 04/11/2010
Source: The Congress of South African Trade Unions
Title: Cosatu: Losi: Address by Cosatu the deputy president, on the former Cosatu president John Gomomo, Port Elizabeth

The COSATU provincial chairperson,

The entire Provincial Executive Committee of COSATU present here today

The leadership of the Alliance present

The MDM and civil society formations present today

Comrades and compatriots

The family of comrade John Gomomo

Please accept warm greetings from the COSATU central Executive Committee and the entire two million members of COSATU across the length and breadth of our country.

To the family of comrade Gomomo, please know that I have been sent all the members of COSATU and our movement to say thank you for giving us comrade Gomomo to lead the revolution.

Perhaps firstly I would like to remind comrades that on the 4th December COSATU will be celebrating 25 years of unbroken struggle with and for the working class and the poor. The family of comrade John Gomomo is invited; all the structures of our movement and the progressive forces are invited.

We will provide free transport from all over the country and we want workers to come there with their partners and families. There will be music from the finest South African artists. Think about any name in the music industry - they will be there. All we need from you is to tell workers in the factories and members of the ANC, the SACP, SANCO, COSAS and SASCO to come and enjoy this historic festival of workers.

Comrades and friends

We are gathered here today to reflect on the life and times of this great leader of our glorious movement whose life can best be described through the words of Maurice Cornford, that "Freedom is not an innate quality of the will, nor is it any sort of gift or endowment which God or nature has bestowed upon man. It is something which is won and which is won gradually, bit by bit, created and realised in the course of ages of human social activity.

"Man is born with no freedom whatever but is born as a creature determined by circumstances independent of his will. But thanks to his social life and the laws of its development, he gradually develops in social practice those capacities which make him become free. This he does in struggle with external nature, in social and class struggle and also in individual struggle. He creates for himself and wins for himself such freedom as he possesses and so he can never possess more than he has created and won for himself".

Like many of our people who were born on farms his birth date is not clear. It was registered as 1945 and also as 16 December 1946. He was one of the seven children born to the late Ndabeni Mnozotho and Nonga Stofile Mpondo.

Comrade John Gomomo was serious minded from his early age. He received his primary education from Ntlaka lower Primary School and Mary Mount High School. Because of poverty he had to leave school in grade 8 to look for a job, but because he was determined to study, he subsequently completed his matriculation through correspondence courses.

Only a serious minded young person can actually do that. We wish our youth today, who think it is fashionable not to study, and who think chasing tenders and getting rich quick is the answer, can take lessons from this great leader. South Africa needs serious minded people who can make a contribution in building its wealth, not people who only want to accumulate.

Comrade John Gomomo's work experience was in a textile factory as a machine operator. He later joined Volkswagen South Africa in 1963. Here he received assistance to study Labour Relations at the University of Port Elizabeth now called the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.

He participated in the 1973 Durban Strikes and became a member of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) at Volkswagen in 1977. It subsequently merged with a set of other unions to form the National Automobile and Allied Workers Union (NAAWU) in 1980, affiliated to the Federation of South African Trade Unions.

This was a period when the union movement was under attack. In 1974 and in 1976 trade union organisers in key unions were banned and prevented from taking any further part in the union movement. Some felt so helpless and angry that they left the country, determined to continue the struggle from exile under the banner of the ANC.

This was a period in which most of the political leadership had been imprisoned, where there was almost apathy and fear among the older generation. Yet it is a period which saw heightened youth activism encored around black consciousness movement, leading to the 1976 June 16 Student uprising which marked the turning point and marked a qualitative shift in the tactics employed in the liberation struggle.

Surely the militant character of comrade John Gomomo was influenced by his experiences of both the 1973 Durban strikes and the 1976 wave of student militancy. The word fear did not exist in comrade Gomomo's vocabulary. With all the experiences of 1973 and 1976 he still chose to join and lead the trade unions!

In the early 1980s, Gomomo became a full-time shop steward at Volkswagen. He led two major strikes in 1980 and 1982, leading to the recognition of full-time shop stewards. He served in NAAWU's executive council and also served as a member of FOSATU's National Executive Committee.

In 1987 NAAWU merged with other unions to form the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA) and comrade Gomomo is credited as being at the heart of talks that led to its formation.

He understood the relationship between community struggles and trade union struggles. He and other union members played a role in building civic structures in Uitenhage. Surely if comrade Gomomo was alive today he would have encouraged COSATU to continue working with civil society formations.

The period from 1987 to 1990s in which comrade Gomomo served as a leader in the union marked an increase in the tempo of the South African liberation struggle. During this period COSATU had become the target of the apartheid system. Its leaders were on the Apartheid system's hit list. To be a leader of COSATU or any of the organisations associated with the liberation movement meant death!

On 22 April 1987, shortly after the SAP massacred a number of COSATU members in Germiston, approximately 100 security policemen invaded COSATU House in central Johannesburg. They assaulted and arrested COSATU leaders and members on the premises and caused damages in excess of R100, 000.00 to the building and equipment.
In the early hours of the morning of 7 May 1987, two large bombs ripped through the basement of COSATU House. COSATU and its affiliates were forced to abandon these offices.
The state of emergency was used to detain thousands of people and to impose political restrictions on organisations.

In the files at lawyers Cheadle, Thompson and Haysom you can see records of the level of state-sponsored deadly attack directed at COSATU. It was a time to be elected as a leader meant going to your family and tell them to prepare for your funeral.
This period however also saw the highest-ever number of COSATU-organised strikes, including a strike by over 300 000 mineworkers which led to many mine workers being dismissed.

During the same period up to the end of 1990 COSATU membership grew from 971 000 to 1 155 000. In the same period the membership of one of COSATU's largest affiliates, the National Union of Mineworkers, rose from 212 000 to 247 000.

During the same period the organic relationship between MK and the mass democratic movement crystallized. The MDM gained prominence in 1989 when it organised a campaign of civil disobedience and passive resistance, in anticipation of the national elections scheduled to take place in September of that year.

Defying the state-of-emergency regulations in effect at the time, several hundred protesters entered whites-only hospitals and beaches. During that month, people of all races marched peacefully in several cities to protest against police brutality and repressive legislation.

The story of the organic link between MK combat actions, the trade union movement labour actions and defiance campaign must continue to be told so that all generations must treasure this relationship and so that they can understand and appreciate why we continue to call for the Alliance to remain as the strategic centre of power.

It was at this time that President P. W. Botha, was compelled to resign on August 14, 1989 partly due to a stroke he suffered in January 1989, coupled with his failure to contain political violence and resistance in the country.

Comrades and friends

In recognition of his qualities as a leader and a metalworker, COSATU elected Comrade John Gomomo as 2nd Deputy President in 1989 and then he replaced Elijah Barayi as President in 1991, a position he held until 1999.

Following the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) in February 1990, he was appointed to the ANC's Eastern Cape internal leadership core, and the SACP's internal leadership group. He was elected to the SACP's central committee at its December 1991 congress.

This was a period of heightened political activism. It called for leaders of a special character. It required a combination of a militant leader and yet a sophisticated cadre. Comrade John Gomomo, with his experience as a union negotiator and a tried and tested militant leader fitted perfectly well under these circumstances.

He was an instrumental player in the CODESA negotiations leading to the transition in 1994. While COSATU president, Gomomo led the campaign for the Labour Relations Act of 1995 and the Employment Equity Act of 1997. He graphically summed up labour's opposition to the government's Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) strategy when he described it as "the reverse gear of our society".

Later he was a Parliamentarian for over eight years and chaired the Public Service and Administration Committee. He remained in touch with NUMSA despite these additional responsibilities and remained a pillar for metalworkers and leader of the federation.

He understood that at the centre of our struggle was to the creation of decent work, redistribution of income and power, industrial development, meeting basic needs, environmental sustainability and the development of Southern Africa.

Comrade John was clear that our struggle was not about trade liberalisation, financial liberalisation, and labour market deregulation, a limited role for the state, fiscal austerity, tight monetary policy, and central bank independence, as advocated by GEAR.

He understood that a struggle was to be waged to address the colonial and apartheid contradictions that remained a dominant feature of our society even post 1994.

He could not tolerate that unemployment among Africans was estimated to be 38% in 1995 and it stood at 45% in 2005.

He could not keep quite when an economic policy that peddled poverty was being imposed on the country. He was angered that after 1994 redistribution of income had not occurred. Comrade Gomomo remained worried that control of the economy and the means of production and power remained concentrated in white capitalist hands.

Comrade John Gomomo had a passion for building the structures of the trade union movement. He believed strongly in building shop stewards as a rock upon which the trade union movement was based. He was a strong advocate of worker control. He believed in building capacity of shop stewards and in ensuring that workers were well capacitated to effectively represent their members in the workplace and to be the true and capacitated custodians of their members.

Comrade Gomomo understood that there was real danger of worker leaders who have no capacity who only sit in committed without making any meaningful contribution. This is a reality we see today in SETAS and in many other strategic structures of engagement of engagement where our comrades only go there to ensure that they sign attendance register so that they can receive the stipend.

We are faced with a real problem when transformation is blocked by our own comrades in these structures simply because they view any move against them as creating the possibility of them losing their income.

John Gomomo died on 22 January 2008 at the age of 62 at a Uitenhage clinic in the Eastern Cape after being sick for a long period, though even when he was sick he continued to work and serve the people.

The best way in which we must remember comrade John Gomomo today is that we must never sell the soul of our movement to anyone. We must never compromise the struggle of the workers for perks promised by the employer or by a possibility of being appointed into government positions. We know that there is a growing tendency of union leaders who see unions as political trampolines from which to jump to positions in government or to open business opportunities for themselves or their families. Many of our unions have internal conflicts based on this phenomenon.

Comrade John Gomomo taught us to value the Alliance, which COSATU will not abandon whatever the challenges. We will not do that, especially with the leadership we saw being demonstrated by the ANC president and all the ANC leaders in the NGC.
We will not leave the Alliance when there is still an NHI to be implemented, when there is still the growth path proposal to which we have been invited to give our input, when the ANC president still consults us about his cabinet reshuffle.
We know that there are issues we will win in the Alliance through persuasion and debate but we also know that power concedes nothing without struggle.
We want to make a pledge that as COSATU we will continue in the footsteps of this great leader. We will continue to build COSATU into a stronger and more formidable force that is feared and respected by the employers and capital and all those who are corrupt who thought our freedom meant a right to loot state resources.

In the name of comrade Gomomo we pledge to work with the SACP to build it into an even stronger party than it is today. The SACP by the way is the second biggest political party today in South Africa, after the ANC. The SACP of Gomomo remains relevant as the only reliable political mouthpiece of the working class and the most reliable tried and tested instrument we can use to pursue our struggle for socialism.

In the name of comrade Gomomo we pledge to build the ANC into an organisation whose programmes remain biased to the working class and the poor. We promise that we will never shirk our responsibility to challenge the ANC as our movement where we think it is losing its focus as an organisation whose majority of membership is the working class and the poor.

In the name of this compatriot, COSATU will follow in the traditions of leaders like comrade John Gomomo and ensure that we work with civil society and all other community formations. Our struggle is inescapably tied to their own struggle.

We stand here today to salute this great leader of our people who taught us that participation in the struggle has no price tag. We say thank you to comrade Gomomo for teaching us that we can win nothing without consciously building and strengthening the power base of our organisations.

We shall forever remove our hats for this great leader for remaining incorruptible up to the end. Amandla!