Date: 05/10/2010
Source: The Congress of South African Trade Unions
Title: Cosatu: Vavi: Address by the secretary general, at the rebranding of Teba Bank, Johannesburg

CEO Mark Williams

Board members of the Bank and the staff

President of the NUM and all leaders and activists of JB Marks's union

Honourable and distinguished guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

Thank you for your invitation to address this important function to
launch a new phase in the life of Teba Bank. It is a great honour to
be associated with what we hope will be a decisive step towards the
realisation of our dreams, as enshrined in the Freedom Charter: "The
national wealth of our country, the heritage of all South Africans,
shall be restored to the people".

For over 35 years Teba Bank has been linked to the mining industry and
in particular the Mineworkers. As a former mine worker I know that a
mere mention of Teba Bank evokes memories of both the tribulations and
triumph of mineworkers.

Today, I want to speak about the pain and suffering, as well as the
rise of the NUM and its victories against all odds. To us this
rebranding of Teba Bank represents a triumph of mineworkers and South
African workers against the system designed to make them sub-humans
and underclass of the underclass.

In their history, they say it was in 1867, after the arrival of the
first settler in 1652 when they discovered diamonds near the Orange
River. Later they discovered gold around Johannesburg, which led to
mining starting in earnest in 1887.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of workers were uprooted from all
over Southern African, China and parts of Europe to come work in the
mines. In the process families were not only disrupted but destroyed.
Today, our society still pays for this destruction of family life
through the collapse of moral and family values.

One of our artists, Hugh Masekela, vividly points out that men of all
ages were bundled and packed like sardines in a tin, into filthy,
flee-ridden, overcrowded and squalid single sex hostels that destroyed
their dignity. The only time when we got to see our real 'home' and
family was once in three years, if we were lucky. Many also do not
make a connection with the fact that the reason Southern Africa today
has the highest HIV/AIDS is because of a legacy of the mining
industry.

In the decades of colonialism and apartheid, mineworkers were the most
exploited and despised members of the working class, despite the fact
that their hard and dangerous labour in the bowels of the earth laid
the foundations for white South Africa's economic success.

Thousands of mine workers died and thousands more were sent home
injured or suffering from incurable, terminal illnesses incurred from
inhaling the foul atmosphere in the underground hell holes.

Meanwhile their bosses, whose profits came from the blood and sweat of
the workers, lived in their luxurious mansions and were on the top of
the economic, social and political pyramid.

It was during these dark days that mineworkers lost their dignity
altogether. They were looked down upon even by their fellow black
township residents who had forgotten that their own existence and
presence in the Reef was due to the labours of the mineworkers.

Today we celebrate workers in general and mineworkers in particular.
The launch of the new Brand for Teba Bank represents a triumph against
all these odds. We will recall the importance of the work started by
white workers to organise themselves into unions, even though these
efforts were hijacked by supremacists who believed that black workers
represented a threat to their job security. Today, we recall the
unequal contribution of JB Marks, who in 1946 led a strike of 100 000
mineworkers. We also recall Cyril Ramaphosa, who helped found the NUM
in November 1982.

This is not just a rebranding; this is a celebration of the death of
apartheid, its migrant laws and dom-passes the struggle against which
was personified by Elijah Barayi, founding Deputy President of the NUM
and founding President of COSATU.

As we launch this brand two months before we celebrate COSATU's 25th
anniversary, we are at the same time celebrating our unity as workers
and our collective triumph against attempts to keep us divided, not
just as black and white workers, but as Zulus, Xhosas, Sothos, etc.
This is about celebrating our defeat of divisions of mineworkers in
particular and all workers in general.

It is true that capitalism tends to dissolve pre-existing relations in
its wake. In their Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels said: "All
that is solid melts into air", in the wake of capitalist accumulation.
Drawn from the Southern African region, the South African working
class, particularly mineworkers, are essentially internationalist.
Because capitalist accumulation has no ethnic blinkers, mine workers
in particular have learned through practical experience about the
irrelevance of ethnic identities. They therefore remain the
foundation upon which a new South African nationality can be forged.

Despite the efforts of the mine-owners and apartheid state to split us
along ethnic lines, we forged unity in action in the many bitter and
bloody struggles to defend and improve our living standards and
working conditions. The divide and rule efforts of the bourgeoisie
were bound to fail, because the very character of capitalist
accumulation has no ethnic blinkers. The workers have learned through
practical experience, when a Xhosa loses a limb today, a Pedi loses an
eye tomorrow, etc., that "An Injury to One is an Injury to All!"

Today things are better. Mine workers enjoy the protection of a
democratic constitution and fairly good labour laws. Mineworkers now
have a right to refuse to do dangerous work and to belong to unions of
their choice. It is a victory that we scored to have right to pension
and provident fund, and to elect our own trustees to look after our
interests in these funds' boards.

But huge challenges remain, as illustrated starkly by the Aurora
Empowerment company, which has failed to pay workers their wages for
more than six months in their mines at Grootvlei and Orkney. The same
company is amongst those putting millions of South Africans at risk
because of their failure to deal with water pollution from their
mines.

The number of deaths in the sector is still outrageous, as the
employers continue to cut corners on health and safety in order to
maximise their profits.
For 35 years Teba Bank, working closely with the NUM, has taken the
responsibility for investing and protecting the savings of the mine
workers. It is one of the many companies which manage provident and
investment funds of the trade unions and I welcome this opportunity to
debate whether our financial institutions have served the workers
well.

It was in 1997 when COSATU members first made a demand in the
Federation's policy conference that they would like to take control of
their provident funds. It was in the same policy conference that they
demanded that a bank be established in their name, together with a
provident fund administration company.

COSATU's 10th National Congress in 2009 reaffirmed "our strategic goal
to create a single national retirement fund as part of our strategy to
control workers' deferred incomes". It further resolved "to use these
resources to support development and industrialisation rather than
fuelling speculation in the equity and property markets".
It called on workers' trustees in retirement funds to make investment
decisions that support the decent work agenda and to work tirelessly
to build a single administration company of the retirement funds and a
Workers' Bank.

Most significantly for us, it went on to say that "we will use Teba
Bank and other institutions as vehicles and mandate the CEC to work
out the modalities of achieving this aim". So, you see the reputation
Teba Bank has acquired among our members! They place high regard and
expect more from Teba Bank.

The rebranding of Teba Bank to the U Bank is a decisive step towards
the realisation of this historic dream. I want to take this
opportunity to thank both management and trustees for this swift move
to implement our resolutions.

Traditionally workers rely on their unity and numbers. Indeed COSATU
with over 2 million paid up members is not a small street-corner
enterprise. In South Africa we also rely on the existence of the
Alliance to advance our interests. We want, as part of consolidating
our power and interests, to slowly take care of what belongs to us for
our benefit and the benefit of our working class communities.

Days are numbered where the trustees of our provident funds which are
worth nearly a trillion rands would invest these monies in glass
buildings here in Sandton, where we only come to work and go back to
our townships, lacking the most basic infrastructure, with horrendous
rates of unemployment and poverty.
We cannot continue with a situation where our trillion rands are
administered by a handful of mainly white-owned companies without any
real benefit to members. These trillions are not worth the few tickets
for the union leadership to enjoy football matches or the money for
jam that sponsors our union congresses. We want worker-controlled
funds for a worker-led economic development.

We want to take control of what belongs to workers. Through these
provident funds we want to dictate where investments should go! We
want to lend money only to companies that will build new factories in
sectors that we have identified as holding the biggest potential for
growth in line with our growth path document, industrial policy and
IPAP2 proposals. We should not lend money to any company so that it
can speculate in the financial market and in the process, strengthen
our currency and create balance of payment problems, which then leads
to loss of jobs.

Why must we continue to build the Alexander Forbes and Old Mutual
empire? Why should we continue to use the 'Big Four' - ABSA, FNB,
Standard and Nedbank - so that they continue paying their executives
obscene salaries? Last year Nedbank paid its CEO Tom Boardman R43m
when he resigned. The Standard Bank CEO Jacko Maree raked in R18, 2m
and Absa CEO Maria Ramos R13, 5m. They have joined the mine owners at
the top of the pyramid. There is also continuing concern that the 'big
four' use their dominant position to collude to fix their charges and
to exclude smaller banks like ours.

Today, we are taking the first step to create our own Bank. Already
the campaign to create sectoral and industrial-wide provident funds
with workers having a 50% say in terms of investment decisions. The
reality though shows that unless we train our trustees they will
continue to rely on "experts" who continue to take money to the former
whites-only suburbs, to build more mega-shopping malls.

It is these shopping malls that have attracted the hyenas like
Wal-Mart. As we now know, Wal-Mart will take over Mass-Mart and soon
everything we buy in their stores will be sourced from their
sweatshops in Asia. Standard Bank and now Nedbank will be owned by the
multinational companies who, like the typical packs of hyenas, are
gathering to catch in the super-profits of the banking industry and
retail sector, to the detriment of our economy and development.

Workers do not seek to build all these institutions for them to join
their counterparts in the private sector for the continued bondage of
workers to capital. U Bank cannot just be like any other bank. It
cannot chase the same levels of profits and pay the CEO the same
salaries or have the same levels of gaps between the top executives
and workers.

This is a new Bank, with no racism and no gender discrimination in the
workplace. In the capitalist banks, young black professionals are
called names, their confidence shattered, they are overlooked; 16
years into our democracy, we do not even have a black CEO in these
banks.

COSATU has consistently supported the SACP-initiated financial sector
campaign which was launched in 2000, and is the focus for their Red
October Campaign this month. The campaign resulted in the 2002
Financial Sector Summit, where Community, Labour, Business and
Government came together and signed 13 agreements, including
commitments to:
a. Universal access to financial services
b. Legislation for co-operative banks
c. Regulation of credit bureaus
d. Infrastructure investments to address the legacy of apartheid
e. Developmental Financial Institutions to promote development
f. Ending redlining or discrimination against people living
with HIV/AIDS

These agreements were supposed to transform the way the financial
sector - both public and private - would work in future. We have made
some advances but overall we have not made nearly enough progress to
say we have achieved our goal to "make the banks serve the people".

The party's Red October 2010 call is for the Community Reinvestment
law to be updated and re-introduced in Parliament. The earlier Bill
was withdrawn from Parliament in 2002 in the hope that the voluntary
Financial Sector Charter (FSC) would deliver equal, if not better,
investment and access.

But the FSC Council, on which Community, Labour, Government and
Business, oversee transformation initiatives, has implemented only
some of the 13 agreements but not others. We want to keep the
voluntary Charter, but also need laws to make the financial sector
meet our transformation and development needs. We also call for
conditions to be attached to bank licences - as they are in other
countries - to force banks to provide adequate and appropriate
services to all our people.

There has also not been nearly enough progress on BEE. Our banks,
insurance companies, investment and asset managers - are still largely
owned and controlled by white capital, driven by profit maximisation
for shareholders and care less for what happens in working class
communities.

We share the campaign's concerns that the financial sector has by and
large interpreted sector transformation and black economic empowerment
as concluding once-off, narrow-based BEE deals with a small number of
politically well connected, and already wealthy, black shareholders.

The campaign is now focussing much more on the developmental role of
both the public and private banks. We are a developing country,
dealing with the legacy of apartheid, massive unemployment, deepening
poverty and growing inequality. Yet we can only request banks, not
compel them, to pursue developmental policies in line with the
national agenda. This must change.

We should not pretend that we are not in a struggle against capital.
We cannot be permanently begging private banks. What we will do now is
support the formation of a state bank; we will also push ahead with
our workers' bank. The two banks will work closely with a transformed
Reserve Bank in order to advance our developmental agenda.

In this regard, we will be closely monitoring the formation of a state
bank, because we know that a democratic state bank and a workers' bank
are close cousins.

This is of special importance now as government finalises the new
national economic growth path and the Industrial Policy Action Plan
(IPAP2) which aims to develop an economy based on manufacturing
industry and the creation of decent work.

The financial sector - particularly those managing the workers' money
in investment and provident funds - has a crucial role to play in
financing this strategy. It must align itself with the country's
developmental agenda and prioritise investment into infrastructure for
decent jobs, rural development, land and agrarian transformation, the
establishment and funding of an NHI, house building and education for
the children of the working class.

The challenge you face, as Teba Bank and now U Bank, is to be the bank
that sets the pace in promoting this developmental agenda, which shows
your bigger rivals what they should be doing and becomes a real
workers' and people's bank. I wish you success as you set out on this
new road.