Date: 31/03/2010
Source: Congress of South Africa Trade Unions
Title: Cosatu: Vavi: Speech by the secretary general, at the National Union of Metalworkers conference, Johannesburg

Thank you for the invitation. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavours.
The economic crisis
o Despite the 2009 framework agreement's stated objectives - that workers should not bear the brunt of the recent world economic meltdown - the reality is that they have paid dearly through the loss of jobs and income.
o In the first nine months of 2009 we lost 959 000 jobs, a new record, and workers lost a staggering R17 billion, further worsening the inequalities in our country.
o In that period unemployment rose from 23.6% to 24.5%, when only counting workers who are actively searching for work. By the expanded definition that counts workers who have given up looking for work, unemployment rose from 32.5% to 34.4%.
o In the last quarter of 2009 the situation improved slightly, with 89 000 new jobs being created, but mainly in the informal sector, where millions are involved in survivalist activities.
o To demonstrate this concentration of global extremes in our country, the World Development Report for 2006 begins its overview of the state of global inequalities by a story of two South Africans, one black and female and the other white and male. The gist of the story is that the black female South African has a 7.2% chance of dying in the first year of her life, whereas the white male has 3% chance of dying. We also learn from this Report that the black South African female can expect to live 12 years shorter than the white male, and that an average male Swede can expect to live 30 years more than an average black South African female[1] <#_ftn1> .
o The life expectancy of South Africans was highest in 1992, at 62 years. Ever since then it has fallen, to 50 years in 2006[2] <#_ftn2> . Although we rank 79th globally in terms of GDP per capita, we rank 178th in terms of life expectancy, 130th in terms of infant mortality, and 119th in terms of doctors per 1000 people.
o Some of these health statistics have slightly improved during the democratic dispensation. Nevertheless a major concern is the discrepancy between per capita output and the comparative performance of South Africa in terms of human development. The situation seems to have worsened since 2006. Life expectancy of a white South African now stands at 71 years and that of a black South African at 48 years, according to a 2009 SA Institute of Race Relations Survey. Whites therefore expect to live 23 years more than blacks.
o Such are the prospects facing black people in general in South Africa, particularly African South African women. In general, the quality of life of an average African South African is not rosy compared to that of their white counterparts. Black households are three times more likely to earn below a monthly income of R3 500 compared to white households. Being white alone significantly reduces the chances of a household earning less than R3 500 a month. African households are three times more likely to stay in informal settlements compared to white households. White households are four times more likely to have access to a mortgage compared to black households[3] <#_ftn3> . The World Development Report records that even accessing a loan to start a business ultimately boils down to race.
o The nature of income inequalities in South Africa shows that the race factor continues to be dominant. An average African man earns in the region of R2 400 per month, whilst an average white man earns around R19 000 per month. The racial income gap is therefore roughly R16 800 among males. Most white women earn in the region of R9 600 per month, whereas most African women earn R1 200 per month. The racial income gap in monthly incomes among women is therefore R8 400. The race gap is therefore overwhelmingly severe among males. A comparison between African men and White women shows the dominance of race as well. The gap in monthly income between African men and White women is R7 200.
o These patterns of income distribution determine the future evolution of chances of having a better life. To quote the 2006 World Development Report: "Disadvantaged children from families at the bottom of the wealth distribution do not have the same opportunities as children from wealthier families to receive quality education. So these disadvantaged children can expect to earn less as adults. Because the poor have less voice in the political process, they - like their parents - will be less able to influence spending decisions to improve public schools for their children. And the cycle of underachievement continues". This is what the Report calls the ‘inequality trap'. This is the situation we are in.
The apartheid political economy fault lines remain largely in place. Structural unemployment remains intact despite modest progress.
o We made tremendous progress in achieving the goals of the national democratic revolution. But as we have said over and over again, in economic terms the main benefits of economic transformation accrued more to white monopoly capital than to workers.
o Unemployment too still discriminates in terms of race, age, gender and geography. The stats underline this problem. The unemployment rate among Africans is 29% (narrow definition), for coloureds it stands at 22% and for Indians it is 13%. For whites, the unemployment rate is 5%, which is comparable to that of advanced economies. This shows that, even when it comes to access to opportunities to earn income, Africans remain severely marginalised. Africans have lived in a depression for many decades. This has generated among Africans massive discouragement to participate in mainstream economic activity. The rate of participation of Africans in the labour force is 52% and for whites it is 68%. Because of the continued structures of domination and exclusion, it will not be wrong to conclude that most Africans do not participate in the labour force because they are the least absorbed in employment. Among Africans of working age (15-64 years), only 36% are absorbed into employment whilst 65% of whites of working age are absorbed into employment[4] <#_ftn4> .
o The scourge of unemployment affects the youth the most. 72% of the unemployed are young people aged between 15 and 34 years of age and of the unemployed youth, 78% are African[5] <#_ftn5> . The proportion of Africans in total youth unemployment is 90%. Already there is a significant number of youth who have never engaged in any type of employment. This situation shows that South Africa may be in an ‘inequality trap'. As I have said the key drivers of unemployment are race, gender, location and education. Unemployment affects those with less than Std 10 the most. Almost 50% of African heads of households have less than Std 7 and in contrast, only 8% of white heads of households have the same level of education.
o Beneath the official unemployment figures lies a terrible situation in South Africa's labour market. Between the third quarter of 2008 and the third quarter of 2009, the number of discouraged work-seekers grew by 561 000. The total number of people who have been too discouraged to look for employment now stands at 1 632 000 - 5% of people of working age. On an annual basis, the number of discouraged work-seekers rose by 40.6% in the second quarter of 2009. In the third quarter this figure rose by 52.4%. Discouraged work-seekers are rising way faster than all categories of unemployment. The migration of active job seekers into the discouraged category places a significant long-term constraint on the improvement of the labour market, because in the discouraged segment whatever little skill people might have had is eroded.
o The apartheid economy deliberately created cheap labour reserves through the hated system of Bantustans, pass laws and other influx-control measures. Till today this has meant that unemployment and poverty remain extremely high in the former ‘homelands areas'. The apartheid growth path relied heavily on mineral resources, that were largely exported unprocessed, to hasten industrialisation in the colonising countries. It relied on capital intensive sectors of the economy, which marginalised and excluded the majority. Regrettably this apartheid growth path remains in place 16 years after the democratic breakthrough.
Poverty continues to afflict millions despite progress registered.
Thanks to government social wage policies, poverty has declined since 1994. Over 12 million people, mostly children and women, benefit from the social grants which government has extended and equalised. Recently government announced that 2 million more children will qualify for social grants. Over 15 million people now have shelter thanks to the construction of over 2.7 million houses. Health care has been more accessible. More children are at school now than any other time.
But inequalities are now deeper than before.
o Recent studies indicate that South Africa has now surpassed Brazil in terms of inequality. Today inequalities are not limited to the social order of apartheid but are growing within each racial group.
o The research by the University of Cape Town revealed (nothing surprising though!) that 58% of African households live in poverty.
o The Gini coefficient has risen from 6.4% to 6.9% in a period of ten years.
o In 2005/6, the national Income and Expenditure Survey found that the average income for the top 10% of households was 32 times that of the bottom 50%. The richest tenth enjoyed well over half of all household income.
o For the employed, pay is unjustifiably inequitable. In 2005/6, the average income from work in the richest 10% of households was 32 times the average income of the poorest 60%. In 2008, the Quarterly Labour Force Survey found that one in seven non-agricultural formal employees and two thirds of domestic, informal and farm workers earned under R1000. Three quarters of security guards got less than R2500 a month - and many risked their lives for people who earned far more;
o Assets are even more unequal than pay. In 2005/6, a household in the richest decile earned 94 times as much from investments as one in the poorest 60%. The richest 10% of households got three quarters of income from capital, compared to under 1% for the poorest;
o The richest 10% of households got almost two thirds of income from these assets, while the poorest 60% received 1%.
Oppression and super exploitation of workers continues, despite government and union efforts.
o The super exploitation and oppression of workers remain widespread across the length and breadth of our country.
o Capital has succeeded in restructuring the working class. We already have a two-tier labour market system in the country. Broadly the workers who are covered by the collective bargaining system through workplace, sectoral and industry-wide bargaining councils are relatively better off. They enjoy better job security, better pay and working conditions and are generally protected by the labour laws.
o But there is a second layer of workers who are not unionised, who are not covered by the increasingly unrepresentative bargaining councils, who are not protected by the labour laws and who face the brutality of labour brokers, merchandisers, farm and domestic employers, etc. This includes all those in the informal sector or employed in small operations. They are all victims of outsourcing, subcontracting and mechanisation of work.
o These workers earn much less and have poor working conditions and no job security. Unions and government have largely failed to protect this category of workers. Despite fine resolutions to organise them they remain outside the unions, and government has not developed the capacity to protect them.
o Government's threat to introduce a wage subsidy to encourage employers to employ young people will mean the creation of a third category of super-super-exploited workers.
o We warmly welcome the Industrial Policy Action Plan 2 (IPAP2) released by the government's economic cluster. This will go a long way to address the apartheid political economy fault lines and hopefully break the backbone of unemployment, poverty and inequality.
o For industrial policies to succeed however they must be supported by appropriate macroeconomic policies. The current macroeconomic stance will make even the good initiatives such as industrial policy or new growth path still-born.
o Regrettably, to our frustration and anger, the government continues with the tendency inherited from the previous administration to ignore policy directives it does not like and only implement those that the markets and capital are happy with. We are angry that the Treasury remains infected by the highly organised but conservative bureaucrats who have been driving neoliberal and conservative policies for the past 16 years.
o The Federation will continue to insist that the Alliance Summit resolutions must form the basis of government policy. For example, the November 2009 Summit's commission on socio-economic policy agreed that we are in a serious crisis and therefore we need to act with appropriate urgency and decisiveness in responding and restructuring the economy. A number of consensus areas are contained in the Alliance Commission's report which were endorsed by the plenary including:
• A concern that our currency was overvalued, further closing space for the manufacturing sector;
• There is a need to link our short-term cyclical response with our long-term objectives of transforming the structure of the economy and moving to a different growth path;
• We must ensure greater coordination between macro and micro economic policy to ensure that they help the developmental state agenda of building the economy and creating decent jobs;
• The Alliance Task Team on macro-economic policy must remain seized with the issue of broadening the mandate of the Reserve Bank and promoting a more competitive exchange rate and to report to Alliance structures by April 2010.
• Inflation targeting must be scrapped as it is an inappropriate policy instrument;
• We must use the crisis to transform the economy and change patterns of ownership in the economy, consider measures to restore wealth to the majority of the people through the use of nationalisation, as articulated in the historic policy perspectives of the movement;
• The strengthening of capital exchange controls to ensure that capital is not allowed to take money out of the country to invest in financial speculation but is redirected to invest in productive sectors of the economy.
o Most important elements of this broad agreement have not being taken forward by the government. We cannot continue going to meetings, argue our case and win the day by convincing the majority in the meeting, only for those decisions to be undermined and sidestepped by bureaucrats in the Treasury and by government leaders.
o For all these reasons we have decided to revive the COSATU campaign against unemployment and poverty we launched in 1999. We will embark on the following steps immediately:
1. Convene a meeting of the three federations (COSATU, FEDUSA and NACTU) to discuss this state of affairs in line with the resolutions of the recent Nedlac labour conference. In this meeting we shall discuss and resolve whatever outstanding disagreements may still exist on labour brokering. Further to this we will decide how we can work together more systematically to unite all workers' organisations through a more systematic campaign to challenge and change the apartheid political economy fault lines. We hope we will convene a broad workers' summit during 2010.
2. Convene meetings with civil society formations across all provinces to discuss with them how we can coordinate our efforts to continue our common campaigns against the apartheid political economy fault lines.
3. Call for a meeting with the leadership of the ANC to discuss in particular our rejection of the wage subsidy policy for youth employment. In this meeting we shall take the opportunity to explain why we reacted angrily to the budget speech policy framework, which undermined the spirit of the Alliance Summits.
4. During the month of March and April we will convene COSATU Provincial Shop Steward Councils and workplace meetings to canvas support for rolling mass action against apartheid economy fault lines. The CEC have instructed the COSATU National Office Bearers to instruct our lawyers to submit a Section 77 notice tailored to cover our demands on the following:
a) Demand for a total ban of the labour brokering system and the implementation of other measures to protect vulnerable workers such as farm workers and workers employed in small/medium enterprises who are facing the brunt of super-super-exploitation
b) Withdrawal of the wage subsidy policy, contained in Finance Minister' speech, that will further restructure working class and open young people to super-exploitation
c) Macroeconomic policy that supports and not undermines a new growth path and industrial policy.
5. We are seeking a major workshop between the Department of Trade and industry and all COSATU unions operating in the manufacturing sector to look at practical ways to implement IPAP2. We shall demand that the DTI provides more capacity to unions to engage in more research to address all structural, objective and subjective weaknesses of every sector of our economy.
6. We are launching the COSATU proposals on 26 April 2010. We are proud that we again taking a lead on a matter so extraordinarily important to the future of our country. It was COSATU that first put on the table proposals on industrial policy many years ago. It is we who started a campaign to get the government to act more decisively against HIV/AIDS. It is we who have taken the fight against corruption to new heights. It is we who stopped in its tracks the tendency to use state power to fight narrow factional battles. We are the pace setters. No one will dare contradict us when we say we are the conscience of our young democracy, a voice of the voiceless, a champion of the most downtrodden in our society and elsewhere in the world.
7. We have instructed our provincial structures to ensure that the programme adopted by the November 2009 COSATU CEC to interact more systematically with communities campaigning against poor or lack of service delivery is taken to new heights. COSATU locals throughout the country must convene community-based meetings to listen to the grievances on the working class communities and take up issues communities raise with relevant authorities. COSATU will form part of all community campaigns as we have done throughout our history. But we will ensure that genuine protests are not hijacked by criminal elements involved in the wanton destruction of property and other acts of criminality. These violent protest actions, just like violent strikes, only take away attention from the genuine grievances.
8. We will continue with the constructive engagement with the 16 government departments we have identified to develop common campaigns to address the apartheid political economy fault lines and to deepen the transformation of our society. At the CEC we had the honour to be addressed by the Minister for Cooperative Government, comrade Sicelo Shiceka. We will continue to work with him to address the many challenges faced by local governments and our communities.
9. We will approach the government to put structures in place to facilitate participation of labour in the decision-making processes on how the R846 billion allocated on infrastructure will be spent. We demand that government uses the same aggression and efficiency it used to build stadiums and other infrastructure for the FIFA 2010 World Cup to roll out infrastructure in the working class communities in order to address the apartheid spatial development patterns, build transport and road infrastructure and other amenities.

Campaigns to make our country and democracy work for the majority
The 2009 ANC election manifesto identified the key challenges and priorities we face - jobs, education, health, rural development/food security/agrarian reforms and crime and corruption.
Education
o Whilst we have made tremendous progress in many areas such as improving infrastructure, delivery of books, enrolment of children, in particular the girl child, improving access by opening more no-fee schools, etc. we have not succeeded in transforming the education system in both quality and quantity.
o The poor's children remain trapped in inferior education with wholly inadequate infrastructure. 70% of our schools do not have libraries and 60% do not have laboratories. 60% of children are pushed out of the schooling system before they reach grade 12.
o Of the 1 550 790 South African children who started school in 1998, only 551 940 of them registered for the matric class. That is a drop-out rate of 64%. Of these 551 940 who wrote matric exams, only 334 609 (60.6%) passed matric and just 109 697 achieved university entrance. That means that 1 216 181 of the original 1998 intake are left with no qualifications and, given the current rate of unemployment, no jobs, no hope and no future. No wonder 75% of all the unemployed are below the age of 35. No wonder there is so much crime and other social ills such as the collapse of family values, HIV/AIDS, etc.
o Many schools, in particular in the former blacks-only residential areas, are dysfunctional.
o In this context we warmly welcomed the selfless, heroic and revolutionary stance adopted by the SADTU leadership in its battle, sometimes with its own structures and members, to save generations of working class children from this unfolding tragedy. Recently SADTU sought not only to lead itself and other teacher unions but society as a whole. We welcomed the statement of recommitment by SADTU, NAPTOSA and SAOU.
Health Care
o South Africa's health status, measured by the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) indicators, is deteriorating. Maternal mortality has increased from 230 mothers per 100,000 dying in 2000 to 400 in 2005, with latest estimates of 575-623 deaths. The MDG target is 38. South Africa stands out internationally for the extent of the deterioration since 2000 when the MDGs were introduced.
o This deterioration began well before 2000. Much of this it is a result of the HIV and Aids pandemic, with 1,000 Aids-related deaths per day in South Africa (and another 1,450 people becoming HIV infected each day). South Africa's death statistics, with the young and working age dying in droves, resembles a country in a terrible war.
o It is estimated that at least 70% of the caseload in the public health system is now taken up by HIV/Aids cases, crowding out the capacity to treat other medical conditions. Moreover, while we seem unable to treat more than half the 800,000 needing anti-retroviral treatment, that number is going to rise to 5, 5 million within five years. (These are people already HIV infected who will reach full-blown Aids).
o The public health system facing this Aids tsunami is dysfunctional. While additional resources are required, South Africa performs worse than countries with far lower levels of per capita health expenditure. There is a disconnection between national policy and the allocation of resources. Management information systems are insufficient for decision-making, and decision-making powers are generally incorrectly located. (A hospital CEO doesn't meaningfully control staff, budget or procurement). There is clearly insufficient regulation of the private sector, though even this profitable sector is facing serious challenges.
Crime and corruption
o We will not succeed to address all these challenge unless we defeat crime and corruption.
o Crime afflicts the working class more than it does the capitalist class and the middle strata.
o We, through our campaign with communities, will lead the campaign to establish street committees to combat crime. We will work with police stations to establish community safety forums and ensure that our campaign never degenerates into vigilantism. We call on all organs of people's power to join the campaign to defeat this scourge. We cannot allow small elements to derail our hard fought freedoms.
o We must step up the campaign against the culture of self-enrichment, crass materialism, corruption and the abuse of state power for narrow materialistic reasons.
o We must not now back off from the campaign for we have overwhelming support from the people of South Africa.
o We must continue to argue that it is not good enough for ministers and public officials to hide behind the argument that they have ‘declared an interest' in the companies they and their families own. The fact that they are in business to make money creates an inevitable conflict of interest when they are legislating in parliament, a provincial legislature or municipal council.
o We insist that all public representatives must be forced to choose whether they are servants of the public or in business to make profits. They cannot be both at the same time. The succession of corruption scandals and the spread of the capitalist culture of greed and self-enrichment are threatening to unravel the fabric of society and undermine all the great progress we have made.
o This has never been just a problem in the public sector. The source of corruption is the very system of personal accumulation of wealth - the capitalist system itself, which corrupts and tempts public representatives.
o We call for the introduction of comprehensive legislation to address the scourge of corruption and greed. No politicians, public servants and unionists must be allowed to feather their nests while still in public service, by creating future business opportunities, in what has become known as ‘javelin-throwing'. We are demanding at the very least a five-year cooling-off period after public servants leave public office before they can take any such position in the private sector.
o We will not back off from our demand for ‘lifestyle audits' of senior public officials, to assist in the fight against corruption. These must not only be conducted on the national government but on all provincial legislatures and local government. The audit is the only weapon to help us to identify, prosecute and punish those involved in corruption. We welcome the Minister of Finance's agreement with the principle and are happy that he intends to use "third-party information and targeted lifestyle audits" in his battle again tax evasion.
o We reject the defensive stance taken by some in relation to this important issue. It is nonsensical to claim that the call for lifestyle audits is done for factional reasons. We have said we will be the first to subject ourselves to lifestyle audits if this will help us get a 100% support for the call. Indeed the media continues to probe into our lives. This is not targeting black people or ANC cadres, as some have argued. The ANC should have nothing to fear from lifestyle audits, though of course those with a lot to hide will continue to try to side-step and take our attention away from this ball.
Accordingly we shall:
1. Call on all our structures to step up the battle against corruption. We shall fight white-collar crime in both the private and public sectors. We shall protect individual members who blow the whistle, in line with the law, who increasingly are becoming targets of intimidation by the powerful.
2. Convene a meeting of all civil society formations who are committed to the fight to end this scourge during 2010. In this conference we shall seek support for the demands of COSATU - on javelin-throwing, conflicts of interest as a result of some people's representatives being businesspersons at the same time - and for lifestyles audit.
3. Work with the government, including the police and the inter-ministerial task team that is doing wonderful work within government.
4. Campaign for the return to the basic principles of selflessness, embodied in the nature and culture of the ANC, as the progressive left-leaning liberation movement, and ensure that we defeat selfishness, graft and crass materialism.
5. Isolate those who seek to transform the ANC into a vehicle for self-enrichment.
6. Campaign for representative tender boards so we reduce the temptation on the part of the political leaders and senior bureaucrats to rig and undermine systems for the benefit of their companies and those of their friends and families.
7. Campaign to ensure that the state develops capacity to provide services directly to communities instead of over-relying on the private sector which opens the state to bribes and other corrupt practises.
8. Campaign to expose the tenderpreneurs who through political connections win tenders unfairly and provide shoddy services to communities whilst more genuine entrepreneurs are sidelined. Accordingly we shall monitor every tender issued to ensure that services reach our communities. For this to happen we shall ask government to publish all the companies who win government tenders after every tender has been concluded.
We expressed our dismay at the exposure by the City Press that SGL Engineering Projects won a tender and then delivered exceedingly bad service and shoddy workmanship, which has left poor people high and dry, without the necessary services that they had been promised. While individuals who are not public representatives have a right to run a business, we insist that these must be genuine businesses and not a scheme to milk the public purse and in the process leave the poor without critical infrastructure.
The stories of the recent weeks beg a question as to whether our stance that public representatives should not be involved in business because of inherent conflict of interest should not be extended to all leaders of political formations. We call on the public to debate this.
We are extremely concerned that our country should not descend into a predator state where society accepts as a norm that state and its institutions are abused for personal gain and wealth accumulation. The examples of this include Angola, Nigeria and some parts of South America. In a predator state society accepts the hierarchal order that when there is a kill (tender or government business) it is the first family who must feed first, followed by all the rest in the hierarchical order, informed by the laws of the jungle, survival of the fittest and me-first mantra.
We reject the call made in the January 8 statement that all municipal workers should be barred from being active in political organisations. This is almost certainly unconstitutional and could set a very dangerous precedent for other public service workers. We will engage with the ANC on this matter so that we isolate the problem where senior local government officials abuse power and subvert and undermine processes.
Alliance

o We warmly welcome the statement of the ANC NEC calling for an end to public mudslinging.
o We are watching the space to see who in the ANC will break this decision first.
o We remain firmly committed as ever to the Alliance.
o We have identified a problem of a small right-wing tendency led by materialists and tenderpreneurs within the ANC leadership that we identified in the November 2009 CEC which is working hard to take us back to the pre-Polokwane days.
o We shall defeat this new, perhaps old, tendency, no matter how long it takes. We have decided to launch a campaign to defend the legacy of the ANC, which is currently threatened by this small band of materialists hell-bent on using their positions to enrich itself and turn our state into a predator state. Accordingly we agreed to:
1. Embark on a national campaign, implemented by every structure of the federation and coordinated at the national affiliate and federation level, to swell the ranks of the ANC and SACP and to defend our gains, in particular at the policy level. We seek to recruit at least a quarter (500 000) of our current two million members to be active in the ANC and the SACP. Each affiliate will develop a practical campaign to first recruit workers into COSATU and then to the ANC and the SACP, based on quotas informed by the size of each affiliate in each province, region and local. This swelling-of-the-ranks campaign must recognise that in many branches the COSATU activists and shop stewards are already participating in their own right as ANC members. This is the base we must connect with and ensure they too do not get swallowed by patronage and the new foreign cultures of individualism.
2. Embark on a political education campaign, in line with National Congress resolutions, to ensure that only the most political and class conscious of our members participate in the ANC and the SACP. The policy of the federation is that all unions should spend at least 10% of their income on education and training. Our credibility as an organisation amongst both our members and society is at stake. Failure of the Zuma administration will spell disaster for COSATU. It is therefore in our best interests that the government succeed on the five priorities which were backed by 67% of the voting masses.
3. Convene an urgent major bilateral with the SACP, with provincial leadership participation, to assess the current environment from a working class perspective. The summit of the foremost, biggest and most organised forces of the working class must develop strategies and design appropriate responses to the current situation. We will raise the following issues in this bilateral:
• We must make an assessment of our deployment strategy. It appears that the SACP increasingly keep quiet on major issues or are too uncritical, as demonstrated by their response to the State of the Nation and budget speeches.
• The decision to deploy the General Secretary and all provincial secretaries to the legislatures will weaken the SACP.
• COSATU is worried that the new tendency referred to above has little respect for the SACP. They attack the party even when it does not have the ball. The tendency has also been deliberately trying to drive a wedge between COSATU and the SACP, which is not unrelated to the balance of forces in society.
4. Hold another major bilateral with the ANCYL to finalise our discussions on our common approach to taking forward all the demands of the Freedom Charter, to develop a joint programme of action covering areas of mutual interest such as education, training, opposition to labour brokering, wage subsidies for the youth, crime, etc. and to finalise the discussions on lifestyle audits and, in the process, the style of engagement at the time of disagreements.
5. Continue engaging with the 16 government departments as agreed and to develop capacity and programmes to take forward all areas of agreement.
6. Defend all the leaders of the ANC, in particular the President and the Secretary General, who are currently the focus of systematic attack from the small group or tendency that the November 2009 CEC identified.
7. In a discussion with the ANC, raise the following concerns:
• The decision to visit hot spots together and to ensure that the Alliance functions at all levels;
• The behaviour of the ANCYL President who demonstrated not only lack of respect for the ANC Secretary General but general disdain for leadership in the last Alliance Summit.
• The real implications of the ANC rejecting the earlier commitment to make the Alliance as a whole a political centre led by the ANC. COSATU is already facing a serious integrity gap from members who were led to believe in the 10th National Congress that there is consensus on the matter. This now places the alliance in a crisis.
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Thank you again for the invitation to speak to you.