Date: 17/09/2003
Source: Cosatu's 8th national congress
Title: Ryder: Addres to Cosatu's 8th national congress


Speech to COSATU's 8th National Congress by GUY RYDER, General Secretary of the International Confederation of Free TRade Unions (ICFTU) - 17 September 2003

President, Sisters and Brothers

Thank you for this opportunity to bring the fraternal greetings of the ICFTU to the 8th National COSATU Congress. On behalf of our worldwide membership of 158 million let me convey a message of solidarity and wishes for the success of this congress and the further strengthening of COSATU and its work.

You meet on the eve of your decade of liberation, the 10th Anniversary of the historic achievement that was the fall of apartheid and the establishment of multiracial democracy here in South Africa. And you do so to lay the foundations of a programme up to 2015 to consolidate working class power and quality jobs.

So as we honour your achievements and look to the future, it is a good moment to recall what forces here and elsewhere really do change society and change history and how they do it. Because although apartheid was a unique evil, trade unionists on all continents have brought the end of repressive regimes and opened roads to liberty.

The virtue of free markets for human freedom is wildly proclaimed these days. But there is not a shred of evidence that capital ever brought down a brutal regime or that freedom has come from unleashing the forces of the market. In fact the opposite is often true. Markets know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Capital can quite happily co-exist with nearly any form of government. Not so trade unions. We need the air of democracy to breathe. And where it does not exist it falls inevitable to trade unions to build it.

That is what happened here. It is the legacy of your movement.

The struggle for democracy has been fought and won in many countries.

The ICFTU was part of the liberation struggle in Africa from the beginning. It joined the struggle against colonialism from the 1950s, just as it spearheaded the resistance to, and ultimate removal of, the military dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s. International solidarity was needed and it was provided.

But we know that democracy has not prevailed everywhere. The political independence has not been a permanent guarantee of democracy, or of trade union freedom. Indeed, trade unions which fought against colonialism were on many occasions seen by new governments as a threat rather than as allies. Trade unions though, are just as essential in maintaining democracy as they are in creating it. We are not to be thanked and dismissed.

Sisters and brothers

The ICFTU is committed to worker rights as universal rights. We make no distinctions between those - still too numerous - who violate them.

We do not close our eyes when we see injustice or keep our mouths shut when political leaders, regardless of their past achievements, turn against their working people. It would be wrong to do so. There are no apologies to offer, just greater efforts to be made.

Beyond the commitment to democracy lies the linked challenge, facing even more ICFTU affiliates today, of making democracy work for working people, to improve their lives, and the lives of their families and their communities.

The reports to this congress show just how profoundly COSATU is addressing that challenge and how it goes to the very core of political as well as social and economic life in South Africa. You will make your decisions and find your path forwards with a very clear vision of the responsibilities and potential of organized labour.

And it is desperately important that you do so, because there is a dangerous notion in the world, born of everyday life experiences, that democracy can do many things - except improve the daily lives of workers. The idea is dangerous because it can alienate so many people - especially the young - and distance them from trade unions and political process.

So our democracies do need to deliver. Unlike politicians, market and forces do not run for office. They cannot be elected or unelected but we cannot leave them alone.

We all know that national governments feel and are constrained by the largely unregulated global economy. And it is true that international capital and the financial markets are a coercive force acting on elected politicians. But they do not justify abdication or resignation on the part of national government. It has been said that the biggest problem with globalisation is not so much that it has rendered governments powerless, but rather that it has induced in them a political paralysis which they need to shake off.

And that paralysis has nowhere been more evident than in the international community's failure to get seriously to grips with the task of governance of the global economy. And until it manages to do this, governments are continuously going to be treating symptoms, not the causes of global injustices. Globalisation today is breeding inequality, injustice and insecurity and it is doing so because of the failure to date to impose on it the type of regulation and standards which all recognize as essential to national markets.

The 150 or more trade unions who were in Cancun, Mexico, these last few days - including representatives of the South African movement - were witness to another episode of such failure. The WTO talks collapsed on Sunday and the recriminations and finger pointing has begun. No doubt the post-mortems will go on for some time. But I think that as trade unionists we can draw some clear conclusions already.

Cancun failed because many, particularly developing, countries are no longer ready to tolerate the injustice at the heart of the system and procedures over which the WTO presides.

Governments which have to frequently had their arms twisted in closed meetings stood together and said they would no longer settle for imposed deals they knew to be unfair. For the Doha Trade Round to be a Development Round it sells itself as meaning that a new deal on agriculture had to be struck. Well, the world's major powers were not going to let that happen.

The WTO stands on the edge of implosion. It can implode because of the vacuum that stands at the heart of its work, the empty space where human beings, social justice, sustainable development and labour rights need to be. The dramatic political realignments of Cancun, with South Africa to the fore, offer hope of a new start - but no certainty. And while that is positive I think we have to be very careful about claiming the Cancun collapse as a victory for workers.

Better no deal than a bad deal - maybe. But 'no deal' means a continuing status quo that we cannot accept and need to change.

Consider this. Had the deal on access to life saving medicines not been reached before Cancun it could have gone down with all the rest.

That deal may not be perfect. But it is certainly better than no deal. It has to be made to work to help turn back the HIV/AIDS pandemic. One medical authority reckons that on it depends whether 5m or 30m will die in the next five years.

And what comfort is Cancun to the 10 million cotton producers in West Africa being deprived of a livelihood by the heavily subsidized dumped exports of 25 000 producers in the US?

We need effective multilateral institutions to put globalisation on a new orbit. After Cancun, the US is threatening to retreat into unilateralism on trade as it has on other issues, and nobody should have any doubt about what that would mean in a unipolar world.

The ICFTU has been very clear that the resort to unilateral military action in Iraq was unacceptable and wrong. In addition to the consequences for the Iraqi people themselves - already victims of decades of tyranny - the Iraqi war has been a blow to the authority of the United Nations and the rule of international law.

We live in an age of global insecurity - a crisis which is social and economic as much as it is military. The way forward lies in more and strengthened international co-operation - not less. Retreat into isolationism or crude anti-globalisation is not the right one for the working people even if it may seem to have the attraction of a quick fix.

But we do need radically new thinking and new and progressive policies on globalisation. COSATU's General Secretary serves on the ILO World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation which, reporting before year's end, offers one opportunity. We believe that the South African government too can and must play a key role.

And no approach can claim legitimacy, or our support if it does not address the specific and urgent development challenges on this continent. Africa's needs have been more frequently acknowledged theoretically than they have been acted upon in practice.

Today NEPAD stands as the international community's mechanism to help move Africa forward. Its basic approach contains much that is good: emphasis on African ownership, on partnership, on good governance, on human rights. But the ICFTU, and particularly our regional organization, AFRO have had to work hard to make good some of NEPAD'S defects. To win space for real popular participation and trade union involvement, guarantees these against a slipping back into the failed orthodoxy of structural adjustment. While I know NEPAD remains an object of debate inside COSATU, and has yet to bear real fruit, I do welcome the renewed assurances won by the AFRO General Secretary from the NEPAD Secretariat last month about the trade unions' role in the partnership.

Sisters and Brothers,

We have enormous challenges ahead - but also the determination and the self-belief to meet them. I have told you that I believe that many of these challenges have to be met at the international level. And so it is logical that just as this Congress is rising to the task of consolidating working class power, so the ICFTU and its Global Union partners have been, and are continuing to work on consolidating the role, structures, and capacities of the international trade union movement. We received a mandate from the last ICFTU Congress in Durban in 2000 to push ahead with an ambitious millennium review. It has taken us a quite a long way - but not far enough. Our international movement is not equal to the power of those ranged against us in the global economy, and making it so is unfinished business.

This is why the 2004 ICFTU World Congress in Japan will be closely focused on further strengthening our movement and 'Globalising Solidarity'. It is an important moment in our history and development and an opportunity that we can take if we show the courage and the vision. We can build a new unity in the international trade union movement, and I am committed to bringing about that and a greater proximity and engagement between the ICFTU and its affiliates.

We need COSATU to continue to bring its strength, its commitment, it's authority to these efforts. Our success, our futures, are inextricably bound - by common values and by global processes which are, more and more driving national and international trade union action together.

Opposition to us and to our goals is powerful and entrenched. But together, we will show them that there is no force on earth more powerful than workers determined and united in their trade unions.

We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old.

Cosatu 8th national congress, September 17, 2003