Date: 23/04/04
Source: COSATU
Title: Z Vavi: COSATU Public Service Conference, on 23 April 2004


Dear comrades and friends, leaders, shop stewards and negotiators from the public service unions,

Let me start by welcoming you to this COSATU Public Service Conference, which must build our organisation and ensure that our affiliates once again take the lead in the transformation of the public sector.

As we open this conference, an ANC premier is sworn in as the premier of KwaZulu Natal. We have an ANC premier in the Western Cape. Above all, 279 of the 400 Members of National Assembly are being sworn in. We shall have a new President this afternoon. On Tuesday the 27 April we shall celebrate that historic day that we descended on political power, following decades of unwavering struggle against colonisation of a special type.

As our Eighth National Congress agreed, COSATU played a central in the Alliance elections victory. That victory must now lay the basis for the continued transformation of our society on the foundation of working-class power. As a leading detachment of the working class, organised workers must build on this victory to take forward the national democratic revolution.

Hats off to the contingent of amadela kufa who went to northern KwaZulu Natal to act as ANC party agents. This was an unbelievable sacrifice that proved beyond any doubt that it is the working class that won democracy and it will be the working class that would defend it. We stopped the normal IFP fraud in its tracks and that is one of the main reasons that they lost in KwaZulu Natal. They could not commit the fraud as they did in 1999 and 1994 elections when chiefs did as they wished. Most of these amadela kufa were from the public sector and mostly teachers.

We have won elections as a united front of the Peoples Congress. We played our role and our credibility with regard our support for the ANC and deepened transformation can no longer be questioned. We are strategic partners of the government which in the process of being established - not its opposition. We want to work with it to implement commitments made to our people. This includes transformation of the state and the public service so that it can be a vehicle at the hands of our people to change their lives for the better.

Whilst we are part of the Peoples Congress we are conscious of the fact that we are a trade union. We recognise that as representatives of workers‚ interests in the public service we may from time to time clash with the government we have played such a critical role in installing.

They are our employers after all, and we want better wages and improved working conditions. When this contradiction plays itself out, all of us should have our eyes in the bigger picture, which is the overall transformation of the state and creating a caring society.

We hope that all of us learnt the lessons of the 1999 near- collapse of the relationship between government and the unions, with the unilateral imposition of a wage settlement. We all have lessons from the crisis of the Alliance in 2001 and 2002. We do not want to return to that situation ever! That is because the principal lesson we learnt is that no component of the Alliance benefits from tensions. We are all weakened when we fail to manage differences better, and our strategic opponents, in particular capital, are strengthened. Yet we can never allow the interests of our members to be compromised in any way.

Holding the conference so soon after the elections begins the process of managing these contradictions in a manner that does not compromise any partner. We want to express our gratitude to your office bearers and staff, as well as the COSATU administrators who worked so hard to make this conference a success.

The conference is necessary for several reasons.

The most immediate factors are the push by the government to improve integration between the public service and local government, and the start of a new round of bargaining. In addition, several public-service unions are expected to take forward the resolution on demarcation agreed to at last year‚s Central Committee.

But the deeper problem is that we need to stand back and reflect on our progress over the past ten years. We need to maintain our strategic perspective so that we can continue to give a lead in public-sector transformation. Moreover, we need to meet and discuss the challenges we face so that we can avoid unnecessary divisions.

This conference, then, must begin a process. It is not a once- off event, but must lay the groundwork for strategic collaboration on a range of issues. In particular, we need to develop strategies on the overall structure and functions of the state. In that context, we must manage the implications for our members of the proposed single public service.

At the same time, we need to conduct a systematic review of our gains and losses in the bargaining processes of the past ten years, as the basis for our engagement this year.

You can see that the programme of this conference focuses on these issues. The first day is dedicated to our strategic vision of the public sector, while the second focuses on bargaining issues. We do not expect to answer all the questions or finish all the tasks arising from these challenges.

In plenaries and commissions, we must both look at the issues and set up processes to take our work here forward.

As worker activists and socialists, however, we cannot see these issues narrowly, just in terms of our own immediate interest and convenience. Rather, we must analyse our challenges in terms of our understanding of the developmental state and its role in the national democratic revolution.

The vast majority of public servants ˆ and our members in the public sector ˆ are educators, health workers and security personnel. We need to analyse how they can do more to contribute to fighting poverty and creating jobs, as we promised in these elections.

In the event, the ANC‚s victory suggests that many South Africans have seen some improvement in their conditions, in large part because of improvements in state services for the poor. The recent SWOP study of union activists found a significant increase in the number who approved of government service delivery.

In part, this improvement resulted very simply because the government has budgeted more for basic services in the past four years. In that sense, the ANC‚s victory was a vote against the budget cuts of the GEAR.

But workers and unions have also made a huge contribution to the restructuring of the state that has made possible improvements in basic services for our people. Many government workers have shown extraordinary dedication and sacrifice to build our communities and our nation.

Still, we cannot deny there are still big problems in service delivery. We must overcome them if we want to bring about social cohesion and sustainable development. Moreover, better service delivery is necessary to ensure public support for government workers.

To address poor service delivery requires that we probe the factors that cause it. Like so many of our problems, the roots lie in the apartheid legacy. That is not an excuse, but rather something we must understand in order to improve our situation.

Under apartheid, the state consciously ran down government services in black areas. Our nurses, police and educators could expect little reward for their service and dedication.

Instead they faced arbitrary management, oppressive discipline, discrimination and a lack of resources. Most continued to do their best. But a significant minority became alienated and demoralised. In contrast, the public services in historically white areas were very well resourced ˆ but served only a minority of our people.

The apartheid state also installed systems that could not benefit the majority of our people. Education was characterised by racist and sexist curricula and memorisation, which could not fit our people for a modern democracy. The security services were designed systematically to oppress our people. Health policy aimed to provide high-level care for a minority while neglecting public-health crises like HIV and T.B.

Since 1994, COSATU affiliates have worked with the democratic government to overcome the legacy of apartheid.

The central challenges were to extend services to our deprived communities, adopt new policy directions that would ensure government really served the people, and develop more efficient and democratic management systems.

But various factors have made the work difficult.

To start with, through the late 1990s the new government extended services to all our people in the context of budget cuts. As a result, government workers faced increasing demands while they had fewer resources. The result was overwork, shortages of key materials like schoolbooks and medicines, and deteriorating infrastructure. The burdens were aggravated by the spread of HIV and AIDS and by rising unemployment.

>From around 2000, the government adopted a more expansionary fiscal policy. This has begun to relieve the burdens on public servants. Still, public service employment has continued to fall, despite the agreement to hire thousands more police, educators and health workers. Shortages of personnel, especially in poor regions, add to demoralisation and make it harder to maintain service delivery.

The democratic government also had to introduce massive changes in policy and programmes in order to ensure that the state really serves our people. We have agreed with most of these policies. But they have not been adequately communicated to government workers. Often government has not provided the training that our members need to carry out the new policies.

Finally, extending services to our communities has required the redeployment of government workers on a massive scale.

That was necessary to bring services to communities that the apartheid state historically neglected. But any redeployment process brings uncertainty and costs to workers. Unions have had to make very hard choices in this context, and our workers have made real sacrifices for the nation.

What can unions do in these circumstances to help ensure better service delivery? In 2000 we held a conference on public-service delivery to help answer that question. In this conference, we need to judge our proposals largely against our success in achieving our aims in this area.

All our public-sector unions have run campaigns to improve service delivery. We have mobilised our members periodically in an effort to overcome alienation, demoralisation and poor discipline.

These campaigns demonstrate our commitment to transformation. We need to evaluate our successes and share our experiences with this type of work.

Most of our unions have also taken steps to communicate new policies to our members. They have tried to fill the gaps where government has not provided enough training in key areas.

All of our affiliates have helped to address poor discipline and corruption, including by blowing the whistle on high-level officials. But we face deep contradictions in this area, particularly in the case of disciplinary charges. We have agreed that we cannot defend public servants who are corrupt. But can we pre-judge our members? At what stage can we decide that they are certainly guilty?
All of our affiliates have faced up to the challenges of restructuring. We have tried to support necessary changes while protecting our members from unnecessary burdens and costs. Our leaders, shop stewards and members have struggled to assess restructuring proposals, not in terms of their own immediate interests, but against the needs of our communities and the nation. We have drawn the line only at retrenchment, since that is never justified in light of the unemployment crisis now facing South Africa.

Finally, all of our unions have engaged systematically and seriously on policy issues in their sectors. We will continue to fight for better systems and enough resources. We must continue to help shape policies that will help fight poverty and create jobs.

For public-sector workers, a particular challenge is to work with the ANC both in the Alliance and as employer. This situation has become somewhat easier as government policies have become more progressive in the past few years.

In particular, the adoption of a somewhat more expansionary fiscal policy means that we don't have to fight so hard every year for a decent pay increase. And the government has slowed down the push for privatisation, partly because of the solidarity shown by all workers in the anti-privatisation campaign.

Although things have improved, we still have to be very strategic in this relationship. We need to maintain strong relations in the Alliance without selling out the interests of our members. We need to accept some costs in order to build a developmental state, but we cannot impose excessive or unnecessary sacrifices on our members.

Ultimately, public-sector unions must continue to fight for transformation, a developmental state, and the national democratic revolution. We cannot confine our activities and interests narrowly to the workplace when our nation faces such huge challenges.

Too often, transformation has become an empty slogan that we struggle to translate into practice. Our members want to be empowered at work, with real employment equity. They want decent conditions and chances of promotion. We need to use this conference to define further needs and demands, which we can negotiate in the coming months.

Comrades and friends, The public-sector unions have a special role to play. Not only must they defend their members, but they must be the voice and power of the working class in the state. This conference must ensure that we strengthen our strategic vision and refine our tactics, so that our work improves services for our people, reinforces the democratic state, and ultimately transforms our society and our economy to ensure job creation and equity.

We come from a major people‚s victory in the past few days, with the ANC winning in all nine provinces. This conference must build on our successes to ensure many more victories in the future.