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The South African Communist Party (SACP) pledges its solidarity with Clover workers who have been on strike for about 10 weeks demanding wage increments and the halting of retrenchments by the company. Clover intends to close more factories and retrench more workers over the coming weeks. Already, the capitalist bosses at Clover have retrenched 1,600 workers. It is projected that they want to retrench a further 822 workers by the end of February.

The retrenchments will be adding to the already crisis-high levels of unemployment in our country. According to Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey for Quarter 3, 2021, South African has an unemployed population of approximately 12.5 million active and discouraged work seekers.

While workers have been made sacrificial lambs for the crisis-hit capitalist system, capitalist bosses mostly smiled all the way to the bank with hefty bonuses and dividends. It is things like this that widen the already crisis-high inequality gap in terms of both income and wealth. In 2016 already it was estimated that the top 10 per cent of the population owned approximately 95 per cent of all wealth in our country, while 80 per cent of the population owned no wealth at all. 

The unemployment and inequality crises, as well as the associated mass poverty crisis, have been worsening during the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers need to unite across union and federation affiliation, and independent of nationality, in defending their collective rights and engaging in struggles against the multiple crises of unemployment, poverty, inequality, social reproduction, neoliberalism and its austerity agenda. 

The SACP calls upon workers across South Africa to unite in defending their rights. While the fight for the immediate needs of workers is crucial, it is even more pivotal for workers to remember that these struggles must be aimed at the ultimate dismantling of the exploitative capitalist system, a system which creates billionaires on the one hand and immense misery on the other.

Issued by SACP