celebration of Workers Day, Swellendam, Western Cape
1 May 2006
Today is Workers Day. It is a day when workers should relax and enjoy
themselves; and not spend too many hours in public meetings.
I am not going to be long so that we can go home and enjoy ourselves. And of
course the other problem is that it is cold.
So all of us who have been sitting here on this platform have been shivering
here because of this cold wind.
And then the master of ceremony was telling me that he is beginning to get
hungry. So I don't want to be long.
I would like to say thank you very much to COSATU (Congress of South African
Trade Unions) for making it possible for me to be here in Swellendam today. To
be here in the Overberg and to spend a little bit of time with the workers of
our country to celebrate an important day.
This year we are going to be commemorating a number of historic events. One
of them is the centenary - the 100 years of the Bhambatha uprising in
KwaZulu-Natal. And the second one is the commemoration of the beginning of the
non-violent struggle led by Mahatma Ghandi which he called Satiagraha. The
other is the 50th anniversary of the march of our women on the Union Buildings
and the 30th anniversary of the Soweto uprising.
We have to commemorate these events and others. Also the 50th anniversary of
the arrest of the treason trialists in 1956. We have to observe all these
anniversaries because we cannot forget where we come from. We cannot forget
that the reason that today we celebrate freedom and we are able to meet as we
are meeting, we are able to celebrate May Day as a public holiday was because
of the struggle that our people waged. I'm saying we cannot forget that, and
therefore I do hope indeed that as we observe all these anniversaries this
year, all of us will make every effort to participate in those
commemorations.
But comrades, we fought so that we should get our freedom so that we should
use that freedom to change the lives of our people for the better. This is the
principal task that we face. This task that we talk about every day, the task
of ensuring a better life for all our people.
So that here in the Overberg, we have to say that everything must surely be
done to ensure that we attend to the conditions pertaining to farm workers. All
of us, everybody has spoken about this, and it is indeed very important that we
use all means possible to attend to the farm workers.
It is of course the responsibility of COSATU, of FAWU (Food and Allied
Workers Union) in particular to attend to the matter of the organisation of
those farm workers. But it is our responsibility surely as government to make
sure that all of these laws that we have approved and that have been intended
to protect the working class of our country; that those laws are observed also
on our farms.
We have to make sure that we attend to this issue which continues to be a
problem, the problem of the eviction of people from farms on which they have
houses which they have occupied for a long time. That also is illegal and
therefore we need to make sure that we take the necessary action to address
problems of that kind.
I am saying we fought for our freedom so that amongst other things we can
use that freedom to change the lives of our people for the better. As we meet
here to celebrate May Day, we must say that a particular sector on which we
have to focus in terms of changing the lives of our people for the better is
indeed the agricultural workers.
We have to attend to these other things that all of us are talking
about.
All of us agree that too many of our people are unemployed, that too many of
our people need to get jobs. Now how are we going to achieve that? That means
there must be new factories; it means there must be new mines, it means we must
build new roads. It means we must extend our infrastructure in many ways. It
means that government - the national government, the provincial governments,
local governments - must also see what they do in order also to build this
infrastructure that we need. I am saying that that is what has to happen so
that we can create jobs.
We have to attend to a serious matter, an important matter which is part of
our heritage from the past; the question of unskilled people. When I grew up,
many people who worked on the roads used picks and shovels on the roads.
Unskilled people travelled from where we lived to go and work in the mines.
The times have changed. Wherever you want to work these days, it is
necessary that there must be some skill and some training. So that's one of the
things we must do. We must attend to improving the skills and the education of
all our people because the time to depend on unskilled labour in the economy
has passed.
I am saying these are some of the things that we have to attend to in order
to ensure that we use our freedom to improve the lives of all our people: to
build new factories, to open new mines, to train our people, to build new
infrastructure. It is only in that way that we will be able to get our economy
to grow. It is only in that way that we will be able to make sure that we
reduce levels of unemployment, it is only in that way that we will be able to
reduce the levels of poverty.
I am saying these things to report to our workers what their government is
doing.
The acting Premier just now talked about Accelerated and Shared Growth
Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA). That is the programme that the government
has adopted which it is discussing with all sectors of our population including
the trade union movement to say that we need to take these special measures to
build new factories, to open new mines, to build roads, to train our people, to
ensure that the economy expands, to make sure that more people get employed, to
make sure that we reduce poverty.
We are determined to ensure that all of that happens and we will do
everything possible to make sure that indeed we achieve those objectives.
We must also continue to attend to the other problems that continue to
afflict our communities: to attend to the problem of people who continue to
live in shacks, to make sure that we are able to speed up our housing
programmes.
When we talk about farm workers who live on the farms, they are not only
entitled to security of tenure, but they must also have access to water and
sanitation - all of these other things which the rest of our people are
entitled to. So we must continue with this programme that has got to do with
housing, that has got to do with better infrastructure, with accessible
clinics, with an infrastructure that is able to support development in the
areas in which we live.
So I think that as we celebrate May Day; the best way to celebrate May Day
is indeed to say, 'What is it that we must do, what is it that we can do to
make sure that the lives of our people continue to improve all the time?' It is
these things that I have spoken about that we have to do.
I think that one of the principal questions we have to ask ourselves as
South Africans, each one of us, is 'What am I doing to contribute to the
achievement of those results?'
You know before last night. I was watching the news and I saw a report which
says that some people had broken into these new flats that they are building in
Cape Town. People who apparently had been living in an area of shacks which got
burnt and they decided to go and break into these flat to occupy them. And I
saw somebody on the television news saying that was a good thing. It was a good
thing that people could go and break into houses. And he said the damage had
been R100 000. And I was watching that and I was saying 'But how can anybody
say that it is a good thing to destroy the property of the people?. How can
anybody say it is a good thing?' To take a brick or something, I don't know
what they used, to go and break down doors, windows and this is the property of
the masses of our people. It's the property of the workers of our country and
somebody says that's a good thing.
It was a bad thing. It can never ever be a good thing that anybody destroys
property that belongs to the people of South Africa; these same masses of our
people that fought for our liberation. But I'm saying that we have to ask this
question ourselves every day; wherever we are.
We are all saying down with unemployment and that is correct. We are all
saying down with poverty. We are all saying down with homelessness. And all of
that is correct.
The difficult thing is not to say down with all of those things. The
difficult thing is to answer the question, 'What do I do to reduce poverty, to
reduce unemployment, to reduce homelessness?' and I believe that's the
challenge all of us face. This is a question that all of us must answer because
indeed the future of South Africa is in all our hands. It is not just in the
hands of the government. It's in the hands of COSATU, it's in the hands of the
South African Communist Party (SACP), it's in the hands of the African National
Congress (ANC), of the government, of all sectors of the population to answer
this question: 'What do we do to change the lives of our people for the
better?'
Thank you very much for giving us this time to come to Swellendam. Thank you
very much therefore for giving me the opportunity to make the commitment to the
people of Swellendam, of the Overberg, of the Western Cape and all our country
that indeed our government continues to be very committed to the achievement of
the goal of improving the lives of our people for the better and we'll continue
with all of the elements of the work that has to go into that so that indeed
when next year comes, we can say that life for the majority of our people is
today better than it was yesterday.
Ndi a bulela.
Amandla.
Issued by: The Presidency
1 May 2006
Source: SAPA
