UPM: Mass Rally of the Unemployed in Durban to Demand Decent Work and a Guaranteed Income for All

Click here to read this statement in French and here to read it in Italian.

Unemployed People’s Movement Press Statement
31 August 2010

MASS RALLY OF THE UNEMPLOYED IN DURBAN TO DEMAND DECENT WORK AND A GUARANTEED INCOME FOR ALL

VENUE: Glebelands Stadium, Umlazi
DATE: Wednesday 1 September 2010
TIME: 11:00
CONTACT PEOPLE: Ayanda Kota 078 625 6462, Nozipho Mnteshana 079 740 5074
SPEAKERS: Nozipho Mnteshana, Chairperson of the Unemployed People’s Movement in Durban and S’bu Zikode, President of Abahlali baseMjondolo South Africa

A million jobs were lost last year. Many people who are working remain poor. We cannot continue like this. Therefore we, as part of a growing solidarity and militancy on the part of the organisations of the working class are demanding:

1. A living wage for every worker.

2. A real commitment to take immediate radical action to create jobs for all. This must include an immediate moratorium on retrenchments and a decision to put the right to work in the constitution.

3. A guaranteed income for all those who do not have work.

We are also in full solidarity with the strikes for a living wage, the growing struggles for land & housing and free basic services as well as the long established struggles for decent health care.

Zwelinzima Vavi is quite correct to have declared that under the Zuma regime “We are heading rapidly in the direction of a full-blown predator state in which a powerful corrupt and demagogic elite of political hyenas increasingly controls the state as a vehicle of accumulation.” But while we support Vavi’s analysis and we affirm the complete legitimacy of the demands that the workers in COSATU are currently issuing we also call on COSATU to stop protecting the ANC from the anger of the people and to join hands with the community protests and social movements that have been at the forefront of the struggle against the predatory state in recent years. We need to unite and to pose the power of the organised working class against the tendency to predation on society via the state. This requires the solidarity of all the organs of working class power on the shop floor and in the communities.

We condemn the state repression faced by movements like Abahlali baseMjondolo in Durban and the Landless People’s Movement in Johannesburg. We also condemn the gutter politics to which some of the authoritarian leaders of the middle class left have resorted in order to protect their fiefdoms from the rising strength of the organised working class.

Our hope lies in the strength of the working class and our strength lies in our unity.