PREMIER'S REMARKS
Programme Director
Comrades leaders of Popcru and fraternal organizations
Delegates
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen,
On behalf of our provincial government and the people of Mpumalanga, I am happy to welcome you to Badplaas and to the province of the Rising Sun.
We are most honoured that you elected to hold this important fourth national congress in our province. I hope and trust that at the end of this conference we will all be enriched by your deliberations.
We are pleased that you are here because we count you as a critical component in our drive to speed up change.
The people of our province will therefore expect that out of this extraordinary gathering will come a message and a programme that will indeed give impetus to our call for a better life for all our people.
Believe me when I say that the hospitality and warmth you will experience in this province in the next few days may just see some of apply for positions in our police stations and prisons.
Over the next few days you will, I am told, help define the challenges facing the trade union movement and to assist in finding solutions for the benefit of all workers.
Comrades, we meet a few weeks after Cosatu met in its ordinary session to discuss, amongst other things, the nature of the National Democratic Revolution and the ground covered in eliminating women's oppression.
Your federation reached the correct conclusion that COSATU continues to mellow as a workers' movement and that its hegemony and political cohesion was indeed continuing.
COSATU was also right in coming to the conclusion that the federation largely retains its major strengths organizationally and that it has not compromised its values and traditions, in particular the culture of open debate and frankness.
This is what I hope and expect this fourth congress to do – debate and differ without calling each other names like thieves, liars, counter-revolutionary an d so on.
Let us not waste time on those things that seem to divide us. Let us concentrate on those that unite us – working for a better life for all our people. We need to do that because quite clearly we have not yet won the struggle against poverty, ignorance and disease – and arrogance.
Arrogance from members of the former ruling group who could not imagine themselves living under a system of democratic and non-racial majority rule.
A few days ago we saw the “Kortbroek” calling on our Minister to resign. It is people like these who accuse our government of failing the people. Where were they when your members revolted against the establishment in the 80s and proclaimed that enough is enough.
They were nowhere to be seen when our people sacrificed their lives, served jail sentences and were driven into banishment and exile because they dared to struggle for democracy.
Comrades, our revolutionary tasks ahead of us are very clear. The challenge facing us is to respond to them like revolutionaries. United there is little we cannot do in a host of co-operative ventures in our fight against poverty.
Divided there is little we can do, for we dare not meet the powerful challenge of poverty alleviation and job creation at odds and split asunder.
We shall not always hope to find you strongly supporting our views as government, but we shall always hope to find you strongly supporting our quests to work for a better life for all.
Let us continue our united task of making Mpumalanga the province it should be and banish hunger, disease and famine from the face of our beautiful country and province. But we can only do that when we are a house united.
The forces opposed to democracy are hard at work. They want us, as an Alliance, to spend our time fighting and destroying one another.
I see that later this afternoon Comrade Blade Nzimande will be discussing the challenges facing the trade union movement in this age of globalisation.
It is important to have a clear understanding of the tasks of the national democratic revolution. And to have a clear grasp of the context within which this revolution is unfolding. This includes the process of globalization and the behaviour of capital within that process.
None of our economies can avoid confronting globalization. Indeed, globalization is like a tidal wave that can either submerge nations in its wake or move them forward in its crest.
In trying to define a role for the trade union movement, we must never forget that there are forces for change; and then there are reactionary forces, bent on retaining at all costs the privileges and power acquired under apartheid.
Finally, don't forget to discuss how you are going to tackle the important task of strengthening each of the Alliance partners and how you are going to strengthen the Alliance itself.
A few days from today we will be celebrating the 25 th anniversary of he 1976 Uprisings. I appeal to you all to go there in large numbers.
We wish this important Fourth National Congress of Popcru success.
I thank you.