South African History Online

1 May 1991

I want to thank COSATU for this opportunity to participate in marking MAY
DAY, in joining with you in celebrating the many victories of workers through
the world, and to discuss with you the challenges that still lie ahead for all
South Africans.

Because the overwhelming majority of members at the ANC are workers, I think
we may sometimes be at fault in not stressing and repeating the importance of
the organised participation of workers in our struggle.

On your individual Unions, in SACTU, and now in this giant that you have
created, called COSATU, workers have struck mighty blows and won victories for
all of us.

What has characterised workers in our country, has been the determination not
to be isolated from the rest of society, not to be misled opinion that Unions
must only concern themselves with shopfloor issues.

The recognition that workers rights could not be realised outside a
democratic South Africa has made you a formidable regiment in the army of
liberation.

On behalf of ANC, I want to say to all of you gathered here, and to all the
workers of South Africa, that if the liberation we struggle for is to have any
meaning then it must include the realization of the demands of workers.

In the new South Africa we want to create, workers will have to continue to
organise, in order to defend and assert their interests as against those of the
employers. But we must ensure you will be doing so within an overall system that
is not weighted against you and favour of employers as it now is.

That is why the ANC's constitutional proposals included a workers charter,
whose content and forum is being determined by workers themselves.

It is the experience of workers that will inform the charter, and the
aspiration of workers that must be enshrined within it.

We must congratulate COSATU for the way in which your campaigns facilitated
the widest participation of workers in drawing up this charter.

And we commend this process to others.

This particular May Day is of particular significance.

It is the day after April 10th, the date by which it had been agreed that all
exiles would have been able to return, all political prisoners released, and the
final obstacles to negotiations would have been removed.

As we all know, none of this has happened.

Thousands of the best cadres of the ANC are still not able to return to the
land of their birth, or remain in jails across the country. The Government has
admitted that more than 4,000 people are in jail because of actions related to
what they call "Unrest", and yet they say they are only considering the release
of 320 possible political prisoners.

And while they prevaricate, our people are dying: Black people have been
dying for generations as a result of the policies of successive white minority
Governments. Previously, there was disregarded for black lives, we did not
count. Now the purpose is more sinister: our sons and daughters, our mothers
fathers and grand parents are being deliberately killed, brutally hacked to
reduce our capacity to fight and remove all aspects of racialism and apartheid
from our country forever.

The political purpose behind the violence is clear everywhere. Just near
here, in Orange Farm we find violence being used to support those who continue
to participate in apartheid institutions.

The aim is to drive out those who support the ANC. There are many other
examples in places where violence has broken out.

The evidence of police involvement in the violence is now overwhelming.

On television screens, the whole nation has seen and heard witnesses
testifying to the failure of the police to stop attacks, and in some cases of
actual involvement.

Yet, what action have the authorities taken.?

The next days, as we come to May 9th are very crucial ones for all South
Africans. They will determine whether or not our hopes of moving forward quickly
towards the establishment of a non-racial, non-sexist democratic society in our
country are to be dashed even before we have begun to negotiate .

Important decisions have to be made and section taken, to establish the bona
fides, the sincerity and the true intentions of those who have talked of peace
and yet unleashed this violence and devastation upon innocent people.

Let there be no mistake, no misunderstanding. The gravity of the situation
does not allow for rhetorical gestures of any kind.

The head of any state any where in the world has the power to bring about an
end to destruction. We have witnessed decades of violence against innocent
protestors, we have seen the mass media condemn those provoked to pick up stones
in the defence of the people and we have witnessed the severe sentences imposed
on people for gestures such as singing and toy-toying a case in point is that of
the Sharpville 6, where the police were able to pick out six amongst a crowd who
killed a councillor. There was never any evidence that they killed anyone, they
were just part of a crowd, or in the case of one person jogging past the
crowd.

Today men wearing headbands and smashing the skulls of people with knob
kieries or knives and choppers are not arrested nor are they condemned by the
Government. Today the police are no longer able to identify cold blooded killers
in a mob of 100's.

Suddenly the sophistication of the police in bringing an to mayhem is guarded
in courteousness.... today a murderer can walk in the streets and chop people up
as long as he is carrying a cultural weapon. This is the message Mr. de Klerk is
giving to the country and the international community.

I have often said that the Government takes measures to protect White people
in one way and Black people not at all. This is not surprising since they are a
white minority, I often wonder what the reaction of the Government would be it
the dwellers of a hostel marched onto the ??well?? land communities of White
directors or the lush Northern suburbs in Northern Johannesburg.

I would condemn them as I do now......would Mr de Klerk still talk about
cultural weapons then I thank not, think he would act swiftly and brutally to
end the violence and protect the lives of those people living there.

I particularly wanted to come to Sebokeng on this workers day. Because this
place is a very special place. Special, because the actions of the people of
Sebokeng have precipitated very important events in our history.

Sharpeville is a word renowned for the bravery of workers who protested
against higher bus ??terrifies??, because others were making decisions about
your lives, and you were not getting even the very services and amenities that
every human being must have in order to live with dignity.

From such actions grew the many local and civic organisations that provide
the backbone of the resistance that cheated all the regime's strategies of
co-opting blacks to administer our own oppression, the Demes treason trial was
the states reaction to your unbending bravery and this period can be counted as
one which brought about the unbanning of your National Liberation movement, the
African National Congress.

But regrettably our opponent has not yet been defeated. There are still many
people in positions of authority, for whom the unbanning of the ANC and talk of
negotiation was merely a tactic. They wanted time to regroup, and once again go
on the offensive to undermine a negotiating process that must lead to the
establishment of genuine democracy in our country.

Those who say they are sincere in their desire for peace must now prove this,
by controlling and bringing an end to this violence or else admit their
complicity in it.

Unless of course, the Government is saying to us that they are incapable of
controlling their own police and army. And if this is what they are saying, then
surely we must consider whether such a Government is a credible negotiating
party, and in a position to help bring an end to apartheid?

Sometimes, it seems to be forgotten, that the objective of our very long and
costly struggle has not been simply to sit down and engage in talks or
negotiations.

Black people of South Africa have given their lives, and so many have been
wasted in prisons, because we wanted to be free and to live in a non-racial,
non-sexist democratic society.

The question for us is, how do we continue to pursue this objective when the
path of negotiations on which we in the ANC are prepared to embark is blocked,
and those who have the power not only fail to take the necessary steps to
unblock it, but add new obstacles.

Whatever steps we take on May 10th, unity amongst us will be crucial.

Last year, people claiming to be members of Inkatha launched attacks upon the
residents of Sebokeng.

Since then, the ANC, COSATU, the SACP and CIVICS have worked hard to bring
about unity between the workers living in Hostels and those in the
community.

Actions of the authorities and employers are not however, directed thyroids
assisting in this process. Despite an agreement that workers will be moved and
the Madala Hostel at the Iscor plant closed, this has not been done and the
administrators of the Madala Hostel where much of the attacks are planned from
allow people who are not workers to live there.

Mr. de Klerk delivered a speech in Parliament yesterday where he did
acknowledge that the conditions in the Hostels were very poor, but defended the
right of single sex Hostels to remain, comparing this with his own experience
living in YMCS in London. He says that the Hostels must be upgraded. He does not
admit that the Hostels are used to plan attacks by forces who ??do not be
consciously planned?? but it certainly has the effect of a well co-ordinate
attempt to scuttle peaceful talks as a way to a non racial, non sexist, united
and democratic South Africa.

Mr. de Klerk may not wish to acknowledge these facts we cannot ignore
them.

The Hostels remain a source of the violence on communities and this cannot be
explained away by confusing the present situation of violence as a problem of
housing as he did in his speech. The ANC has demanded housing for all the people
and we are still demanding this as well as the right of families to live
together.

The men who live in these Hostels are not single young men without families,
they are grown adult parents who see their families once a year and yes this was
apartheid grand scheme to control the influx of blacks to the Towns.

We cannot accept the message that Mr. de Klerk is giving to the country and
the international community and we continue to say that he can stop the
violence, if he wishes to do so.

The ANC COSATU, the SACP and the CIVICS organisations have been working on
developing the peace committees with Inkatha and right here in Sebokeng we have
achieved success at the Sebokeng Hostel, where the community once threatened to
break this Hostels up brick by brick, today the people in the Hostels and in the
community have a relationship of living together. Despite the terrible deaths
which occurred as a result of the attacks by dwellers in this Hostel in
1990.

I am confident that you will continue your efforts to unite and create a
community on which all can live in harmony regardless of political affiliation
or ??conversion??.

We have until May 9th to hear the response Mr de Klerk will give on how he
plans to stop the violence and we have made suggestions to him to ban the lethal
weapons be they ............this must also include the all rifles in the Hostels
and which are in the hands of the right wing organisations.

The Government calls our call for self -defence units an obstacle to the
process for the release of political prisoners, this was said by Mr de Klerk
yesterday in his speech when as he mentioned examples of how it is the ANC and
not the Government who as delaying the process or releasing the prisoners.

This is not acceptable to the ANC, who initiated the peace talks and laid
down as an obstacle to the negotiating process the continued exile of its
membership and the criminalisation of political protest which led to the arrests
and subsequent sentences.

We have not yet heard Mr. de Klerk openly condemn the right wing parties who
march in the street with guns at ready and who speak openly on public television
of civil defence ??units which will be have the right to defend our lives and
our homes. ?? The Government has thus far failed to do so and we have issued
more than........people since the start of the violence and very weakened the
death ..goes higher .

Comrades if we want to create a democratic system in South Africa in which
everyone can participate, then we must make sure that we involve everyone in
making the new constitution and deciding what form it should take. ??That is any
the ANC is selected future political system, then the future Government and
system elections that will still are head.??

Democracy is about participation by all ......something that comes
afterwards, but must begin now and be part May 10 will be every decisive day for
the ANC and much will depend on the response of the Government to our
demands.

We are the ANC, complaints of our failure to attend meetings.

We have not heard Mr. de Klerk say he is putting an end to the violence, he
is now going to release all the political prisoners and we can bring home all
the exiles.

We have not seen the security laws scrapped and we most certainly cannot
support the rewards being a very good......

We are waiting for productive responses now.

I leave here today with this message United all our people, in the Hostels in
the townships, in the squatter camps, the struggles are not over we must use
every means at our disposal to defend the people and to defend the process to
peace.

Our aim is to bring about peace in this country and to unite all its
people................to defend this desire we will need to be united now than
ever.