National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA)

By Irvin Jim and Patrick Craven - NUMSA, November 16, 2016

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa welcomes the resignations of Eskom CEO Brian Molefe and Board member Mark Pamensky, and calls for the resignation of the entire board and divisional executives who are all implicated in the many serious allegations against Eskom in the former Public Protector’s report, the State of Capture, which include:

1. Irregularities in an Eskom deal with a Gupta-0wned mining company, Tegeta, which won a R2-billion profit from a transaction involving Glencor’s sale of Optimum Coal Mine and its holding company to Tegeta.

2. Eskom letting Tegeta sell off part of Optimum Coal Terminal — a deal which Ajay Gupta told the public protector had netted him a profit of R2-billion, which might constitute a contravention of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) as Eskom “acted solely for the benefit of one company”.

3. Eskom’s authorisation of a R660-million coal prepayment to Tegeta at a special board meeting, hours after the Gupta company informed Glencor they were R600-million short of the money to buy the mine and that banks had refused to come up with the cash. This could violate the PFMA and amount to fraud as the money was not used to fund the mine but to buy the shares of the holding company — contrary to what Tegeta said publicly.

4. A 10-year contract with Tegeta to supply 1.35 million tons of coal a year to Majuba power station at roughly R284 per ton from their Brakfontein mine, despite evidence that Eskom’s technical team were concerned about the coal’s quality. Eskom paid R134-million to Tegeta for substandard coal it knew it could not use in its power stations.

Eskom has even victimised two Numsa members whom they are trying to make scapegoats for this Brakfontein deal. One has been dismissed and the other suspended for over a year and Numsa will continuously fight for justice for these members.

5. Molefe’s “cosy” relationship with the Guptas which are substantiated by cell phone records which show that he phoned Ajay Gupta 44 times, and Ajay Gupta called him 14 times, between August last year and March this year. Between August 5 and November 17 2015, he was placed in Saxonwold on 19 occasions.  Atul Gupta admitted to Madonsela that Molefe was a “very good friend”, yet Molefe had not declared his relationship with the Gupta family.

All these are allegations which the proposed Commission of Enquiry must investigate, but they are sufficiently serious to make it impossible for Molefe and the Eskom Board to continue with business as usual and they must stand down.

This however raises the question of who should replace them, and also who should be on the boards of other state-owned entities about several of which the State of Capture report also expresses concern, including Transnet, Denel, SAA and the SABC.

Numsa has consistently opposed privatisation of public entities, called for the renationalisation of Arcelor Mittal SA and Sasol and the nationalisation of other strategic industries. But it is now clear that SOEs all need to be run in a far more democratic and socially responsible way.

Public utilities should have an entirely different set of objectives from private companies – to produce commodities and deliver services which people need, as efficiently, safely and economically as possible and to protect the environment and the economic prospects for future generations.

This is impossible however when SOEs are run as they are today, as if they are private businesses, motivated exclusively by the pursuit of maximum short-term profits, regardless of the impact their activities have on local communities, the environment, their workers and the long-term future of the economy, and also as auxiliary service providers to the dominant private capitalist system.

The underlying problem at the heart of all Madonsela’s allegations is that SOEs have become entangled with the corrupt private sector through outsourcing of ancillary activities and thus been infected with the disease of corruption, which is inherent in the capitalist system.

While Eskom itself remains state-owned, it has done huge deals with private companies, in particular those in the coal mining industry, many of which feature in the former Public Protector’s allegations.

This leads to a particularly blatant form of corruption arising from the SOE directors’ close relations with the state, corrupt politicians and private companies, which creates the crony capitalism which Madonsela has exposed.

When challenged by Numsa about Eskom’s outsourcing of coal mining, Molefe argued that he was not interested in owning the bakery but only in the delivery of the bread.  But coal mining and electricity generation are inextricably linked together.

If public ownership is to achieve the social objectives as defined above it will have to embrace all the key sectors of the economy so that they can be integrated into a coherent development plan of production.

This will however be impossible if their boards are full of profit-motivated business men and women. The new Eskom Board must reverse this trend and comprise of democratically elected representatives of the workers, communities and civil society, so that they are run in the interests of South Africa as a whole and not their selfish interests and those of corrupt cronies.

This should then set the pattern for all SOEs and other industries which need to be nationalised so that we can create a socialist South Africa based on the Freedom Charter in which the wealth of the country is really transferred to the people.

By Irvin Jim - NUMSA, October 7, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s. The following event is unfolding as this goes to press:

A. The origins and foundations of South Africa’s unique corruption

There is concrete evidence, and also an admission by a key individual with a conscience, Ronnie Kasrils, about the extent of the sell-out deals the ANC made with capital during the 1990s, namely that the ANC would only get political power, without economic power, and that no radical measures would be embarked upon to restructure and to transform the South African economy.

We now know for certain that those deals sold the struggle for liberation in South African down the drain, and instead they ensured that post apartheid South Africa would be an extremely corrupt neoliberal capitalist state and society. South Africa is now in that space – an Olympic gold medal winning corrupt neoliberal capitalist system and society.

In place of the radical and full implementation of the Freedom Charter, the ANC abandoned both the philosophy and ideology of the liberation struggle – which were based on moving South Africa out of apartheid capitalism and all its evils including corruption and environmental destruction, into a society free of racism, colonialism, patriarchy and one of shared human values, social and economic justice and a transition to socialism.

Such a society was not capable of being created on the foundation of our inherited racist and patriarchal colonial capitalism.

Secretly and publicly, the ANC sold the dream for a racism free, equal and just society for a neoliberal capitalist society, complete with the corruption that comes with that package.

Apart from accepting International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank neoliberal capitalist dogma, and guaranteeing that land justice would never take place outside the capitalist markets, here are some of the deals the ANC struck with the devil, literally and figuratively, between 1990 and 1994:

• The ANC accepted to repay $25 billion of inherited apartheid-era foreign debt (October 1993).
• They gave the central bank formal independence in the interim and final constitutions (November 1993 and July 1996).
• They borrowed $850 million from the IMF with tough conditions (December 1993)
• They reappoint apartheid finance minister Derek Keys and SA Reserve Bank governor Chris Stals (May 1994).
• They agreed that South Africa would join the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (later renamed World Trade Organisation) on disadvantageous terms (August 1994).
• They agreed to lower the main corporate tax rate from 48% to 29% and maintain countless privileges enjoyed by wealthy white people and corporations (1994-99)
• They agreed to privatise peripheral parts of the state (January 1995).
• They agreed to relax exchange controls (the ‘finrand’) and raise interest rates (March 1995).
• They granted permission to South Africa’s biggest companies to move their financial headquarters to London (1999).
• Finally, of course, they adopt a neoliberal Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy (June 1996).

The adoption of the GEAR policy (June 1996) effectively buried any hope of sustaining any liberation ethos and cultures, as South Africa was now fully confirmed as a neoliberal capitalist state and society replete with all the cutthroat competition, capitalist greed and pathological craving for accumulation of wealth by all means necessary including all and extreme forms of corruption.

All that we have said above is in the public domain. Why are our own state regulators, academics and journalists not blowing the whistle? Why must it take the FBI to tell us the details of the $10 million bribe that Thabo Mbeki and Danny Jordaan made to Sepp Blatter’s cronies, and the $6 million (R80 million) that Chancellor House made from the corrupt Hitachi deal to build Medupi’s boilers?

In effect an elite has agreed to use its control of the state to allow the white racist colonial capitalist foundation of South Africa to remain intact, in the process, allowing white dominated and foreign corporations to continue with their economic activities unchanged. It has done this in exchange for a share of the spoils. We know some of them are direct beneficiaries. They are businessmen and women during the night and politicians during the day. And of course their families are crony capitalists night and day. Today, the ANC itself acknowledges this fact – just read their 2015 NGC documents.

There is no difference between the ANC and the network of public officials and private individuals who agree to corruptly allocate tenders in exchange for a share of the spoils. This behaviour is a logical and necessary corrupt character structure of the society that neoliberal capitalism thrives on.

By Castro Ngobese - NUMSA, October 5, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), on behalf of its 365 000 members, pledges its unwavering support and unflinching solidarity with the striking coal workers, as led by two class orientated and anti-capitalist workers formations, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU).

We call on workers to unite behind their legitimate and genuine demands, irrespective of their union’s logos or t-shirt colours. Furthermore, we call on the striking workers to use this strike to agitate and propagate for coal as a strategic mineral resource to be nationalized, in order to build the required and necessary capacity for the democratic State to supply cheaper electricity to Eskom and the national grid.

The strike is happening amidst the socio-economic burden faced by workers of taking care of the vast number of the unemployed, especially amongst the youth and women, who are ravaged by squalor and poverty in working class communities, informal settlements and rural slums, post the 1994 failed negotiated political settlement. The workers are demanding a fair share of the surplus in the absent of a legislated Minimum Wage, as a stated key socio-economic demand of the Freedom Charter.

The ongoing strike should consolidate working class power from below to challenge the colonial and racist economic dominance and wealth concentration in the hands of a tiny minority. This is against the super remuneration packages and benefits enjoyed mining’s Chief Executives, whilst ordinary workers are paid Apartheid poverty wages. The demands by the unions on behalf of their members will elevate the socio-economic living standard of workers, including a life of dignity.

We call on the workers not to soften their demands when Executives, Shareholders’ salaries, bonuses and perks remain obscene, whilst workers who are producers of wealth are squeezed deeper into abject poverty and economic misery.

Numsa calls on the coal mining oligarchy to concede to the reasonable and affordable demands of workers. In line with workers’ battle slogan: “an injury to one; and injury to all”, Numsa calls on its members and communities to join the picket’s line in solidarity with the striking workers. Through solidarity actions we shall diminish the fictitious wall erected between community struggles and struggles on the shopfloor.