News / Press Release
Zimbabwe Communist Party solidarity message: NEHAWU 30th Anniversary
02 Oct 2017 at 02:14hrs | Views
We bring to you revolutionary greetings from the membership and leadership of the Zimbabwe Communist Party and of the Zimbabwean workers both in South Africa and in Zimbabwe.
We are honoured to be invited to join you in celebrating your 30th Anniversary. We take this opportunity to congratulate you on the arduous journey of class struggle that you have travelled in the last 30 years. We know that a lot still needs to be done to improve the lives of the ordinary worker.
We know that many Zimbabwean migrant workers in the health sector are interested in becoming members of this giant trade union. We must encourage them in this. A number of our health professionals who are based in South Africa, face many challenges, chief among them is registration with the South African Nursing Council. Failure to do so means that many migrant health professionals end up working as domestic workers. We call on you comrades to assist them to register and practice.
Migrants have established the Migrant Workers' Association of South Africa (MWASA) and Migrants Workers' Union of South Africa (MIWUSA). While we are working to unite these two organisations, our main task is to ensure that they work with you as they mobilise migrants in South Africa. We call on Cosatu affiliates to set up migrant desks. This will go a long way in assisting migrant workers who are victims of greedy employers and in ensuring that migrants are not used to undermine the wage levels of South Africans.
We want to thank you for supporting the Zimbabwe Documentation Project that started in 2010. Today, Zimbabweans who benefited from the special permits are busy renewing their permits which are to expire on 31st December 2017. Without your support, this would not have happened. We call on you to support migrant workers from other countries who have not benefited from these special permits. As you will know comrades, workers have no borders. It is our task to organise the unorganised workers in South Africa and to take those traditions of working-class organisation back to their countries of origin.
Comrades, in July 2017, we established the SADC Democracy Forum. Currently, the members of this forum are ZCP, SACP, Pudemo, Communist Party of Swaziland, Swaziland Solidarity Network, ZAPU, Botswana National Front, Cosatu, NEHAWU, YCLSA, Communist Party of Lesotho, BDS South Africa and other progressive formations. We are encouraging others to join our ranks. This will help in strengthening the Africa Left. Our main aim is to promote democratic principles in our region guided by Marxist-Leninist philosophy.
Our first activity as the SADC Democratic Forum was the demonstration at the SADC Summit which was held in Tshwane. We were able to present a memorandum to SADC leadership. We are making a follow up with the office of the Chairperson of SADC, President Zuma, on the issues we raised.
The economic crisis in Zimbabwe is worsening. Thousands of young people are flocking to South Africa hoping for better opportunities. With the rising unemployment in South Africa, this then increase competition for resources in poor communities, leading to xenophobic attacks.
We must then comrades, find a solution to the economic crisis in Zimbabwe and the region. It cannot be correct that the South African economy can develop when surrounded by poor nations.
As the ZCP, we are calling for a National Economic Dialogue to find a solution to our economic challenges. Our view is that the 2018 elections will not resolve our economic challenges. Despite Zimbabweans having voted overwhelmingly for a new Constitution, that Constitution has not been implemented and therefore the elections will be held under the same electoral conditions as in 2013. This will prolong the suffering of the working class and peasants as the 2018 election outcome will be contested, and in any case, neither the factions of the ruling party nor any of the opposition parties have any clear vision of how to rebuild the economy. Only the ZCP has a clear Political Economy Programme.
This National Economic Dialogue must be attended by the ruling party, the opposition parties, liberation movements from the SADC region, trade unions, informal sector organisations, progressive civil society organisations, faith based organisations, rural based formations, youth and women formations. We call on you to support this initiative. We have already started engaging informally some liberation movements in the region. Those that we have met so far share our view, that indeed, we must focus on building the Zimbabwean economy. As Communists, we want an economy that is free both from imperialist influence and from looting by parasites.
Comrades, the Zimbabwe Communist Party is your organisation as well as ours, it is simply the Zimbabwean section of the vanguard movement of the international working -class. It is our collective task to build it if we are to build a peaceful SADC, a peaceful Africa and a peaceful World. The alternative to the capitalist system is socialism. Socialism will never be achieved unless we build peoples power in our communities and at the work place.
As we conclude comrades, the challenges you are facing within the Alliance are not new or confined to South Africa.
In Zimbabwe, the liberation movement was established by the trade unionists in 1957 and in turn the liberation movement assisted the re-structuring of the trade union movement in 1981. But when the liberation movement adopted neo-liberal policies and corruption became the order of the day, that alliance of the working class and the liberation movement collapsed.
We hope you will be able to self-correct your own liberation movement, like ours a liberation movement founded and fought for by the working-class and its organisations, in the case of South Africa the trade unions and the South African Communist Party. We need a strong and revolutionary Alliance to lead the masses in the second phase of the radical transformation of the South Africa society.
We are honoured to be invited to join you in celebrating your 30th Anniversary. We take this opportunity to congratulate you on the arduous journey of class struggle that you have travelled in the last 30 years. We know that a lot still needs to be done to improve the lives of the ordinary worker.
We know that many Zimbabwean migrant workers in the health sector are interested in becoming members of this giant trade union. We must encourage them in this. A number of our health professionals who are based in South Africa, face many challenges, chief among them is registration with the South African Nursing Council. Failure to do so means that many migrant health professionals end up working as domestic workers. We call on you comrades to assist them to register and practice.
Migrants have established the Migrant Workers' Association of South Africa (MWASA) and Migrants Workers' Union of South Africa (MIWUSA). While we are working to unite these two organisations, our main task is to ensure that they work with you as they mobilise migrants in South Africa. We call on Cosatu affiliates to set up migrant desks. This will go a long way in assisting migrant workers who are victims of greedy employers and in ensuring that migrants are not used to undermine the wage levels of South Africans.
We want to thank you for supporting the Zimbabwe Documentation Project that started in 2010. Today, Zimbabweans who benefited from the special permits are busy renewing their permits which are to expire on 31st December 2017. Without your support, this would not have happened. We call on you to support migrant workers from other countries who have not benefited from these special permits. As you will know comrades, workers have no borders. It is our task to organise the unorganised workers in South Africa and to take those traditions of working-class organisation back to their countries of origin.
Comrades, in July 2017, we established the SADC Democracy Forum. Currently, the members of this forum are ZCP, SACP, Pudemo, Communist Party of Swaziland, Swaziland Solidarity Network, ZAPU, Botswana National Front, Cosatu, NEHAWU, YCLSA, Communist Party of Lesotho, BDS South Africa and other progressive formations. We are encouraging others to join our ranks. This will help in strengthening the Africa Left. Our main aim is to promote democratic principles in our region guided by Marxist-Leninist philosophy.
Our first activity as the SADC Democratic Forum was the demonstration at the SADC Summit which was held in Tshwane. We were able to present a memorandum to SADC leadership. We are making a follow up with the office of the Chairperson of SADC, President Zuma, on the issues we raised.
The economic crisis in Zimbabwe is worsening. Thousands of young people are flocking to South Africa hoping for better opportunities. With the rising unemployment in South Africa, this then increase competition for resources in poor communities, leading to xenophobic attacks.
We must then comrades, find a solution to the economic crisis in Zimbabwe and the region. It cannot be correct that the South African economy can develop when surrounded by poor nations.
As the ZCP, we are calling for a National Economic Dialogue to find a solution to our economic challenges. Our view is that the 2018 elections will not resolve our economic challenges. Despite Zimbabweans having voted overwhelmingly for a new Constitution, that Constitution has not been implemented and therefore the elections will be held under the same electoral conditions as in 2013. This will prolong the suffering of the working class and peasants as the 2018 election outcome will be contested, and in any case, neither the factions of the ruling party nor any of the opposition parties have any clear vision of how to rebuild the economy. Only the ZCP has a clear Political Economy Programme.
This National Economic Dialogue must be attended by the ruling party, the opposition parties, liberation movements from the SADC region, trade unions, informal sector organisations, progressive civil society organisations, faith based organisations, rural based formations, youth and women formations. We call on you to support this initiative. We have already started engaging informally some liberation movements in the region. Those that we have met so far share our view, that indeed, we must focus on building the Zimbabwean economy. As Communists, we want an economy that is free both from imperialist influence and from looting by parasites.
Comrades, the Zimbabwe Communist Party is your organisation as well as ours, it is simply the Zimbabwean section of the vanguard movement of the international working -class. It is our collective task to build it if we are to build a peaceful SADC, a peaceful Africa and a peaceful World. The alternative to the capitalist system is socialism. Socialism will never be achieved unless we build peoples power in our communities and at the work place.
As we conclude comrades, the challenges you are facing within the Alliance are not new or confined to South Africa.
In Zimbabwe, the liberation movement was established by the trade unionists in 1957 and in turn the liberation movement assisted the re-structuring of the trade union movement in 1981. But when the liberation movement adopted neo-liberal policies and corruption became the order of the day, that alliance of the working class and the liberation movement collapsed.
We hope you will be able to self-correct your own liberation movement, like ours a liberation movement founded and fought for by the working-class and its organisations, in the case of South Africa the trade unions and the South African Communist Party. We need a strong and revolutionary Alliance to lead the masses in the second phase of the radical transformation of the South Africa society.
Source - Zimbabwe Communist Party
