WATCH | Ramaphosa urges workers to ensure ANC outright majority

ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa has called on workers to ensure the ANC gets an outright majority at the polls later this month.

Ramaphosa made the call during a May Day rally hosted by ANC alliance partner trade union federation Cosatu at Athlone Stadium in Cape Town on Wednesday.

He said the party was the only political organisation that has advanced the interests of workers and that all the others that are campaigning do not intend to advance the rights of workers.

“I want to rally all workers to be active volunteers of the ANC, to go out and make sure that we achieve this decisive victory that awaits us, because on May 29 the ANC will indeed emerge victorious,” he said.

Ramaphosa also shot down predictions that the ANC result will drop below 50%, saying the naysayers will be surprised.

“I want to give them a very clear message: the workers of this country, the people of this country, are not going to allow the ANC to go below 50%. They are working for an outright majority of the ANC.

“The ANC is going to show you because that is one organisation that has proven over the past 30 years that it cares for the people of this country, having led our people as a whole to bring this country to where it is.”

Ramaphosa outlined a number of workers’ achievements since the ANC came into power in 1994, saying the party, in government, will continue to fight for the rights of workers.

“We are going to continue supporting them. We will continue the fight for the poor, for those who do not have land, for those who do not have a job and for those who do not even have houses.”

While 1994 was a victory for the rights to vote, to elect a government and write a constitution, the struggle against poverty, inequality, unemployment and exploitation was not over. “But what did we fight for? What did you as workers fight for and achieve?

“You wanted those freedoms that are in the Freedom Charter to be attained. You wanted democracy in your country — that has been achieved.

“You wanted a new constitution — yes, that has been achieved.

“You wanted recognition of your unions in the legal form, that has been achieved because soon after freedom, we enacted the Basic Conditions of Employment Act that gave recognition to unions.

“Our unions having not been recognised for the longest time, but as the struggle intensified, they were recognised, but that recognition needed to be strengthened by what should be scribed in the constitution, and that was done.”

Ramaphosa added workers wanted collective bargaining, and that too had been achieved.

“In recent months, you had sought that collective bargaining should be entrenched, it should be consolidated in all sectors, including in the government sector, and I can assure you that collective bargaining is here to stay.

“What you fought for to get collective bargaining will continue to be respected, and you as workers, whether in the private sector or government, I want you to be assured that your collective bargaining rights are entrenched and are guaranteed, so they will continue.”

The workers also won the fight to organise.

“One of the most important rights you wanted was the right to strike, the right to strike was never always there in our laws because workers could easily be dismissed when they went on, but at your insistence as Cosatu, as the working class movement, you insisted that the constitution should have the right to strike, and it is there, you have won it.

“You have a right to strike, and that right would never be taken away from you,” he said.

Other rights included the right to compensation when a worker gets injured at work. Prescribing the minimum wage was another achievement and celebrating a workers’ day like May Day.

Ramaphosa said while a lot has been achieved, the ANC and its alliance partners still needed to complete the work they set out to do, including returning the land to those who work it.

“We still need to ensure the harm that was done against our people when they were forcibly removed from their land and their houses should be addressed, and we still need to provide our people with basic requirements for a decent life: houses, electricity, water and healthcare.

“We still need to undo the effects of Bantu education, to transform our schools completely, to end illiteracy and ensure our people have the skills to find decent work.”

The ANC also wants a chance to tackle the high unemployment rate in the country and remove the barriers that kept African, coloured and Indian South Africans from full and equal participation in the economy.

Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi reiterated the trade union federation’s support for the ANC in the elections, saying all the workers’ victories were possible not only because Cosatu was strong but also due to its partnership with the ANC that stood with them in the trenches.

“We will stand by the ANC as we unleash our elections machinery crisscrossing workplaces from the farms of George to the shopping centres of Durban. We will go door to door from Mangaung to Rustenburg ensuring we mobilise every worker and voter to come out on election day and deliver an overwhelming majority for the ANC,” she said.

“We dare not fail nor disappoint our people, we have come too far and have much to do.”

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