Siyabonga Mkhwanazi
Former Cosatu general secretary Jay Naidoo sidestepped the trade union federation’s imbroglio at a conference of unionists from across the world, and instead called for union solidarity against poverty, hunger and inequality.
Naidoo told hundreds of union leaders from all over the world on the last day of the 4th UNI World Global Union conference in Cape Town yesterday that the time had come to unite against inequality and malnutrition.
The struggle of the unions across the globe was more powerful than any other human solidarity struggle.
Unlike his successor, Zwelinzima Vavi, who told the conference a day earlier of the implosion in Cosatu, Naidoo said workers today faced an even bigger challenge of fighting a myriad of global challenges, including violence, poverty and inequality.
Vavi said on Tuesday that the divisions in Cosatu were so pervasive they threatened to split the 29-year-old trade union federation.
But Naidoo, who was the founding general secretary of Cosatu until he left in 1994 to join Nelson Mandela’s government, called for union solidarity.
“Nelson Mandela left prison at the point he wanted to leave prison. He did not leave when they wanted to release him,” said Naidoo.
“He wanted to leave on his own terms. We did not defeat the enemy militarily. We defeated it politically, at the back of the unions.”
He said the strength of the unions on the shop floor turned the tide against apartheid.
Questions needed to be asked today about the escalating violence in society, he said.
Leaders of the calibre of Mandela were needed today to foster peace and solidarity in the world.
The situation in the world was so dire that children who had finished school were living in slums, from Diepsloot to Lagos and Sao Paulo, with no hope for the future.
In southern Africa, nine out of 10 jobs were informal.
This called for a new way of doing things and finding solidarity on common issues, Naidoo said.