Durban - The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) is not supporting #ZumaMustFall because it fears that if the campaign were to succeed, the sacking of President Jacob Zuma would pave the way for Cyril Ramaphosa to take over, says the union’s general secretary, Irvin Jim.
Jim, who was fired from Cosatu along with the expulsion of Numsa two years ago, was at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Durban-Westville Campus to address a Dullah Omar School for Paralegalism workshop.
He told The Mercury that the fall of Zuma would see Ramaphosa elevated to the presidency.
He, however, condemned Zuma for “chopping and changing” finance ministers.
Jim said Ramaphosa was part of “white monopoly capital” in the country.
“He is among those who are accumulating in the country, while there is mass poverty and mass inequality.
He said that there was no luxury to affirm once more “a capitalist whose interest is to maintain existing economic conditions that continue to plunge the working class into poverty, unemployment and inequality”.
He said Numsa had not come across anybody in the ANC today who represented the interests of the working class.
“To chop and change names is just to cause confusion for the working class and poor.”
He called on the working class to mobilise itself behind a new political formation which would take steps against the neo-liberal system, which the ANC had continued to supervise.
Numsa was working on forming a United Front political party which, Jim said, would crystallise the country’s politics.
“Some United Front structures in some areas have registered for the local government elections, and the coming constitutional meeting of Numsa at (a) national level will be discussing the nature and form of support we will be giving them,” he said.
Currently election campaigns were used to garner votes, but after voting the working class and poor continued to be subjected to poverty.
“Our stance is that this is the time for the working class and poor to organise themselves and build their own people’s power in the structures to challenge the neo-liberal agenda,” he said.
Jim said his displeasure with the ANC started after the 1994 election when the ANC had shown no interest in implementing policies of the Freedom Charter.
He said that South Coast resident Penny Sparrow, who called black people monkeys, was a creation of the ANC because “inequality breeds racism”.
“Racism is a class issue in this country,” he said.
The Mercury