Johannesburg – The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) says the public should not expect anything new from this year's ANC January 8 statement.
"The ANC has run out of ideas, and morals. It has no clear strategy on how to radically transform the economy. There will be no concrete socialist plans to solve the problems of deepening inequality, poverty and joblessness, and the overburdening of workers through slave wages," the union said in a statement.
Numsa said it believes the event has lost all meaning and relevance. It added the current crisis facing the ANC as well as its leadership was that the 1-5-year-old organisation is unable to realise the goals of the National Democratic Revolution, (NDR).
Its statement continued: "It is ironic that the party has chosen to hold its January 8th statement in Orlando Stadium, in a province where they only control one metro – and the rest are governed by the opposition. Five months after the local government elections, and the ANC is still experiencing the aftershocks of the results."
"The fact that the people of Soweto, where Nelson Mandela once lived, chose not to defend President Jacob Zuma and his ANC at the polls during last year’s crucial election, demonstrates the growing discontent that ordinary South Africans gave against have the ruling party."
Numsa, which described the ANC as no longer being the vanguard of the NDR and has betrayed the working class, said the said the year 2017 was one of protest and violent confrontation.
It added that Apartheid was a racist dehumanising political system designed to keep the white minority in control over the Black and African majority.
"It was an immoral economic and political system designed to support and promote white supremacy and ensure that white people would always be bosses, and Black people would remain sources of cheap black labour. Under the ANC – led government that dynamic has remained unchanged. Control of the economy remains in the hands of white capitalists and multi-national corporations whose main objective is to preserve the dominance and privilege of an elite white minority." it said.
The statement also highlighted that under the ANC-led government the country had witnessed the massacre of miners in Marikana and that the ruling party's failures were laid bare by the Fees Must Fall student movement. It blamed the liberation movement's economic policies for rocketing unemployment, deepening poverty affecting millions of black and African working class and contributing to the highest level of inequality in the world.