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May 27 2012 11:21
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May 28 2012 07:53
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Johannesburg - Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi on Tuesday urged the government to transform the economy, saying the market-driven polices of the past were to blame for poor delivery and, in part, the recession.
The answer was fostering a mass socialist movement, true to Marxist principles and built around the South African Communist Party (SACP), he told unionists in Limpopo.
"The underlying cause of the crisis that is now ravaging working class communities is the mistaken policies between 1996 and 2004, of cutting tariffs and privatising basic services and the conservative fiscal and monetary policies pursued in those years, centred on the misguided belief in inflation targeting and the urge to appease the narrow interests of financial markets," he said.
"There are still some who continue to hold on to this wrong belief," he told the national congress of the South African Municipal Workers Union.
"Relying on market forces has not only entrenched the inequalities of the past but further widened them, making us the most unequal society on the planet."
Vavi said service delivery protests were therefore a symptom of structural problems in the economy and proved that working class communities were losing patience.
It was time to implement the policy decisions taken at the ANC's watershed conference in Polokwane to restructure the economy to create industrial growth and decent jobs, he added.
"It is now almost seven months since we elected the new government to pursue this new growth path. It is early days still, but I must say we are beginning to be nervous about the slow pace at which we are moving in this new direction."
He said progress in this direction was held up by "a defence of the status quo and turf battles that do not take us forward".
Cosatu and the SACP have been putting pressure on President Jacob Zuma to entrust economic policy to Ebrahim Patel, the new economic development minister and former trade unionist, and clip the wings of former finance minister Trevor Manuel, now planning minister in the presidency.
- Sapa