By Zingiswa Losi
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Opening of Parliament Address offers a vision for South Africa to set itself on the path to growth and a better life.
But if the government fails to deliver on its progressive calls, it risks alienating an already sceptical nation.
Cosatu welcomed the president’s unequivocal statement that the ANC-led 7th administration will respect the country’s progressive labour laws, protect workers’ hard-won rights and seek to uplift their working and living conditions.
This needs to be accompanied by resourcing the CCMA and overhauling the struggling Unemployment Insurance and the Compensation of Occupational Injuries and Diseases funds, stamp out corruption and ensure monies due to workers reach them quickly.
The government has allocated a massive R943 billion for infrastructure investments over the next three years. If spent well and utilising local goods and workers, it would provide an invaluable injection into the ageing infrastructure and kick-start the struggling economy.
South Africa needs to be turned into a massive construction site. The commitment to capacitate and rebuild local government is key to ensuring these funds are spent correctly, that municipal workers are paid timeously, and municipal services are delivered.
Recent steps to address challenges at eThekwini Metro provide a path for similar interventions in other embattled metros and municipalities.
Releasing state land, accelerating land reform and title deeds for the landless is fundamental if we are to overcome our painful racially-skewed land ownership. This needs to be accompanied by more aggressive support for emerging farmers and access to services and decent-sized plots for public housing.
Our existing RDP housing model needs to be reviewed.
We are heartened by the commitment to increase support for the industrial master plans and industrial, export and trade programmes as they have the potential to unlock the economy and create decent jobs and value chains.
While Cosatu welcomes the pledge to expand the Presidential Employment Stimulus, this needs to be backed up by the necessary resources and accommodate at least 2 million continuous participants as part of breaking the back of unemployment, in particular for the youth.
This means the continuous cuts to its funding by National Treasury must stop.
We have become a society that all too often fails to acknowledge when good work has been done. Eskom and its employees have made remarkable progressive in overcoming load shedding. Eskom must be given further support to ramp-up maintenance, bring on board its own new generation capacity, and tackle crime and corruption.
Its progressive plans to bring on board 170 new transformers and 14 000km of new transmission lines will be a game-changer ensuring Eskom returns to its strategic role as the engine of the economy’s growth.
Similar support needs to be given to Transnet and Metro Rail to ensure endemic cable theft is defeated, and our ports and railways modernised. We have seen progress in both SOEs. When returned to full efficiency they will help boost mining, manufacturing and agriculture, and create thousands of desperately-needed jobs and revenue for the state and the economy.
The creation of the new mining rights application system needs to be expedited to halt the flood of mining retrenchments.
Other embattled SOEs, in particular Denel, SABC, SA Post Office and Postbank equally need similar interventions to set them on the path to sustainability.
Cosatu will never agree to their workers being sent to the unemployment queue.
The SRD grant with all of its limitations has laid the foundation for the long-sought Basic Income Grant. A clear timeframe and path is needed to achieve this, including raising the SRD grant to the Food Poverty Line, and linking its recipients to skills and employment opportunities.
Increasing the number of essential items, in particular food exempt from VAT, and reviewing and reducing the third of the fuel price going towards taxes will provide valuable relief for the poor, workers and the economy. While welcoming these, the president needs to assent to the Pension Fund Amendment Bill and the pension funds need to move much faster to ensure the long sought two-pot pension reforms come into effect on September 1, giving relief to millions of struggling workers.
We applaud the president’s support for the National Health Insurance and to begin its rolling out, including investing in our badly overstretched public healthcare infrastructure.
This needs to be accompanied by filling critical health worker vacancies.
Similar commitments to invest in public services need to be accompanied by a shift away from debilitating budget cuts and employing much-needed teachers, police officers, prosecutors, Home Affairs staff ,and other frontline workers essential to delivering quality public services.
Clear deadlines to end the shame of school pit latrines are needed. In order to ensure these many progressive commitments happen, National Treasury needs to table a bold Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement in October in Parliament.
The government cannot afford to raise the hopes of workers with a progressive Opening of Parliament Address, only to see Treasury pickpocket it through painful and ill-considered Budget cuts.
Sars, whose employees have done wonderful work rebuilding it, must be given the resources they require to boost tax compliance to 70% by 2036 to provide the state with the resources required to capacitate the state, stimulate the economy, slash unemployment, poverty and inequality, and tackle crime and corruption.
While the president was silent on the geopolitical challenges facing the world, we expect the government to maintain the principled international relations stance of the 6th administration founded upon non-alignment, the African agenda, and the promotion of trade and international solidarity.
Parliament must play its role in these unchartered times, and hold the state at all levels accountable for actioning these commitments and where failures occur to hold those responsible liable.
We need action not sloganeering or heckling. Society and in particular workers and working-class communities are exhausted and expect the government and business to do more and better. We have the resources and capacity as a nation. What we do not have is limitless time or infinite patience.
The government must lead with the decisiveness required.
Zingiswa Losi is president of Cosatu.
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