Cosatu congratulates Zuma

2009-06-03 16:52

Cape Town - The Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Wednesday congratulated President Jacob Zuma on his "excellent" State of the Nation address to Parliament.

"It is totally consistent with the ANC's progressive election manifesto and sends a message of hope to workers and the poor of South Africa," the trade union federation said in a statement.

Cosatu was impressed with the speech's insistence that "the creation of decent work will be at the centre of our economic policies" and, in particular, that government took as its starting point "the framework for South Africa's response to the international economic crisis, concluded by government, labour and business".

This agreement contained numerous positive and practical ways to minimise the impact of the crisis and save jobs, but had so far not been implemented by the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) task teams charged with taking it forward.

Kick-starting the implementation

"Now that the president has spoken we expect the government officials to join the union leaders in Nedlac to kick-start the implementation.

"While the president frankly acknowledged that we have entered a recession, he did not use this as an excuse for abandoning ambitious targets, especially to create 500 000 [expanded public works] job opportunities by December 2009 and four million by 2014."

Cosatu said a remarkable feature of the speech was the emphasis on monitoring the implementation of all the policies.

Ignored international issues

The only disappointing section of the speech was on international issues.

It failed to mention the huge dangers posed to developing countries if the terms of the latest draft of the World Trade Organisation's Doha development round of negotiations were adopted.

It would entrench the dominance of the rich and powerful nations and threaten to mire the developing world in economic colonialism.

Zuma also failed to mention the "scandal of Swaziland, whose absolute monarch King Mswati III, routinely tramples on human rights, has jailed opposition leader Mario Masuku since November 2008, and has just arrested his lawyer Thulani Maseko on charges of 'terrorism'," Cosatu said.
 

- SAPA