Special Hearings — Business Hearings — 1997-11-13

MR NAIDOO: Thank you, Mr Chairperson.  I - Sam Shilowa is the general secretary of COSATU.  He was a security guard.  Felezima Babi is the assistant general secretary.  He was a mine worker.  John Komama is the president of COSATU.  He's an auto worker.
 If you want to study truth and reconciliation, you will study the history of trade unionism in this country.  In spite of everything that our commentators and our so-called independent media, and opinion makers and decision makers in this society say, trade unionism and in particular the role played by SACTO and COSATU has been fundamental in transforming our country and being, what I consider to be, the greatest stabilising force in our society.
 To take a movement of people who have been (indistinct) and lived under harshest of experiences, under the most brutal repression, under the strain and burden of under development, illiteracy and fashion an organisation against all the odds that is not christened here today.
 Fashion an organisation that today has two million paid up members;  that has tens of thousands of leaders that have been trained outside of the Apartheid education system and that have contributed to the stability we see in society, is a debt we owe these workers.  Perhaps today, maybe we hope that there will be some feeling of remorse in those editorials that used to barb us in the eighties, that workers, illiterate they may be, not as articulate in the queen's English that we hear Sam talk about, have made a fundamental contribution to making this political miracle a reality.
 Maybe there will be some concern in remorse and apology for the treatment that was meted out, what constitutes, I think, the worst excess of Apartheid, the worst abuse of human rights in our country.  There will be some apology for that and accepted that the racial stereotyping of whether it is Government today, whether it's individual Black leaders in the business community, whether it is COSATU, which often in our media and in our society in affluent and privileged circles in the discussion in our Northern suburbs, are chose as being the root cause of all problems we have today.
 A stereotyping that we see everyday in our newspapers that a Government that is Black lead is incompetent or corrupt, that the trade union - that all our economic problems in the country are the consequence of the irrational and unreasonable actions of the Sam Shilowa of this world.
 Maybe there will be and I hope there will be some remorse about what they did to us and the fact that we never retaliated, except through using a peaceful protest, except by the real organisation of people, developing the organisation, in fact, initiating the principle and culture of negotiations in this country.
 There will be an acceptance of the role that the trade unions played.  The tens of thousands of people that negotiated (indistinct)  those agreements that laid the bases our modern day miracle.  I don't see that.  I see in our society today an overwhelming wining by the privileged and the affluent.
 As racial stereotyping of any progress that we may want to make of an attempt to say, let's whitewash our past and say that all problems of our society and there are gigantic problems, which we don't deny, are rooted in that Apartheid parcel.
 Yes, we have made mistakes and we'll continue to make mistakes, but we have the courage to admit them and we have the courage to correct ourselves, which I don't see having been displayed here today or yesterday or on Tuesday.
 I'm astounded that someone can come onto this platform and representing Barlow Rand, say that they have consistently fought Apartheid.  They have consistently opposed the violence of Apartheid, but in the next breath say they have co-operated in the military industrial complex of our country that armed the defence force and the police that unleashed the worst damages, not just in South Africa, but the whole of Southern Africa.
 And say they conspired with the Apartheid Government to break the UN sanctions and arms embargo, and yet claim that they've done nothing wrong.  That they never benefitted from Apartheid.  That it's a myth of our imagination that Black people were the victims of Apartheid and they still are.
 The reality, Chairman, the reality even today and travelling up in the business class of SAA, if you want to have a McDonald's index of Black empowerment, you will see besides the crew, I was the sole figure in the Black community sitting in that class.
 The reality today is we still have the type of inequality that has dominated our society for centuries.
 So it is in that reality that we sought recognition and we won recognition through our efforts and the efforts of millions that are unrecognised today.
 Examples that Sam gave are accurate, because there was never any law that said don't recognise Black trade unions.  And if you look at it, BTR, Samcor, I helped organise that factory.  I knew the persons intimately.  I worked with them.  We shared food together.  We broke the crusts together.  They were dismissed by a multi-nation, a British multi-nation for demanding a better a wage, for demanding a trade union recognition. 
 Not only were they locked out and dismissed.  The brutality of the system was brought to bear on that community.  Free of those leading (indistinct), (indistinct) is a (indistinct).
 I would like the majority of Whites in our country to know that name.  To know that history.  To go back into your homes and ask the nanny that raises your child, what families they have, what children they have, what are their children doing?  Because Fenias Sebea was abducted.  He was with two other burned alive in a car in an environment that was created by employees in a climate that was enforced on us by an Apartheid state.
 So when employers come here and say we defended your right to organise, tell me in a legal strike during the mine workers strike;  how can you dismiss, Anglo American, 40 000 workers?  Explain to me how is that an acknowledgement of the rights of workers either as workers or as human beings.
 I don't see the sense of that and what we have and we can go through the history of it, is a overwhelming evidence of collaboration between the business community and Apartheid.
 In the suppression, the brutalization and in the death and destruction that we have had inflicted in the vast majority of our people and I think they should beg us for forgiveness.
 That even in the harshest of circumstances, in the most brutal of actions against us, when COSATU house was bombed, when we stood outside the building which had been declared unsafe, the security police arrives with a search warrant to see certain publications and when we accuse them, but you've just bombed our building, how can you demand to go and search it.  It's now unsafe.   They said, we will arrest you for making allegations that are unsubstantiated.
 Well, Mr Vlok has to have come an account for that today.  So, I agree with what Bobby said, Mr Godsell has said, that we need to look to the future and Bobby Godsell has been an individual that gave evidence in my trial.  I respect him for that and I respect the contribution he's made.  There are many other outstanding individuals, either as organisations or individuals as persons, that have contributed.
 But overwhelmingly no one can stand up here and claim to be speaking the truth when they say that business did not be - were not the direct beneficiaries of Apartheid.  In fact, the core of Apartheid was the perpetuation of a cheap labour system.
 It will be (indistinct).  It will be an insult to millions in Southern Africa and yes, we need to concentrate on the future and building our beautiful country, but we need to do it from a foundation of truth.
 The truth is that there's an (indistinct) link between the work of business and the economy and the functioning of the Apartheid State and so I hope in that context that we understand there is an issue of violence that broke out in strikes.
 COSATU as an organisation, and if you study our history, has been committed to peaceful protest and demonstration.  At every point of our existence, even under the most extreme provocation, we argued for disciplined mass action, for peaceful mass action.
 We had leadership that was ingrained in the fact that we had to negotiate and find solutions.  It was our initiative to put recognition agreements on the table.
 Yet, the State reacted with brutality and in that brutality there was some retaliation.  The issue which we never condoned, the issue which we condemned, an issue to which we can apologise, that there was harm caused to people and some innocent people, but ultimately I have not heard on this platform any of that remorse that the deputy Chairperson of the TRC has talked about.
 Any of the apologies that is unqualified for what was done to the mass of humanity in our country.  Thank you.