Seven Oaks Magazine.

1) You were in town to address the BC Federation of Labour convention – is international solidarity still as important to democratic, anti-racist movements in South Africa as it was in the 1980s?

Yes, that’s one of the issues which I raised in my discussion, that the Canadian workers played a very central role in the anti-apartheid movement, and we believe therefore that solidarity was very important in bringing about change and in putting pressure on the white minority government in South Africa. And, again, the Canadian trade union movement contributed in coming up with solidarity programs with the South African trade unions and as a result we were strengthened, in order to be able to challenge all the human rights abuses in South Africa.

So, clearly, the Canadian workers played a very, very important role, including the B.C. workers, in bringing about liberation in South Africa.

2) The BC Fed delegates will no doubt be talking about the neo-liberalism and privatization that we’re seeing in this country; in that respect, the experience in South Africa presents a quite extreme example of the devastating effects of those kinds of programs.

Definitely. I also indicated in my talk that one of the problems facing what I call progressive governments is the pressure to privatize, the pressure to adopt the neo-liberal policies, including the ANC government in South Africa, which is seen to be very progressive and fighting for the eradication of poverty. But it has been forced to adopt those very conservative polices, in one way or another, and that is unfortunate because what it does is hamper progress towards the eradication of poverty, privatizing the services and making them inaccessible to the poor. We see this as an international onslaught against the poor, where the services have become privatized and inaccessible. And here, we’re talking about services like education, health and all the other public services that are supposed to be available to the poor.

3) I understand that in South Africa there are also problems in terms of access to water, electricity, and medications.

Yes, we’ve seen hospitals being privatized and public hospitals, in terms of quality, going down. And we’re seeing also electricity being privatized and becoming more and more expensive. Also water, which is a natural resource, once it’s privatized, it becomes expensive for the poor. These are all the basic services, and I think it’s worse in developing countries where people have been denied what we would call the basic needs.

4) And have these measures led to tension, in South Africa, between the ANC of Thabo Mbeki and the party’s traditional allies in the anti-racist union movement of COSATU?

Well, you would know that historically COSATU and the ANC have been part of the same alliance, which we call the progressive liberation alliance. That relationship has not been without tension, and those tensions have been the result of what I’ve just mentioned, where the ANC is seen to be adopting some of these neo-liberal policies which the workers are opposed to. But, as the workers of South Africa, we continue to say, ‘we will support the ANC as a progressive party. However, if it tramples on what we think is our rights as it’s adopting these policies, which are disenfranchising workers, we will continue to oppose those because we have to act in the interests of our own workers.

It’s not just a question of an uncritical alliance. We will continue to be critical. Where we agree with them, we will support them, but where we disagree – because we believe we are independent unions – we will take a different position.

5) Some commentators, such as Phyllis Bennis in the United States, have said that though the domestic policies of the ANC have been questionable, the South African government is still a great ally of progress in terms of international issues, such as UN reform.

Well, I agree that the ANC remains an ally of the progressive left forces, or at least the centre-left. So we want to keep it like that. Remember that the ANC was seen as a broad church, where different ideologies come in, and the poor are part and parcel of the ANC. The new emerging business is part and parcel of the ANC. It’s bound to have those tensions, and there is a big struggle for control of the ANC because, beyond apartheid, there is that ideological fight over the direction of the ANC.

And we see it as a movement where we have to preserve it and it must remain pro-poor and we believe that it is still pro-poor. However, there are these contradictions which we must continue to fight. We will continue to fight in making sure that the ANC remains pro the working class.

6) How would you say the South African trade union movement is doing in terms of dealing with post-apartheid issues such as HIV/AIDS?

HIV/AIDS is a serious problem for the whole world. In fact, I’ve indicated that social progress in many developing countries is being hampered, or the gains that have been made have been reversed by this particular scourge. What we’ve seen in a number of African countries is a serious crisis where the disease is spreading like fire. It’s in the main infecting and affecting the young people, the most productive part of the workforce.

Even in South Africa, it remains a very big challenge. But the unfortunate part of it is that this disease has is affecting the poor more than any other grouping. And it has its class impact in the sense that, for the working class and poor people, the medication is very expensive, the pharmaceutical companies are also not playing a positive role. They are only thinking about profits.

As for workers in South Africa, we’ve made the issue of fighting HIV/AIDS central into all our struggles. If indeed we want to fight this particular scourge, all the unions have to work to make the workers conscious of prevention, and also that we make sure to protect those who are sick. And that we make sure that we are able to protect workers who are being discriminated against by their employers because they are HIV positive.

7) Today, the issue of justice for the Palestinian people in their struggle against Israel has taken on many of the same dimensions of the past struggle of South Africans against apartheid. Can you comment on the special relationship between the blacks of South Africa and the Palestinians occupied by Israel?

Well, to us in the South African labour movement, we see the struggle in Palestine as the same struggle as the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. We believe that the issue in Palestine is about the self-determination of the people of Palestine. It is about fighting the violation of the rights of the people of Palestine. It is on that basis that we support the struggle of the Palestinian people.

In fact, our movement, the African National Congress, has always been very close to the Palestinian people, in terms of the objective of their struggle and the objectives of the ANC. It’s on that basis that, from time to time, millions of South Africans go into the streets to demonstrate against the massacre of our people in Israel. And one of the things that we want to make very clear, is that we want to disagree that the people who are fighting for their freedom in Palestine are to be termed as “terrorists.” We don’t see them as terrorists. We see them as freedom fighters, who have been forced into adopting whatever method they are adopting by the Israeli government, supported of course by the Bush administration. And at the centre of this conflict we believe it is the struggle by the rich countries for the control of the resources of the Middle East, of that region’s strategic position in terms of geo-politics. And therefore we are of the view that that is a legitimate struggle that the people of Palestine are fighting.

They need the support internationally. In fact, today, if we want to talk about a new world order, where there’s peace and social justice, that cannot be said outside the context of a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian question.