SAFTU -- This Is What We Stand For
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- Published on Monday, 24 April 2017 23:30
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1401 .... April 25, 2017
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SAFTU – This Is What We Stand For
Declaration of the Launching Congress of the South African Federation of Trade Unions
The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) has been born. We have passed a milestone in the history of the South African trade union movement at this Launching Congress held in Boksburg from 21-23 April 2017.
700,000 workers represented by 1,384 voting delegates from 24 unions and other non-voting unions have taken the first decisive step to building a new, vibrant, independent, and democratic workers’ federation, leading the struggle against exploitation, mass unemployment, poverty, inequality and corruption and taking up the struggle for the total emancipation of the working class from the chains of its capitalist oppressors.
Delegates formally adopted the... name, logo and colours of red, black and gold. A constitution was adopted and a Report from the Steering Committee which spelled out the way forward for the coming period, and endorsed the principles adopted by the Workers Summit on 30 April 2016.
We are building a fundamentally different type of workers’ organization – independent of political parties and employers but not apolitical – democratic, worker-controlled, militant, socialist-orientated, internationalist, panafricanist from a Marxist perspective and inspired by the principles of Marxism-Leninism.
Our historic mission is to rapidly build a united mass force of workers, which will transform their lives and pave the way for the transformation of society as a whole from one based on the greed of a rapacious capitalist elite to one run for the benefit of the working class and all the people of South Africa and the world.
But time is not on our side. Unless we urgently mobilize our forces to confront the quadruple challenge of unemployment, poverty, inequality and corruption and revive the trade union movement, turn the tide and fight back against their appalling conditions of life, we shall slide into a new age of barbarism, and even worse exploitation of the working class and the poor.
