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Volume 11, No. 18, 17 May 2012 |
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Red Alert SA needs a Skills Revolution and the working class must take responsibility for it |
By Blade Nzimande, SACP General Secretary
This week I attended an important gathering of UNESCO, focusing on sharing experiences on how to strengthen technical and vocational education (TVET). An important consensus was reached that good and quality TVET is critical for inclusive economic development in general, and for human development in particular. As we discuss the implementation of a new growth path, the industrial policy action plan 3 and rollout the infrastructure plan in our country it is absolutely essential that the matter of skills development be prioritized. This is an essential component of micro economic transformation.
As we debate the notion of a developmental state we need to realize that for the state to be developmental it needs capacity and state capacity cannot be build on the backbone of an unskilled working class. The skills and capacity are even more critical for Socialism as under socialism we will need more capacity and efficiency to address the needs of the overwhelming majority of the workers and the poor, with the working class playing its leading role. Skills development should feature as prominently alongside the living and social campaigns.
To bring about rising living standards and a better life for all our people, South Africa must have an increasingly productive economy which creates decent jobs for workers on a large scale. Our workers must, steadily but decisively, improve their educational and skills levels, especially their technical and vocational skills. This will enable our country to set out on a new and sustainable growth path, with a regenerated manufacturing industry and the new jobs that will accompany this.
Manufacturing will not only create new jobs in the actual production of goods, but also stimulate other employment in services such as transport or telecommunications and even encourage further development in primary industry such as mining and agriculture.
In order to achieve all this it is essential for the country to undergo a skills revolution - a process that must make certain that every citizen is trained to a high level and can contribute productively to social and economic development. This will ensure that we overcome the effects of job reservation and cheap labour which was such an important part of the strategy of oppressive colonial and apartheid regimes for over a century. Job reservation did not allow blacks to do skilled work - and so prevented most South Africans from becoming skilled artisans, technicians or managers and banned them from all but a few professions. Since 1994, we have done surprisingly little to overcome the effects of this legacy.
One of the main reasons for this lack of progress is that the working class has not yet fully taken responsibility for the skills revolution. Unless we ourselves drive the process and ensure that our children and our communities appreciate the need for it, no skills revolution can be successful. The working class and it's organisations must play a central role in ensuring that employers allocate sufficient resources to training and that they play their part in skills development and especially in technical and vocational education and training (TVET). Whilst we need to mobilize all social forces behind a skills revolution, Worker driven and worker led TVET is an essential component in the struggle for the transformation of South Africa's workplace.
Vocational education at the skilled artisan level not only allows workers to make a decent living, but can also lay the basis for further studies leading to technician or professional qualifications. In some highly developed countries with strong manufacturing industries like Germany and Switzerland, up to 70% of young people go into an apprenticeship straight from basic education, usually at the age of sixteen. It is also essential that workers take up in earnest the issue of artisan aides - who are essentially doing artisan work but without proper certificated upgrading and consequently not paid as such - to become full artisans.
At the UNESCO Congress in Shanghai, China, many delegates made the point that in those countries with low-skilled workforces; technical and vocational education tends to have a low status. Poor attitudes to vocational training are based on an outdated, elitist attitude to manual work that doesn't recognize it's economic value or it's potential to create wealth for the individual or society. China has recognized that skills are essential for raising the living standards of its people and is investing heavily in technical and vocational education at both senior secondary and higher education level.
It would be wrong to say that education and training can on its own create jobs; it COULD just create people who are educated but unemployed. However, it is also true that without an educated and skilled work-force it is not possible to have the level of economic growth and development that creates enough decent jobs in line with our developmental agenda. It is essential for a country to have good policies for economic development, including policies for industrial development, for the development and maintenance of infrastructure, and for job creation more generally. But for such policies to be successful, education and training are essential.
Our government is now starting to tackle seriously the issue of skills development in South Africa. The working class should assert itself to ensure that its interests are placed at the center of this process. Unions and worker-led community organisations must take a lead in advising government on education and training policy and take up these issues in their respective workplaces. They should encourage workers to participate in strengthening our FET colleges and SETAs, and even our schools that provide the basic education that every person needs in a developmental state. Unions must insist that their employers - in both the private and the public sectors - play their role in training both new workers as well as those already in employment. They should insist that the apprenticeship and learnership systems become entrenched as an integral part of the activities in every workplace. Every workplace should become a training space!
The working class must not only work to ensure the existence of some kind of TVET but should concern itself with the type of education that is provided. We must always insist that the TVET curriculum should not be narrowly occupationally focused; it should also include significant elements of social studies, humanities and ethics. This is because all education should prepare people to live as responsible members of society who contribute to not only to its economic life, but also to its social, cultural, scientific and political life. Workers ARE producers of goods and services, but they are also citizens and rounded human beings with a whole range of interests.
Also important is for workers to advocate for the recognition of prior learning (RPL) so that the knowledge they have acquired through practical experience can be recognised, certificated and rewarded. Another important issue is to design a system of qualifications in which there are no dead ends and that all TVET qualifications open articulation pathways to higher learning for those who wants to continue studying.
In engaging with training policies, we should be aware of a view coming from some on the left that actually conflicts with the interests of the working class. This view argues that all skills training is just for the benefit of capital, to help it to increase profits. It follows, according to this argument, that any policy to prioritise training or skills is just promoting the needs of capital and is anti-working class. This is a fallacy. Skills will, in fact, strengthen the working class and make workers less expendable, especially if the working class itself is at the head of this struggle.
Similarly we must critique the right wing and liberal notion that education and training is narrowly only for the workplace. Central as education and training is for the labour market, but it must be broad enough to empower our youth and workers with the necessary knowledge and capacity to deepen and consolidate the national democratic revolution.
The SACP hopes that the forthcoming COSATU Education and Training Conference in July will tackle the issue of TVET in particular, as well as clearly define its role in skills development in general. The SACP is of the view that COSATU in particular has an important role to play in driving a progressive skills agenda.
Asikhulume!!
In the aftermath of the march to COSATU house by the DA and Hellen Zille’s spirited attack on the public protector we have decided to republish the article below. Once more events have vindicates us!!
Liberals as eternal political hypocrites
Blade Nzimande, General Secretary
Liberalism in general and its different South African shades has only been consistent on one and only one thing, political hypocrisy. Otherwise how does explain the fact that the DA has come out with guns blazing against e-tolling in Gauteng (which the SACP incidentally also has problems with) whilst at the same time imposing its own toll gates on Chapman`s peak in Cape Town.
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the media completely ignored the SACP Central Committee statement over the weekend when it pointed this out, since, for all intents and purposes, mainstream and commercial media in South Africa, with few exceptions, has become the mouthpiece of especially post 1994 (white) liberalism.
Liberalism and political hypocrisy have a long history in South Africa. The very same liberalism in our country had over decades prior to 1994 preached `freedom` whilst strenuously opposing one person one vote as the basis of genuine democracy in our country. Instead, whilst they pretended to oppose apartheid (but privately praying for the NP to win election after election), they only argued for a qualified franchise, that only educated blacks (`because they are civilized like us`), should be given a limited vote whilst not tampering with white minority rule and power.
For instance at the height of the struggles against the criminal apartheid regime, right into the negotiations of the early 1990s, the Democratic Party, the predecessor to the DA and many of its fellow travellers, never advanced a principled stance for majority rule based on one person one vote. Instead majority rule, as enshrined in our constitution today, was won by the liberation movement, using a combination of armed and mass struggles as well as the moral superiority of its struggle.
When Dr Pieter Mulder made extremely provocative statements about blacks and land ownership in our country, this has been met by a very loud silence from the liberals because Mulder has `spoken for us all`!! From the hordes of the mushrooming liberal NGOs, there are no talks or even whispers of going to the Equality Court or the Human Rights Commission, as ordinarily would have been the case had similar statements been made about whites. There are no parliamentary motions or call for special debates or `points of order` and warnings of unparliamentary language, had it been the other way round!
In true liberal fashion, especially after 1994, liberals have opportunistically cherry-picked on issues where they want to appear to be on the side of, or speaking for, the majority of the people our country. They seek alliances with the workers when they seek to capture the SABC (the `Save our SABC Coalition`). They would seek to build alliances with worker organizations on opposing the Protection of State Information Bill (POSIB) and `civil society` coalitions to oppose e- tolling in Gauteng, even in courts, if need be.
But we are yet to hear of `civil society` initiatives against abuse of farm workers, against labour brokers, or against retrenchments. There is no `right to know` campaign on why Nelson Chisale had to be thrown into a lion`s den by a white racist nor is there an outcry about threats to our constitution when judges, as public officials, resist to declare their interests and those of their spouses.
There is already an important lesson for the working class about all this, that we should be extremely vigilant about liberal fellow travellers posing as friends and allies of the working class. Liberals choose issues on which to try and fool the working class, often issues aimed at opposing government and the majoritarian character of our democracy. For instance when Cosatu embarks on actions against labour brokers, these liberal `friends` and `civil society combatants` will be conspicuous by their absence. Why? Because liberals are not against capitalism and the exploitation of the working class nor are they for the total emancipation of the black majority or the total eradication of the legacy of colonialism of a special type. Instead the very notion of `civil society` is used to hide elite class interests, and often racial ones as well, whilst pretending to be the greatest defenders of freedom (`Under Law`) and equality.
This is why liberals don`t want to support the campaign on deepening participatory democracy - participatory democracy is reduced to their donor funded organisations, pursuing sponsored views on issues such as the POSIB, the media appeals tribunal, and many others. The liberals are fundamentally opposed to the increased role of the state in the economy, because, whilst purporting to seek to speak on behalf of our people, they do not believe of a state that seeks to act to advance the interests of the majority. It is for this reason that liberals have sought to use the courts and all institutions supporting our democracy, to try and oppose, discredit and subvert all government decisions aimed at the thorough transformation of society. The liberals now are going to court to challenge the Languages Bill, yet have never raised their voices about the marginalisation of indigenous African languages. They oppose the National Health Insurance Scheme, and practically all that stands to benefit our people. That is why they have reduced our struggle to constitutional legalisms, devoid of any substantive economic and social transformation.
Liberalism, especially in the 1970s and 80s, argued very strongly for instance that apartheid was an aberration and distorted the otherwise rational capitalist market system, refusing to see the deep interconnectedness between the two, thus reinforcing the very conditions for the reproduction of the apartheid system. Apartheid was not a distortion of, or aberration from, the capitalist market, but was a brutal and particular form of colonial and bourgeois rule, which affected the lived experiences of the overwhelming majority of South Africans.
Perhaps liberalism is after all not a hypocrisy as such, but its very nature and character is elitist, and it will at all times act like this. South African (white) liberalism in particular evolved from a racialist form of accumulation of privileges, and it still largely displays similar features today. It is an expression of the coincidence of race and class in a patriarchal society.
It is therefore important for the working class to understand that it`s fate lies in its own hands, working in alliance with progressive forces in society. It is this understanding that would characterize the working class as a class for itself rather than a class in itself. It is only a politically conscious working class and the majority of our people that will expose the hypocrisy of liberalism, in all its manifestations.
The principal task of the working class is to lead and be at the head of the mobilization of the people as a whole, and intensify the ideological offensive against all forms of reactionary and regressive tendencies, including liberalism, workerism, populism and demagoguery. In so doing it should act as the glue to the unity of our Alliance! This is the true meaning of the working class as the principal motive force of the national democratic revolution. It is taking responsibility for the revolution!
Asikhulume!!
