1.0 Introduction
Cde President, Willie Madisha,
General Secretary of COSATU, Cde Zwelinzima Vavi,
Other NOBs of COSATU,
Leadership of the ANC present, leaders of affiliates and other allied formations,
Local and international guests, comrade delegates.
I am deeply honoured by the invitation to present the keynote address at your Education Conference. This conference couldn't have come at a better time, shortly before the 8th Congress of COSATU and immediately after the National Gender Conference. We need to take forward and integrate the resolutions from the National Gender Conference and this Education Conference into the agenda of the 8th Congress. The fundamentals of our revolution are those of seeking to address the interrelationship between the national, class and gender contradictions. I am confident that the deliberations here will assist greatly towards debates and discussions at the 8th Congress.
It is obvious that no single keynote address can touch on all the issues that a COSATU education conference needs to cover. That is the task of Conference as a whole. All I will do today is to set a political and analytical framework within which the issues to be debated should be located. Education is a very broad field that no single conference can deal with comprehensively. The role of this Conference therefore should be to identify the key challenges and a programme of action to meet those challenges. In particular, the key challenge is that of building union capacity in the area of education, both internally as well as within the broader education terrain.
2.0 The political context of union education and educational transformation
The last few months has seen the development of a medium term vision by both the Party and COSATU, independent of each other. Our Party has placed for debate within our structures a Medium Term Vision for the next 10-12 years, which addresses what kind of society we want to see in South Africa by the end of the second decade of our freedom in 2014. At its last CEC, COSATU received and extensively debated "Vision 2015". Why this seeming "coincidence" that our prime working class and worker formations are suddenly pre-occupied with a medium term vision?
Objectively, this is not a coincidence. Rather, it is a direct outcome of intense reflections by our formations on class and other struggles during the first decade of our freedom. Some of the lessons being learnt by South Africa's working class during this period include the following:
What does the medium term vision of the SACP say? To quote:
We cannot … guide, lead and grapple with the current period and all its developments, as well as the second decade of our freedom, unless we develop a medium term vision... The fundamental goal of the SACP for the next 10-11 years should be that the working class by then must be having a decisive and qualitative impact on all key sites of power and influence - particularly political, mass and economic sites of power - such that no significant centre of power in society can … exercise that power without a significant input from, and centrally taking into account the class interests of, the working class (Bua Komanisi, July 2003, Volume 3 No.1 p.3).
In relation to the ideological struggle, the SACP's discussion document on the medium term vision calls for "Building a conscious cadre able to impact on state institutions and policy, economic and mass formations in favour of the workers and the poor." Most critically, the document states that "In the same way that the locomotive and bedrock of the struggle against apartheid was the organised power of the working class, any further qualitative advance in the NDR is dependent on the power and political consciousness of that working class" (Bua Komanisi, July 2003, p.4).
The COSATU CEC document ("Consolidating Working Class Power for Quality Jobs - Towards 2015") argues: "We need a 2015 plan because it has become clear that only deep-seated restructuring of our economy and the state can bring about the aims of the National Democratic Revolution" (p.1). Of fundamental importance in achieving this goal is the fact that:
Our assessment of the past ten years suggests a complex pattern of gains and setback. On the one hand, the 1994 transition brought major political and social gains, with the introduction of democracy... and extension of government services to our communities... On the other hand, whilst the democratic forces have entered political office, the economic ruling class has remained the same. Our economy remains in white hands, dominated by the mining finance complex in alliance with foreign capital (p.3).
Highlighting also the question of the "battle of ideas", the document continues, "In these circumstances, the direction of the national democratic revolution, and with it each component of the Alliance, is contested" (p.8). The document then calls for "two strategies" for organised workers, building working class power and struggling for quality jobs, as well as deepening the ideological contestation around the nature of the national democratic revolution.
There are a few key messages arising out of this:
The role of education is key in this regard. An equally important dimension is that of skills development for the working class as the foundation upon which to transform the current accumulation regime.
It is within this context that we should approach the task of union education and broader educational transformation. If the above represent key elements of a medium-term vision for the working class, what is it that we must do immediately and in the short term in the educational sphere in order to realise the medium-term vision of the working class in South Africa? This is the anchor around which we should approach the question of union education and the transformation of the broader educational sphere.
Our perspectives on union education and broader educational transformation must principally be anchored around the three interrelated contradictions the NDR seeks to address: the class, national (principally racial) and gender contradictions. Nowadays it is becoming fashionable to only focus on one of these contradictions (the racial one). The danger is that we will never, ever be able to address the racial legacy of apartheid in general and in education in particular without addressing the class and gender issues. The overwhelming majority of black people are workers and women. Our education system must be so restructured that it seeks to address the three contradictions in their interrelationship. Sometimes the exclusive emphasis on race, at the expense of class and gender, has the objective of advancing only the interests of the black male elite, at the expense of the black working class and poor women. Our task is to approach union education and broader educational transformation from the standpoint of these three contradictions. The working class is most capable of leading this struggle!
3.0 Advances and challenges for the working class in the educational arena
Educational transformation happens in a number of spheres and sectors. These include union education, formal schooling, early childhood education, literacy and adult basic education, the national qualifications framework, higher education and skills development. Education under capitalism tends to fragment and isolate these spheres from each other, in order to consolidate capitalist education. These spheres are not separate, but need to be understood in their interrelationship. The glue that must hold these together is a consistent working class perspective, based on building working class power in society and transforming the political and economic terrain in favour of the workers and the poor. It is from this overarching framework that we must now assess progress in educational transformation since 1994 and the challenges that arise for the working class in this regard.
One of the key challenges facing the labour movement in particular, and the working class in general, is that we have not made enough use of the educational spaces we, together with the ANC and government, have created for ourselves over the past 10 to 15 years. Particularly major advances have been made in our country, thanks to the struggles of the working class and our people as a whole, as well as measures taken by the democratic government since 1994, but we have not fully made use of these.
Allow me to take you on a brief tour of these in order to identify both the advances and challenges for workers and the working class as a whole:
3.1 The sphere of formal schooling
One of the most important gains we have made as a country was the promulgation of the South African Schools Act, 1996, as well as the constitutional clauses entrenching the right to basic education for all South Africans. The two key achievements of these was at least the "legal deracialisation" of our schooling system, and the creation of democratic school governing bodies, a long-standing demand of the democratic education movement.
I wish to highlight the issue of school governing bodies. We lack a strategic approach to working class participation in school governing bodies. Most of the 32 000 schools in our country cater for the needs of the children of the working class. This year, a number, if not all, provinces have been electing new school governing bodies. Working class participation has not been strong enough. We must bring our organisational experiences onto these governing bodies.
A recently established organisation, the National Association of School Governing Bodies, seeks to represent the collective interests of democratic school governing bodies, mainly representing township and rural schools. We must resolve that COSATU in particular encourages its members to build this association, in the interests of advancing the interests of the overwhelming majority of schools catering for the children of the workers and the poor.
3.2 Early Childhood, Literacy and ABET
Our country, under the ANC government, has some of the most progressive legislation and policies in the areas of early childhood, literacy and adult basic education and training. However, most of this sphere of education is marginal and dominated by NGOs that are doing sterling work, but which are very weak and have limited resources. The challenge here is how we ensure provision of more financial and human resources, and getting the better-educated workers to volunteer to assist in this regard. An illiterate working class is a potential danger to the struggle of the working class as a whole. Our democracy principally rests on a population that is able to read and write. We need, as workers and trade unions, to take an active interest in this regard. SADTU has a very important role to play in leading the struggles in these areas of our education system.
3.3 Further Education and Training and the proposed new National Qualifications Framework
There is currently massive restructuring of further education and training in our country. This is a sphere of our education system - the last three years of school education - that is critical for skills development and laying a basis for entry into or upgrade in employment. Recent research has, for instance, shown that most of our technical colleges offer substandard education. The challenge is how we ensure that these are upgraded in order to provide the much needed skills and meaningful last three years of formal education for our youth.
I will now turn to the National Qualifications Framework. The Departments of Labour and Education have just released a discussion document on the national qualifications framework (NQF) and are calling for comments by the end of October. We welcome the release of this document for public discussion. And we call upon COSATU and the entire labour movement to seriously engage with this document.
There are a number of concerns that should be tackled by COSATU, though I will highlight only two here. Our starting point in developing our education and training system in 1994 was to create an integrated approach to education and training to enable our people to broaden their range of knowledge, skills and competencies, and achieve greater mobility and flexibility in the education and training system. Other legislation since 1994 speaks in a similar voice.
Yet, the consultative document released by the two departments describes the NQF as being made up of three completely separate learning pathways: (1) the general pathway, (2) the general vocational pathway, and (3) the trade, occupational and professional pathway. These distinctions could undo our conception of an integrated education and training system, in which learners can shift from one to the other path with ease. The NQF was intended to eradicate the common practice of giving a higher status to a university degree as opposed to that obtained through technical or experiential learning. Having achieved through decades of struggle a national consensus to eliminate elitism, this document has the danger of reintroducing this elitism and creating rigid barriers between the streams.
There are many other critical issues that need to be engaged on the NQF consultative document, but time does not allow me to engage with all of these. Rather, I would like to urge this conference to resolve to actively engage with this document and respond before the end of October. A new qualifications framework is in the deepest interests of workers in our country, and we should therefore prepare ourselves for robust engagement on this front. Conference should take a resolution in this regard.
3.4 The National Education and Training Council
In about 1995 legislation was passed to establish a national consultative forum on education, the National Education and Training Council, together with similar provincial structures. The aim of these structures was to create a platform for various social forces to engage with, and impact upon, national and provincial education and training policy development. This is a very crucial forum in the overall struggles to transform education in our country.
Unfortunately, this forum has not been established at national level, though some of the provinces have established provincial fora. We must call for a national council to be established as a matter of urgency. We also ask this COSATU Conference to take a resolution in this regard. Our approach to the issue of the NETC in particular and education in general, is that none of the spheres of education can be dealt with in isolation from the others. In other words, union education seen in isolation from the broader educational terrain, and vice versa, runs the danger of fragmenting the working class approach to education. The establishment of this Council is one of the critical arenas for taking forward a holistic approach to educational transformation.
4.0 The Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs)
I have decided to deal with this matter almost as a stand-alone topic given its significance and closeness to the labour movement and the organised working class. The fact that the SETAs have not spent more than R2,5 billion of their funds should be an indictment on all of us. Though the issue is not spending money for the sake of it, this illustrates a lack of a strategic vision and direction in the SETAs.
It is my considered opinion that the labour movement needs to develop a comprehensive strategic and practical approach to the SETAs. Labour makes up 50% of the decision-making structures within the SETAs. The national skills levy is 1% of the national wage bill - and this is billions of rands. Therefore, labour essentially has 50% control of the 1% of the national wage bill, to be used for education and training. This is huge strategic leverage that we are not using in a manner that can advance the interests of workers in particular and the working class as a whole.
We are also concerned that private sector capitalist consultants almost wholly dominate this very important area of education and training. The objectives and values of these capitalist consultants are diametrically opposed to those of labour and the working class, and their primary aim is to make profit rather than to train workers for a democratic and transforming South Africa.
One of the most important discussions and resolutions from this conference should be on a strategic approach to the SETAs. It is time that we send senior worker representatives to these bodies, in order to ensure that these billions of rands are spent in the interests of the overwhelming majority of the working class in our country. We need to develop an overarching approach to reviewing the functioning and key positions in these SETAs in order to ensure that people who occupy such positions have the best interests of the black working class in our country at heart. The practice of employing people simply because they come from the private sector or to reward some people for having served the labour movement on a sentimental basis, irrespective of their commitment to the skilling of the black working class, must be stopped. The task in our country is to skill the black working class.
Another battle we need to wage in these SETAs must be about ensuring that workers are trained to acquire more skills and higher qualifications on the NQF; hence, the importance of engaging with the consultative document on the new NQF. Capitalist bosses are only interested in training to increase their profits, and not to improve the overall skills of workers in our country. We must struggle to ensure that such training is in the interests of workers and the skills needs of the country, and not allow this to be subjected to the narrow profit interests of the bosses. This is a critical arena of struggle for COSATU and the workers of our country as a whole.
5.0 Union education and working class institutions
It is within the above context that we should locate internal union education. Internal union education is absolutely crucial in the working class struggles today. It should effectively combine political education, training to service members adequately and efficiently and comprehension of policy issues in the sectors in which the unions organise. These are the three most critical areas for internal union education and a new worker organiser, cadre and educator.
We need to create a commissariat of union educators, who must understand the broader education terrain. Anything short of this is likely to weaken the trade union movement considerably.
Having covered the broad area of education and the range of institutions that the working class needs to impact upon seriously, let me turn to what are regarded as working class institutions, under the direct control of the labour movement and/or the working class as a whole. This institutions include workers' colleges, research and policy institutes, and NGOs, for example, organisations like NALEDI, NIEP, Ditsela, the Workers Library, Workers' Colleges in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. Included amongst these would be NGOs like ILRIG, LRS, SWOP. The latest to join the ranks of working class institutions is the Chris Hani Institute. I would like this Conference to ask and discuss the question of what role these institutions are playing in supporting the broad strategic political and economic thrust of the working class in our country. How accountable are they to organised workers and the working class as a whole? It is a fact that most, if not all, of these institutions raise their funds in the name and on behalf of the workers and working class of our country. But to what extent are they accountable to this voice, its aspirations and interests, particularly in the area of advancing union and working class education in general.
It is a fact that some of these institutions raise money in the name of South Africa's workers, but use this to advance very narrow and highly left sectarian interests that are not in the broad interests and political orientation of the overwhelming majority of the workers in our country. The question is to what extent are some of these institutions advancing a minority agenda in the name of the working class? What is COSATU doing about this? Have we asked ourselves the question, who teaches and does research in these institutions? Without wanting to silence vibrancy and debates in some of these institutions, it is time that we ask these awkward and uncomfortable questions if we are to harness all the resources and energies towards building working class power in education, and the medium term vision of the working class in our country. I call for extensive debates and very specific resolutions on these matters, in order to ensure accountability of these institutions to the workers they claim to service. It is time COSATU takes leadership about the direction and politics of these working class institutions.
6.0 Conclusion
The South African Communist Party stands firmly behind the interests and struggles of organised workers in our country, COSATU in particular, both as our ally and the leading formation of the organised working class. The SACP has indeed been engaging with COSATU on a number of these areas, including joint political schools with affiliates, the formation of the Chris Hani Institute, participation in the National Gender Conference and discussing common strategic issues around the role of the SETAs and the effective participation of labour representatives in these structures.
With these words we wish you a successful Conference!
Blade Nzimande
General Secretary
SACP