President Thabo Mbeki Addresses Unions' World Congress

The South African government is to give urgent consideration to ratifying a key international standard on mining health and safety, President Thabo Mbeki announced this morning.

GLOBAL SOLIDARITY

About 800 trade unionists from all over the world marched through Durban this afternoon.

He was addressing the World Congress of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), currently in session in Durban.

Welcoming Thabo Mbeki, ICEM President Hans Berger asked him to help ensure that South Africa ratifies Convention 176 of the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO). Mbeki replied that he would put the issue on the agenda of the next cabinet meeeting in two weeks' time.

Approved by the world's trade union, employer and government representatives within the ILO, Convention 176 sets out international standards for ensuring health and safety in mines. The ICEM played a major role in its drafting and adoption. The Convention came into force in 1995 and has already been ratified by 12 countries. Ratification by South Africa, one of the world's biggest mining nations, would send an important signal to mining countries worldwide.

South African mine safety has been in the spotlight recently, following a series of fatal accidents. The ICEM-affiliated National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has insisted that safety must be improved urgently, and some leading mining companies have conceded that their safety provisions are inadequate.

Mbeki received a standing ovation from around 800 union leaders of all continents attending the Congress. Thanking unions worldwide for their support during the struggle against apartheid, he said South Africa must be "part of the world forces fighting for a better world." In particular, he told the Congress, "we must respond to the forces of globalisation which Vic Thorpe has analysed very correctly in the document before this Congress."

To applause, Mbeki stated that the slogan "Workers of the World Unite" had "never been more appropriate than today." Citing the strong alliance between South African trade unions and the ruling African National Congress (ANC), he said it was important that workers and their unions should have a strong input into national policy-making. This would be "one guarantee that we will have a government that will focus on the interests of working people."

Africa must become more than a supplier of raw materials to the North, President Mbeki insisted. He also issued a strong call for peace throughout Africa: "The people who benefit from these wars are not the ordinary working people of our continent. The people who die, who become refugees, are the ordinary working people." And Africa must "put corrupt governments behind our backs."

Deploring the "growing disparities of wealth" between North and South, but also within the North and within the South, Mbeki said: "What it means in real terms is that children are going hungry. We cannot continue with the absurd situation where the poor African countries become net exporters of capital to the rich countries, because of a heavy debt burden. It is clearly not correct that you have huge concentrations of capital in one part of the world and huge concentrations of poverty in another part."

One problem, he emphasised, is that "those who own the capital are not driven by the concerns that drive you and me. They are driven by what would make the biggest possible profit for themselves in the shortest possible time."

"As far as the South African government is concerned," Mbeki pledged, "you can rely on us not to abandon the camp of the progressive people of the world." He welcomed the holding of the ICEM Congress in South Africa, because "we would very much appreciate your own ideas on these issues, and on how to reinforce the spirit of solidarity between ourselves, so that we can act in the interests of working people."

But, he warned, "the forces that we confront are very powerful." So "we all have an obligation to show a little bit of courage, to think properly and to act, because we cannot simply get used to millions of people dying of hunger."

The labour response to globalisation is the main theme of the ICEM Congress, which opened on 3 November and will continue until 5 November. This afternoon, trade unionists of all continents will march through Durban in a display of global trade union solidarity.

South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki:
"We must respond to the forces of globalisation."

James Motlatsi
ICEM Vice President
President, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM, South Africa):

"Trade unions must be at the forefront of the struggle against injustices against workers worldwide ...
We must ensure that dictators who have no regard for human rights and workers' rights are removed."

Vic Thorpe
Outgoing ICEM General Secretary:

"We will advance in our goal to Unite and Organise.
It will be a measure of our success that the ICEM's members can say with us:
Power is OURS - Amandla Awethu!"

Bill Jordan
General Secretary
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU):

"The worst of times is what workers, with few exceptions, have experienced from globalisation.
Only organised strength will earn us the respect we need to win."