The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) joins millions of South Africans in honouring the memory of the protestors who were callously gunned down by the apartheid regime in Sharpville on this day in 1960.
As we commemorate Human Rights Day, COSATU urges South Africans not to take the freedoms we enjoy today for granted. We must never forget the price that our forebears paid in blood, sweat and tears in the fight against apartheid. A 5 000-strong unarmed crowd gathered in front of the police station that fateful morning to protest pass laws before police opened fire. Today, a crowd that size at a protest is a rare sight and yet the fight for freedom is far from over.
Granted, we have a Constitution that is counted among the best in the world and progressive laws to match, but we tend to fall short when it comes to implementation and ensuring that legislation is translated into the lived experience of the majority of South Africans. This is more critical now than ever as those who still enjoy the spoils of apartheid 31 years after the democratic breakthrough, become emboldened, cry wolf and present themselves as victims of land dispossession, when only 24% of land is in black, Indian and Coloured hands.
We must guard against those who would have us believe that the BELA Act aims to eliminate Afrikaans and Afrikaner culture, when it actually affirms all mother-tongue languages and ensures the rights and dignity of all learners.
We must fight against the deliberately misleading narrative that the introduction of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) has resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs; when in reality the NMW has lifted 6 million farm, domestic, security, construction and hospitality workers out of poverty. The struggle now is to ensure that all employers comply with NMW Act and pay their employees no less than R28.79 per hour.
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Freedom-loving South Africans must oppose the court cases against the National Health Insurance from various quarters and stand firm in support of universal healthcare coverage. The status quo of two health systems in one country, where the poor are excluded from accessing adequate healthcare, while the rich are treated to hotel-like services at private hospitals must not be allowed to continue.
As a nation, we must join hands against the scourge of gender-based violence and protect women, children, and vulnerable persons. COSATU has expressed support for the Sexual Offenders' Register to be made publicly available to guard against known predators being placed in positions where they prey on the vulnerable. Sexual harassment at the workplace must not be tolerated.
Most critically, we need to ensure we have an economy that provides decent permanent work for all and a state that is capacitated to provide public services the working class and economy depend upon, as these are the foundations for our human rights ethos but also that better life for all.
COSATU calls on South Africans not to be complacent, to remain vigilant and ready to defend this hard-won democracy that our forebears sacrificed their lives for. We must not allow our history to be rewritten. We must never forget.
