Zuma: workers must join ANC

President Jacob Zuma urged workers to become members of the ruling African National Congress if they wanted to have a say in decision-making.

Zuma, speaking at the 9th national congress of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) in Durban on Tuesday, said they could choose be “fellow travellers” or they could choose to be “conductors” or “drivers” of ANC policy.

He pointed out that the ANC was the leader of the alliance that consisted of the SA Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu), but at the same time it was a party that was made up of members from all walks of life. 

“It is wrong for you not to be a part of the ANC,” he said, adding that several leading members of the unions had played significant roles in the ANC and continued to do so.

He said that the alliance’s “revolution” had reached “some cross-roads”.

“There is no revolution that can drive itself.”

Zuma said the country had done well since the ANC came to power in the country’s first non-racial election in 1994, but that there was much that still needed to be done.

Despite the progress, the country still faced the “triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality”. He said it was clear that the state still needed to improve its capacity to deliver services and to tackle the triple challenges.

“We have identified Africans, women and the youth as carrying a disproportionate burden of these challenges.”

The state, he said could not be a “bystander” in the national economy, but would need to intervene.

“It must participate and play a central and strategic role in the economy. It must intervene directly by investing in under-developed areas and by directing private sector investment.” - Sapa