Fulfilling a Freedom Charter prescript
While progress has been too slow for some people, there have been beacons of light, writes Dougie Oakes
IT WAS June 26, 1955, and in an open field in Kliptown, near Joburg, 2 284 delegates from every corner of South Africa began ratifying a document that would play a pivotal role in the political discussions and debates that would shape the country over the next six decades – and beyond.
Describing the Congress of the People and its Freedom Charter, then ANC president Albert Luthuli, wrote: “The charter produced at Kliptown is, line by line, the direct outcome of conditions which obtain – harsh, oppressive and unjust conditions. It is thus a practical and relevant document. It attempted to give a flesh and blood meaning, in the South African setting, to such words as democracy, freedom, liberty.”
Consisting of 10 clauses, all built around the first, “The people shall govern”, the Freedom Charter became the lodestar of people dreaming of freedom through some of the most brutal excesses of the apartheid state.
After the defeat of apartheid, the debate around the clauses in the charter began anew, with progress being far too slow for many people. But there were beacons of light too. Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa is sitting at a table in the boardroom of the presidential offices of Tuynhuys, in the precincts of Parliament.
He is there to speak about a triumph of toenadering (approach) – some would say far too rare these days – between representatives of the government, business, labour and communities: agreement over a minimum wage of R3 500 a month.
Speaking with great passion, Ramaphosa says: “It was what I would call a milestone moment for the social partners who had been huddled together at the offices of Nedlac negotiating this for a solid two years and a few months.
“When finally we reached agreement, everyone was overjoyed. It was an emotional moment.
“Finally, for the very first time since the call was made in 1955 by our forebears when they drafted the Freedom Charter that South Africa should have a national minimum wage, there was agreement,” Ramaphosa says.
“For some of us who have been involved in the struggle for all these years, it meant a fulfilment of a demand set out for the drafters of the Freedom Charter.
“We are doing it 62 years later. Late, but better late than never,” he says.
He describes the agreement as having put in place the “foundation stone of dealing with income inequality” – and for dealing a “devastating blow against wage poverty”.
“It came as a big shock to us,” Ramaphosa says, “to be given real-time evidence of the state of wage poverty in our country.
“Everyone involved in the process expected farmworkers and domestic workers to be at the bottom of the rung. But few of us expected workers in the retail sector, in logistics, in distribution, in hairdressing salons to be earning as low as between R6 and R14 an hour.
He points out that these workers are not only from obscure sectors of the economy. Some, he says, are from formalised sectors, with wage determinations.
“What this tells us is that there has been super exploitation of working people.”
There was another aspect, Ramaphosa says: it brought to the fore that only 30% of workers are organised.
“It therefore challenges trade unions to organise workers of this country – because only when workers are organised can their wages be improved.”
He believes the accord was strengthened because the government did not act unilaterally. And business did not impose their own wages on working people. Agreement was jointly arrived at.
“It is a most powerful consortium of social partners, acting together to lift 6.6 million people out of wage poverty,” Ramaphosa says.
He stresses that the national minimum wage is not a living wage.
“A living wage should be higher. It should be based on a number of other considerations – on what it takes for a family to sustain a living. What the minimum level should be. It is based on nutrition.
“It is based on a family being able to sustain a life.
“The national minimum wage is right at the bottom. But what it does is form a very good base for us to tackle income inequality. And the strength of this is that it is not going to remain static. The wage is going to rise year after year.
“And it will rise on two accounts. It will be cost-of-living driven. And it will be based on a review that will take a number of factors into account, including our GDP growth, including our employment levels in the country, including interest rates, including our exchange rates and a whole range of other factors.”
Ramaphosa says a wage commission will give consideration to lifting the minimum wage.
“The other important thing is that we will now start benchmarking ourselves against other developing countries. In this we’re not alone. We will be watching very closely how other countries measure their minimum wage dispensation.
“We expect that this minimum wage that we have struck is going to have an impact in reducing poverty. It is not the only factor, but it is one of those factors that will act to reduce poverty. When countries like Brazil inaugurated their minimum wage, their poverty levels went down. We hope ours will reduce inequality and have an impact on poverty as well.”
He says that during discussions between the parties, a number of issues were raised. The most important was: Could the economy afford to pay a minimum wage? Would this not lead to massive unemployment?
“This came from the business side. But government was equally concerned. We have the responsibility of managing the economy and the question we had to ask ourselves was: ‘ Are we prepared to countenance a haemorrhaging of jobs?’ The trade unions, on the other hand, wanted to move towards a living wage. They did not want a minimum wage that was going to be pegged at a low level.
“In the end, the level of the minimum wage is what kept the parties apart. For quite a long time, discussion around it was not very robust because people were just tap-dancing around the level of the minimum wage.”
The other issue, Ramaphosa says, was that all three parties did not trust one another. He says that when business looked at the trade unions, they thought they wanted a high wage.
There was exactly the same thing on the opposite side.
“It was quite interesting how we finally won trust,” he says. “We set up two structures. We set up a technical team that dealt with wage inequality. We set up another team that dealt with labour stability. And above them we set up what we called a Committee of Principals. These were the bigwigs in government, in business, in labour and in communities.
“This Committee of Principals was where you expected a more mature approach to things, a more sober, a more soft-toned exchange of views, no screaming, no shouting, where you articulated your viewpoint in a measured way.
“At a technical team level, representatives would go at each other hammer and tongs. They would scream at one another. These were the real foot soldiers. But it was these foot soldiers who helped to unlock the logjams.
“One thing that can be said about these negotiations was that it had a South African DNA written all over it.
“It had a typical South African fingerprint,” Ramaphosa says.