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Songs
mark opening of UNI-Africa’s first regional conference
16.10.2003
UNI-Africa’s first Regional Conference opened with song - the songs
of Johannesburg schoolchildren and spontaneous singing from delegates.
Joe Chauke, master of ceremonies |
The Johannesburg conference
marks a milestone in the short history of UNI - launched on January
1 2000 - with all regions now having held their first conferences.
"Africa must organise for jobs, justice and equality,"
said master of ceremonies for the opening session Joe Chauke of the
South African communications union.
He was picking up the broad themes of the conference - which will be
dealing with poverty reduction, the digital divide and the scourge
of HIV/AIDS across sub-Saharan Africa. |
Seventy children from the Dominican Convent School provided the formal
music welcome, but delegates were not slow to add their own solidarity and
union songs - with many of them in colourful traditional costumes.
"We cannot stop
globalisation but we must have a very much stronger social dimension to
globalisation," Maj-Len Remahl of Finland told delegates in one
of her last official engagements as UNI’s global president before
handing over next month to Joe Hansen of the USA.
She said she was shocked at the little coverage given by the media
to the impact of HIV/AIDS, which kills 6,500 people every day.
Joe called on governments to take the HIV/AIDS issue seriously.
"We have no intention of being victims of policies as in the
past," said Gabou Gueye, UNI-Africa Vice President who is
chairing the conference because of the illness of Regional President
Changwa Shifamba.
He told delegates that Africa had been a passive participant in the
Agricultural and Industrial revolutions - providing raw materials
that fed other countries’ growth - and the world is now entering a
third revolution, in Information Technology.
"I hope this revolution will be an African revolution as well.
"Across Africa about a fifth of the population are unemployed,
said Bheki Ntshalintshali, Deputy General Secretary of the South
African trade union centre COSATU. |
UNI World President Maj-Len Remahl
Gabou Gueye, UNI-Africa
Vice President chairing conference
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In South Africa the official unemployment rate is 31% and the real
total could be as high as 40%, he told delegates.
"We cannot have prosperous and fair societies where workers cannot
support themselves and their families or face intolerable conditions at
work."
Africa has been systematically forced to open up its markets even though
their economies were not ready to stand global competition. As a result
10% of manufacturing jobs have gone in South Africa in the last ten years.
"We are throwing away a generation. Two thirds of young people under
the age of 30 are unemployed, with no prospects of finding work, gaining a
decent income and a career."
This theme was picked up by Gabou who said "it is our responsibility
to ensure that the children who sang here to us can have a bright
future."
He also said that "we need peace and we need democracy".
In an outspoken address Lesetja Kganyago, a top official at the South
African Finance Ministry, urged unions to work with NEPAD (the New
Partnership for Africa’s Development).
"Let’s form a partnership’" he told the 150 trade union
leaders in the audience.
"It’s time to awake the slumbering giant that is Africa - we cannot
afford to fail."
"It’s our duty to promote democracy and put human rights at the
centre of our development," he said.
Labour should be seen as a resource not a cost and the challenge for
unions is to assist in creating a stable environment for economic growth.
Africa needs new capital and he castigated corrupt African leaders who had
looted African wealth.
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