The African National Congress- (ANC-) led government has failed to deliver meaningful economic empowerment for the working class majority and has instead given away South Africa’s strategic interests and resources to international monopoly capitalists, Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) president Joseph Mathunjwa has asserted.

He was addressing a crowd of about 8 000 supporters during a May Day celebration rally at the Griffons Rugby Stadium, in Welkom, in the Free State.

“Government should embrace US President Donald Trump’s mantra of putting ‘America First’ and renegotiate all trade and investment deals to ensure South Africa receives maximum benefit in all spheres of trade and industry. [Government] must ensure that ‘South Africa First’ is adopted as part of all existing and future agreements,” he remarked.

Additionally, he called on AMCU members to boycott any goods that were made in China and instead only buy those that were locally produced. “China is destroying our economy and killing jobs by dumping their substandard products in this country. We must follow Trump’s path and encourage our people to buy locally manufactured goods only. AMCU will not buy anything made in China and we urge our members to do the same.”

Mathunjwa further called for South Africa’s mineral resources to be locally beneficiated to ensure downstream job creation. He commented that this must be undertaken while also encouraging local investment in South African business initiatives, instead of being overly reliant on foreign investment, which he contended had its own agenda that ran contrary to the needs of South African workers to earn a “living wage”.

“South Africa must take charge of its own economy and create many millions of new jobs, as currently there are about 17- million people receiving social grants, which is unsustainable for the economy,” Mathunjwa pointed out.

He added that this would also protect South Africa from international credit agencies, as the country would have full control over its natural resources and manufacturing capabilities.

Further, Mathunjwa remarked that “ultimately” the nationalisation of mines in South Africa would bring about true “radical economic transformation”, as workers would own the means of production and, therefore, control their own destiny.

He, moreover, stated that, if the South African Communist Party were serious about fighting for the rights of workers, it would unchain itself from the ANC-led political alliance and collaborate with AMCU to form a labour party to challenge the ANC and other political parties to “truly represent the interests of workers”.

Meanwhile, Mathunjwa told Mining Weekly on the sidelines of the event that he believed there was a need to change the current electoral system to one where the President, Premiers and mayors were elected directly by the people, instead of being elected by their respective political parties.

“We need to give power back to the people and I believe this can happen.”

With the current gold sector wage agreement set to end on June 30, 2018, AMCU is eager to position itself as the majority union and is “actively recruiting” members in the sector.

According to the gold producers’ data released in 2015, the National Union of Mineworkers accounted for 52% of union representation in the gold industry, followed by AMCU with 30% and Uasa and Solidarity at 7% and 2% respectively.

“We are not far off from becoming the majority union in the gold sector and we may well in fact be the majority. “The NUM is losing support in the sector and, as the only champion of workers’ interests, mineworkers in the gold sector are flocking to AMCU in large numbers,” Mathunjwa asserted.

He accused gold mining companies of understating the union’s representation in the sector, saying that there were “thousands of unprocessed AMCU membership applications” at gold mines.