THE ethos of service to the people over personal advancement is quickly being forgotten by the African National Congress-led movement, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said on Wednesday.
Delivering a blunt critique of South African society and the deep structural flaws that maintain the economic inequalities in the country, Mr Vavi warned that the "hammer blow of revolution is no longer a distant reality".
Mr Vavi was delivering Unisa’s Annual Abdullah Omar Safety and Human Rights lecture at Constitutional Hill in Braamfontein, Johannesburg.
The ANC is preparing for its national elective conference in December, where Cosatu expects radical policies to be adopted to change the structure of the economy and to renew the party itself and rid it of the myriad internal problems it faces. A meeting of Cosatu’s top brass on Tuesday resolved that the ANC should "reassert the values of sacrifice, selflessness, service to the people, democratic participation, harnessing of peoples power".
The "squalid morality" of capitalism with its "me-first" outlook had seeped into the "revolutionary movement", Mr Vavi said.
"(It is) dragging in its wake huge problems of factionalism and even assassination of opponents and whistle-blowers," he said.
"We are rapidly forgetting the traditions of our movement, which valued service to the people above any thought of personal advancement," he added.
While the economy remained largely in white hands, a "black elite" had shaken off the chains of apartheid and created "an oasis of opulence" for themselves. This group had access to world-class private healthcare, and their children played on "the same rugby fields as descendants of the Oppenheimers and Ackermans of this world".
"Their lavish golf courses, which guzzle litres and litres of water through their sprinkler systems, keep them entertained and give them a safe haven to strike their dirty deals. Their high walls and electric fences insulate them from the wrath of the poor," Mr Vavi said.
The reign of the rich was not forever, he warned.
Mr Vavi also bemoaned a society in which working-class mothers died giving birth, where newborns died because hospital wards were not disinfected, and where breast-cancer patients queued for access to radiation treatment.
"I do not possess the powers to look into a crystal ball and tell you about what the future hold. But I know from my experience of struggle and my own reading of history that every force always produces its opposite," he said.
Poor people could only tolerate so much. "We are sitting on a powder keg, which is slowly approaching the point of explosion."
As he spoke, the labour unrest in South Africa mines continued to rage around the country — with some of the lowest-paid workers demanding increases outside formal collective bargaining structures, through wildcat strikes, some of which have turned violent.
Mr Vavi hit out at those claiming "neutrality" — those who sat on the fence amid the injustice in society — and said they were complicit in it due to their inaction.
"All middle-class South Africans must remember Archbishop (Desmond) Tutu’s warning that ‘if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor’," he said.
The inequalities in South Africa were compounded by corruption, crime, incompetence and the "squandering of public resources".
"A greedy criminal elite is systematically robbing the poor and sabotaging efforts to improve the lives of the people," Mr Vavi said.
This year has also witnessed the highest number of service delivery protests since 2004. Mr Vavi said South Africa was viewed as the world "capital of protest action", and more worrying was the violent nature of these protests.
Increased levels of desperation over poverty and inequalities drove workers and the poor "straight into the arms of violence".
"If we moving in this direction, then God must help us all," Mr Vavi said.
The fight against injustice in South Africa today could only be won though mass mobilisation and a "united front", he added. "We can no longer continue to be spectators in a game that will ultimately determine our future."
