Communication Workers Union

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) supports the calls by our Federation – Cosatu – on the lifestyle audit of public representatives and leaders.

This call should be understood within the context of an embedded and deep-seated Kebble-ism within our movement which hands out largesse in order to secure their own personal accumulation agendas. This has been further advanced through radical articulation of the progressive clauses of the Freedom Charter and offensive targeted at ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe which is being reinforced by the naked class interests of trying to use the ANC and the State for wealth accumulation and crass materialism.

The Revolutionary Alliance and the State cannot be used as a vehicle for self-enrichment and dispensation of patronage at the expense of the needs and aspirations of the vast majority of our people. Our country is confronted by mass challenges of poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment as a result of the colonial character of our economy as permeated by Capitalism. We reject the usage of public offices and leadership positions for ill-gotten wealth and exclusive parties in opulent suburbs by our public representatives and leaders

We call on the Revolutionary Alliance as a leader of society to endorse the lifestyle audit as being called by Cosatu. This lifestyle audit is in sync with the movements commit to fight corruption in both the public and private sector. The ANC’s 2004 Elections Manifesto committed our movement to “ensure efficient functioning of all anti-corruption structures and systems including whistle-blowing, blacklisting of corrupt companies, implementation of laws to ensure exposure of, and action against, private sector corruption, and quicker processes to deal with any corrupt civil servants and public officials”. This bold commitment by the ANC is consistent with the lifestyle audit as proposed by Cosatu and the broad democratic forces.

This calls on the Alliance Secretariat to convene an urgent Secretariat Meeting to have a political discussion with an intention to develop a framework on lifestyle audit. No amount of bullying, grandstanding, labeling and rhetorical radicalism should deter the movement from nipping in the bud this cancer of self-enrichment and crass materialism.

CWU also welcomes the GS of COSATU’s  willingness to volunteer to open his closets for all and sundry see that he has got nothing to hide. We wish that all our leaders will emulate this revolutionary gesture by Cde Vavi. We call on other genuine leaders of the working class and the poor to fear nothing.

Law enforcement agencies must move swiftly on those that are barking the loudest; as they know exactly what they are hiding.