I support wholeheartedly the right of public workers to strike. The importance of this strike, unprecedented in breadth and scope, and the challenge it poses to the neoliberal state, cannot be overestimated, for South African, continental, and indeed global labour movements.

I do not support:

1) Violent attacks, threats and intimidation by strikers towards those workers who exercise their freedom of conscience in choosing not to down tools.

2) Acts of violence by strikers towards helpless patients in hospitals and learners seeking to attend school.

3) The short-sighted and strategically irrelevant ideology of total shutdown of schools and hospitals by any means necessary. This ideology ignores the reality that these schools however inadequate, offer a measure of shelter and safety for millions of poor and working class children, who would otherwise be at the mercy of rapists, gangsters, and other predators. That these hospitals, however under-equipped, offer the slenderest of lifelines to people with HIV, women about to give birth, accident victims, people with serious illnesses and disabilities, the poor who have no other options in medical emergencies.

It is necessary that our solidarity include our humanity. We cannot call ourselves leftists or socialists if we abandon our moral and political obligation to protect and defend the most vulnerable in our society. Unless COSATU leadership takes immediate and effective action to end these violations by their members, what we see portends an all-too-chilling return to the scenes of the 80s.

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