Xenophobia: NLC writes South African counterparts to halt attacks

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has called on its sister labour centre in South Africa to lend its powerful voice without equivocation and condemn these xenophobic attacks in the strongest terms, not as a mere press release but as a mass mobilisation so that every trade union hall, every shop floor, and every picket line carries the message that an injury to one is an injury to all.

In a statement in Abuja, Joe Ajaero, NLC president, urged its South African counterpart to condemn the xenophobic attacks, emphasisng on the need to protect migrant workers.

“We are compelled by the blood of our fellow Black workers – Zimbabwean, Malawian, Mozambican, Somali, Nigerian, and others – who are being murdered, not for any crime, but for the sin of being African in Africa. We are appalled at the destruction of livelihoods of Africans built through years of sweat and blood in the
streets of South African towns.

“These killings and destructions are a reactionary fever born of the same neoliberal crisis that is crushing workers and masses across the globe. The crisis of unemployment, housing, and social services in South Africa is real, and we do not dismiss the pain of our South African comrades. But the response of the ruling class has always been to turn the oppressed against each other. When the bourgeoisie fails, the foreign worker becomes the
scapegoat.

“Our common enemy is not the migrant worker hawking goods in Soweto or
mining in Rustenburg. Our common enemy is neoliberalism, capitalism’s most vicious mask. It is failed government policies that failed to address the needs of workers and people but panders to profit,” Ajaero wrote.

The NLC further demands that COSATU use its immense weight to pressure the South African government to take robust and immediate steps.

“Comrades, we remind you that the trade union movement in Africa was forged in the crucible of solidarity, from the anti-apartheid struggle that we in the Nigeria Labour Congress supported with our dues and our voices, to the fight against structural adjustment.

“Fresh in our minds are some of the faces of the many South Africans that
were with us in our universities as fellow students on the sponsorship of the government, and whom we provided belongingness and solidarity.

“We cannot abandon that history. We cannot claim to fight for the working class while allowing a section of that class to be hunted like wild animals.

“We therefore call upon COSATU to lead a mass educational and sensitisation offensive within every union, every community, and every workplace in South Africa. We must teach that the migrant worker is not a cause of poverty but a victim of the same system. We must break, once and for all, the racist myth that a fellow black African from across a colonial border is our enemy. Xenophobia is not good for anybody, especially the world of work, because it fractures working-class unity and weakens our collective bargaining power against capital.

“We must organize a pushback against this latest eruption and change the mindset that propels it before it destroys our collective unity
across the continent.

“As partners in the global and regional trade union movement, it remains our collective responsibility to protect the world of work in Africa by also protecting the migrant African communities in South Africa.

“We urge COSATU to join us in building a Pan-African labour response. Let us convene an emergency meeting of African trade union centres under the
African Regional Organisation of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC Africa) and the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU).

“Let us draft joint mechanisms for protecting migrant workers across borders. Xenophobia is a cancer that
If not excised in South Africa, it will metastasise across the continent, and it is already showing its pustules elsewhere, including other countries of Africa.

“We want you to understand that we believe that this is not a South African problem alone. This is a crisis for the entire African working class. The transnational capitalist class watches with glee as we butcher each other. They laugh when an informal trader is burnt to death, because that trader is one less mouth demanding wages and one less mind organising for dignity.

“We in the NLC will not abandon our South African brothers and sisters to neoliberalism’s lies. But we demand that you, as our sister and progressive labour centre, stand on the side of internationalism. There is no emancipation without solidarity. There is no liberation without the liberation of all African workers, regardless of passport.

“The hour is late. The blood is staining the soil which we share together. It is time for concerted action. Let us save Africa. Let us deliver workers of Africa.