Numsa threatens mass action over NDP

The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) has threatened mass action over the National Development Plan (NDP), which its general secretary Irvin Jim has said was similar to the DA’s policies.

Jim called it “a downright neoliberal plan” that ANC members had not read.

He also said the newly elected ANC leadership was not working class orientated.

Speaking at a press conference in central Johannesburg today, following a meeting this week of its central committee, Jim lashed out at the National Development Plan, saying Numsa never agreed to its adoption by the ANC.

He said Numsa leaders “had noted with great concern that the NDP has been elevated to a status above the Freedom Charter, and appears to have sent into oblivion the RDP (Reconstruction and Development Programme).

He also said the NDP is the “failed neoliberal” 1996 growth programme Gear (Growth, Employment and Redistribution) in another form. Gear had 66 pages but has now grown into the 430 pages of the NDP, he said.

It “leaves intact and protects the power relations of colonialism of a special type in post-1994 South Africa”.

He added: “It is therefore a major right-wing deviation from the Freedom Charter and thus gives further momentum to the derailment of a socialist-oriented NDR (national democratic revolution).”

Jim said the NDP would “reproduce the same results we have suffered under the current neoliberal economic trajectory – mass poverty, rising unemployment and deepening inequalities, mostly affecting the black working class, including the marginalised and despondent youth of the country”.

According to Jim, parts of the plan were directly lifted from DA policy documents, especially the chapters on economic restructuring, infrastructure, the role of the state, agriculture and rural development.

“The fact that the ANC has adopted the NDP now buries whatever differences existed between it and the DA on matters of socioeconomic transformation,” he said.

Jim also condemned the leaks from the Cosatu central executive committee meeting, which accused the federation’s general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi of corruption and misconduct.