 Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Today, we are going to talk about the COVID-19 situation in South Africa, especially on the workers in the poor. And to talk about this, we have with us Thakam Elehanubi Majola, the national spokesperson of the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa. Thank you so much, Pax, for joining us. Thank you and good afternoon or good morning to your listeners, your viewers. Thank you. So, first of all, yesterday night, we understand that the president announced that the lockdown would be extended by a couple of more weeks till the end of April. So, could you first tell us what the situation is with the COVID-19 spread in South Africa, with the numbers, and what has been the pattern so far? Well, yes, indeed. Yesterday, the president made an announcement that the lockdown, which was only supposed to be 21 days, would now be extended by an additional two weeks. So, it would basically go on until the end of the month. The reason this is is because where we are in South Africa in terms of the infection rate, we have over 1,900 cases. And so far, unfortunately, 19 people have passed away. And I think where the concerns are coming from is because the testing process itself has been very, very slow. When we began rolling out the COVID-19 response, the expectation had been that we would get to a point where we were testing about 36,000 people a day, and we're nowhere near that. And I think so that's where the concern is coming from, from government, that to say that if we are too quick to lift the lockdown, then we might, you know, the numbers that we're looking at are not really a true reflection of what is actually happening. They've not had enough time, for example, to roll out the mass screening. This process was actually announced last week Sunday, but even on that process, they've not gone far enough. They've not begun doing enough areas. My understanding is they've so far only done a handful of areas. So it's all of those types of concerns that have sparked government's response to extend the lockdown because there is a very deep concern that the infection is far worse than what we're dealing with. And also, it does seem that on the side of government, they want to do everything to ensure that they flatten the curve, as they say, of the infection. Right. So the lockdown, as in many places in the global south, has brought a very serious set of socioeconomic concerns as well. And South Africa, with a very high inequality rate, a considerable amount of, say, a massive exploitation in terms of workers, a lack of workers' rights. As far as workers are concerned, it's been a huge issue. So could you talk a bit about what Noomsa specifically has been raising at this point with regards to the various sectors of the economy? What are the key areas where workers are facing problems during the lockdown? Well, you know, the problem with the coronavirus is that it does seem that the only method of being able to effectively tackle it involves mass quarantines or lockdowns, and where basically production has to stop in order to tackle it effectively. We've seen this in China. We've seen what Italy is trying to do in all these other countries where the virus has overtaken them. So our problem is that whilst we recognize that the lockdown is necessary in order to curb the spread of the virus, we're deeply concerned that these measures are having a very detrimental impact on the working class and the poor, because our socioeconomic setup is not set up in such a way as to support the poor and the working class during a lockdown of this kind. We have extremely high levels of poverty and unemployment. We've got unemployment rates above 37% now. We've got poverty levels where we're talking more than half the population is poor, and the majority of workers who are working earn very low wages. So it does mean that when you implement a lockdown of this kind, it creates real problems. In our case, many companies have obviously taken a decision to lockdown because many sectors are not operating, and what some companies have done is they've gone as far as forcing workers to take a no-work-no-pay. They've implemented no-work-no-pay policies, and this for us is particularly problematic because our government has actually gone pretty far in putting up measures to support small and medium-sized enterprises and cushion them. There's funding that's been available in order to assist during this process, and they've been asked to actually make applications to these mechanisms and these institutions. There's also the Unemployment Insurance Fund that's been made available so that for companies that have taken a decision to lockdown, they can claim from the Unemployment Insurance Fund so that workers can get their salaries. But the problem that we have in South Africa is that a lot of employers, frankly, even when business is normal, when you're not dealing with a coronavirus, employers are just not interested in filling out paperwork. They just don't care that this is their responsibility and it is their duty to take care of workers, and they've literally just left workers in the leverage. So this for us is particularly worrying because we've been very clear that our government should have done this in a different way. We would have preferred, for example, if they had given an income grant, which was given directly to families, this would have been much more effective because you wouldn't have a situation which we have now where during lockdown, our officials at NUMSA are running around desperately trying to help workers, trying to make sure they get their salaries because they're dealing with hostile employers who simply couldn't be bothered to assist workers with this type of thing. Right. So from the government side, there hasn't been any concept of direct transfer of either cash or say other essentials such as food. Have any policies been announced in this regard? Well, there are some initiatives around food parcels where provinces, for example, have been going on these campaigns house to house where they've identified indigenous and poor families and they're delivering food parcels. So that, of course, is progressive. But if you're talking about a huge sector of the population where the problem comes is for workers who are either casual workers and don't fall apart of the system because indigenous families are already families that exist on a system in our government. So in other words, if you're not on that system already, you're not going to benefit from food parcels. If you're an independent contractor or a freelancer, a casual worker, chances are you're not on that system, so you're not going to benefit. And it's all of those groups of workers that are finding themselves having problems. It's workers who are working for small and medium-sized companies who are suffering. A lot of bigger companies have taken decisions because of reserves and also because of support from government they are paying. But what we needed was something like along the lines of guaranteed income as a director from government. Which is one of the demands Numsa has raised on. Precisely, precisely. It is too much reliance on the goodwill of capital and that is where a lot of our problems are. The fact that, for example, our government has not taken the most crucial decision which is to nationalize the private healthcare means for us that they're not actually dealing with this effectively, they're not taking this seriously. South African healthcare system has effectively collapsed. Our public healthcare system collapsed long before coronavirus came on the scene. We have the most, our hospitals are completely underfunded, they're understaffed, drastically under-resourced. Chris Honey Baragwanath Hospital, which is the biggest hospital in Africa frequently runs out of, you know, Panado, you know, painkillers. It's that bad. So how is it that we can then say we are preparing for coronavirus but we're not doing the most obvious thing which would be to take over all the private healthcare facilities in our country. Our healthcare system is very skewed in the sense that all of the specialists, all of the best resources, all of the best hospitals target and cater for the minority who are wealthy, who have medical aid and can access these things not more than 26% of the population. The rest must take their chances in the public sector. So we feel that that is a fundamental failure in this strategy because it means that we are actually not going to be able to tackle this virus. This is made worse by the fact that health workers do not have access to health, to PPEs, to safety clothing, masks, gloves, all of those things. And we know, based on scientific evidence, how fast this virus spreads. Already several of our health professionals have fallen sick. So, you know, we see that our government is not prioritizing this and for us, as long as they're not prioritizing these crucial areas, then unfortunately we really are going to be headed for a disaster as bad as Italy, if not worse. Right. So, what are the other key demands that Noomsa has been raising at this point? You mentioned the privatization of the health sector and you mentioned, of course, the issue of the guaranteed income which has to go, but what have been the other demands? Well, those for us are really the key demands. We've also made demands, for example, around the demands which have been raised by our comrades, Abashal Bassem Jondolo, ABM, whose movement has been viciously and violently attacked by the Ateguini municipality which is a municipality located in Guazulunatal, in the province of Guazulunatal. These really are the poorest of the poor. These are Shaq Duelis who live in informal settlements and during the coronavirus pandemic, our government has been systematically, the municipality of Ateguini has been systematically destroying these Shaqs. Imagine during a lockdown, they've destroyed Shaqs, they're evicting people by the dozens. Many members of the movement are sleeping exposed to the elements because they've got no housing. Last night, apparently, they were attacked again and 29 women were arrested. We find this completely unacceptable and shocking, considering what we are battling in this time. And it's not just these types of attacks that I'm talking about. We've had the army deployed in our communities since the rollout and the army, frankly, has not been playing a very progressive role. We would have hoped that the army would have played the role of supporting health workers, perhaps testing on a mass scale to support the health sector, setting up makeshift facilities for testing and treatment in informal spaces and in communities, but they're not doing that. They're busy patrolling the streets and at times they get bored and beat up or assault or harass members of the public. So this for us has been deeply concerning because, again, it speaks to the fact that we feel that our government is not gearing its focus on... and really is not acting in the interest of the majority of people. It seems as if the state machinery is being used rather to police the poor instead of resolving what is a crisis for all of us. And so for us, really, these are some of the things that we've been raising because if we're not going to treat the poorest of the poor with dignity and guarantee shelter and clean water, then there's no way we're going to tackle this virus. And unfortunately, to beat coronavirus, you actually have to deal decisively with the socioeconomic conditions at the same time. Exactly. And across the world, there have been quite a few discussions on how society looks like after this crisis, when the crisis ends, and the possibility of a new, say, progressive kind of politics coming into being which has much more radical demands. So has there been the kind of discussion in South African society as well as this crisis progresses? There has been certainly a conversation around that and you can see more and more that people are becoming more conscious about the fact that at the heart of this crisis is the fact that capitalism has privatized something as important as healthcare and we sat back and we allowed that to happen. And capitalism is proving that it's completely incapable of responding to a crisis of this kind. So there are these conversations taking place, but there's also a very worrying narrative which is developing certainly from the side of treasury where we've heard from the finance minister things like structural reform which he says must take place during this process. Now what we know about our finance minister is that he is extremely conservative and like the governing party, the ANC, has really been strongly pursuing the whole neoliberal agenda and when he uses words like structural reform we automatically know that what he means is to privatize even further. And that really is a bizarre response during such times. You know during war times you don't privatize anything. The state takes over everything and the coronavirus pandemic is like a war and what we demanded is a war-like response. We demanded for example a massive stimulus package of the kind that was devised as a Marshall plan during those times as a recovery plan for the Second World War. This is what you need at this time. And yet here we have a finance minister and a government which seems sort of more concerned about maintaining the wealth of the private sector. So whilst other countries like Italy and Spain have forced the banks to give families and households debt repayment holidays, our government has allowed the banks to basically decide for themselves whether or not they make a contribution to this crisis. And what we've seen in terms of their response is very clearly a model based on them profiteering of the crisis. So they're offering loans with interest and certainly nothing near to what we've seen taking place in other countries. And this for us is a deep concern because instead of our government taking a good look at the fact that for the last more than two decades we've implemented this neoliberal macroeconomic framework and it has failed. It has created the most unequal society. Instead of looking at that and saying this thing has clearly failed. We need to do something totally radical. We need to shift to the left. We need to do more from a social welfare perspective. They're actually looking at measures which are possibly going to be even more conservative and are going to worsen conditions for the working class and the poor going forward. Thank you so much for talking to us.