ON BUDGET DAY WE SAY PAY BACK THE MONEY!
Not just for Nkandla. After all that is just small change compared to the R100 billion the banks, mines and monopoly industries are illegally syphoning out of the country into their foreign bank accounts. Not only do they avoid tax but they avoid paying workers a living wage!
Nkandla is small change relative to the R1,3 trillion the corporations hold in idle bank accounts. They refuse to invest in creating jobs. For years now these companies that get big subsidies from government have been on an investment strike.
Pay back the money for fixing the bread price. The bread companies colluded to push up the bread price in spite of the fact that it is the staple diet of the poor and working people. Pay back the money for colluding to put up the costs of building the football stadiums and other construction projects. Pay back the money for corruption. Big business likes to talk about corruption as if it is a problem only of government – as if their lily-white hands are clean. But who is it that is bribing government officials and paying the kickbacks for the lucrative contracts to build the Etolls, Gautrain and the electricity plants?
Pay back the money for cutting wages and increasing profits. Since 1994 more of the wealth generated through the blood and sweat of workers goes to the bosses at the expense of wages.
Pay back the money for retrenching workers. Millions of workers have been retrenched so business can gain more profits. Unemployment in SA stands at nearly 40%. The labour brokers should pay back the money for profiting from the wages of workers. Contract workers are sold to big mining and other businesses at a fraction of the wage paid
to permanent workers.
There has indeed been redistribution of wealth but it has been from the poor to the rich. How is it that the richest two people in SA have amassed so much wealth that it is equal to the combined wealth of the poorest half of the population, i.e. 26 million people!
Even though more than half our people live in extreme poverty, half the adult population is unemployed, the public schools and hospitals that is mainly used by working class people is collapsing, government wants to cut spending on public services. How
is it when working people face such hardship government wants to cut spending on social grants.
This is what the 2015/16 budget is about. Once again this government satisfies the demands of the bosses and the rich at the expense of the workers and the poor. This is how CAPITALISM works. This is why economic freedom must mean doing away with the bosses
system of private property.
Like Zuma they will never pay back the money. This is why we must unite: communities and workers. This is why we must build the United Front into a fighting force. We need PEOPLES POWER; we need WORKERS POWER to force them to pay back the money.
