The State of the Nation Address by Jacob Zuma, at the behest of the ANC collective, ushered a new wave of austerity measures that does not augur well for the working class in this epoch of neo-liberalism. Those that are lucky to have formal work will see the erosion of their income and the ±34% unemployed will suffer further intrusions on their basic human rights due to the cuts in social expenditure by the ruling party.

We all know that the capitalists will praise the “bold leadership” of the government, while the poor people will feel the bite of the further failure of the promise of “a good life for all”. The rallying call of the president that all tiers of government must follow this direction will ensure that the little service delivery that the nation has received will be further reduced.

When the president alluded to the idea that public enterprises which are not performing, will be rationalised  or phased out, we can be sure that the parastatals which are badly managed through cadre and crony deployment, will be privatised. This will be at a huge cost to the cash-strapped workers and their dependents. The president also mentioned that we need stable labour relations. We can be sure that what this means is that they expect of  COSATU, their alliance partner, to ensure that they deliver a docile workforce that must accept the onslaught of the bosses. The workers’ hard-won concessions from these bosses will now be under attack.

We are being asked to be patriotic and supportive of  a leadership which has mismanaged the country by slavishly following the ill-advised, neo-liberal policies of the bourgeois class. If not, we are accused of being counter-revolutionaries, opposing the so-called National Democratic Revolution. We are witnessing that the petit- bourgeois leadership of the Tripartite alliance will more and more be using the “scourge of racism” as the “new” struggle and to blame a minority for all the ills of bad governance. We are already witnessing the rise of national and tribal chauvinism to address many political and economic  issues, all in the attempt to   blind the labouring classes to the understanding  that our struggle is a class struggle.

Comrades, the enemy of the workers and peasants is the capitalist class from whose rule we must free ourselves.