Today is Workers’ Day, known around the world as May Day, a day to celebrate the struggles of workers.

Our movement is committed to building unity, in struggle, between the oppressed. We have always organised in solidarity with migrant organisations, street traders, flat dwellers and other groups representing impoverished and oppressed people. We are also committed to building unity, in struggle, between impoverished people, many of whom are not members of trade unions, and the unionised working class. If we can support each other in our struggles we’ll both be stronger and the working class as a whole, unionised and not unionised, working formally and informally, will be stronger.

On Sunday, the leadership of the South Africa Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) joined us at our annual UnFreedom Day rally in Durban.

Today we will join SAFTU, including NUMSA, the Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) and others unions, in their march through central Durban. We will support this march in numbers.

Our members in Gauteng are travelling to Limpopo in numbers to support the SAFTU event in that province.

We will also use May Day to express our solidarity with our comrades in Venezuela. One of our leaders visited Venezuela recently and she has given us comprehensive reports of the situation there. We are in full solidarity with the progressive popular movements organising in the favelas there and we are completely opposed to all attempted by the government of the United States to work with the rich in Venezuela to take over the country in the interests of capitalism, racism and imperialism. Just as we have stood with our comrades in Haiti, Turkey, Zimbabwe and elsewhere in the past we will stand with our comrades in Venezuela too.

Mqapheli Bonono: 073 067 3274
Nomusa Sizani: 081 005 3686
Zanele Mtshali: 062 437 9077