This public holiday is a testimony to the hard battles that workers in this country and in other parts of the globe have waged for workers’ rights and social justice over many decades.
It is also a reminder of the many challenges that still confront working people and the poor in South Africa – and which remain obstacles to sustainable human development among all developing nations.
The South African working class has been at the forefront of the struggle for a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist, prosperous and united nation. It has understood and consistently maintained that workplace struggles cannot be separated from broader social struggles; that economic justice and equality cannot be achieved without national liberation. And it has argued that these struggles cannot be separated from the struggle for gender equality and, specifically, women’s emancipation.
In the year of the ninth anniversary of our democratic breakthrough and the 30th anniversary of the historic 1973 Durban strikes, we pay tribute to the millions of workers who fought for a democratic South Africa and the many who sacrificed so much so that all South Africans could today enjoy rights of citizenship in their own country.
WE SALUTE YOU!
