Trade unionism in Africa: Interview with Owei Lakemfa, Secretary General of OATUU
The Organization of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU) celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. In this interview, the new Secretary General of OATUU, Mr. Owei Lakemfa gives his views regarding the results and prospects of OATUU, the unity of trade union movement in Africa and the implementation of Post-2015 Development Agenda in Africa.
ACTRAV INFO: In April 2013, the OATUU celebrates the 40th anniversary of its creation. Please tell us about OATUU’s achievements and perspective for the African trade union movement
Owei Lakemfa: Africa used to be a battlefield for individual groups and treaty organizations across the world. In 1973, we came together. There were three international labour centres in Africa. All agreed to dissolve themselves and come together to form one united organization. And that is the reason why we are that named – the Organization of African Trade Union Unity-OATUU. So, the main thing is that we achieved that and we came together.
What we have achieved mainly is that African workers are united and, being united, we can speak with one voice, carry out swift actions everywhere. With OATUU, African workers have their identity. Like our European comrades have the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), we have our own identity. So Africa has its own identity. We have our independence. We can decide on our own and we have respect. And also, fundamentally, OATUU has been able to link African workers with the African Union (AU). Do not forget that the African Union has been the main organization, carrying out projects and trying to unite the African continent, in line with the dreams of our founding fathers. So, OATUU has been able to take African workers into the AU system and, in the AU system, we are there represented at all levels, including at the summits of Heads of States. So we know what is going on in the continent. We are there when the discussions are held and then we can disseminate information. We can then know the feeling of African workers. Now, we have built this around what we call “pan-Africanism”. Pan-Africanism does not mean that we are not internationalists. This was what we were taught by our founders. I am talking about the founders of Africa. By that, Kwame Nkrumah and others in that mode, and then we show that we are pan-Africanists in thoughts and internationalists in action. You will find that people like that are all over the world. They were respected. They were part of what we call the non-aligned movement. But they were pan-Africanists and that is what we are building on.
In the last 40 years, we have built African trade unions to build capacity skills, especially in education, on gender issues, on health issues. We have a programme going on, called the PANAF, where, since about 1986 or 1987, we have been educating some African countries – at least 15 of them. In March 2013, we are going to start a new programme, with ten new countries in Africa. This time in collaboration with our comrades from China, to educate African workers.When we started some 40 years ago, in line with the Protocol agreement, the Government of Ghana gave us an office and a residence for the Secretary-General. We have added to that. We now have a bigger, better office, which we built on our own, with the assistance of our comrades from China. We now have what is called the Kwame Nkrumah Labour College, where we are going to train African labour leaders and even labour leaders from outside our continent, on trade unionism’s various aspects. So these are primary achievements that we think we have. But the main thing there is that we will be able to get African workers together to meet changes and to tackle challenges. And, of course, as you know, there are a lot of challenges everywhere. Even outside this sphere of work, you find conflicts, for instance. You know, we have had problems in Libya, we have had in Tunisia, we have had in Egypt, we have in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the Central African Republic etc. Even in countries that you might say are post-conflict situations – like Liberia, like Sierra Leone – you have to consolidate. But we believe that, once we are united, the people will unite and poverty will be defeated. That, once we are united, we can combat these problems.
Now, talking about our perspectives for the African trade union movement, it is simply that we must remain true to ourselves and remain independent of thoughts, independent of action. That whatever we are going to do, we will have to put the interests of Africa first. We are not going to allow anyone to dictate to us. We are going to carry out a lot of our decisions at our last conference, which was in Algiers in December 2012. It is for a united international trade union movement. That is one of the things we are trying to do.We also have to repair a lot of damages that have been done in the last few years. We used to insist, in OATUU, that we must have labour centres by country. It was not because we were against people’s democratic rights to establish organizations that they want, but we knew that, as far as trade union organizations were concerned, as the workers were concerned, the more united we are the better. But we now have the challenge of having multiplicity of unions, trade union centres, in many African countries. In fact, in many countries Trade union centres have increased by four. It just does not make sense and that is part of one of the things that we are trying to preach and carry out programmes for. We must be able to unite African trade unions and bring them together and let them speak with one voice.
ACTRAV INFO: OATUU is one of the regional organizations of the African trade union movement. Are there cooperation projects with the ITUC Africa, in the context of strengthening of the union movement in Africa?
We believe that any programme that will aid the African is fine. It does not matter by whom. And so when we had the whole issue about the pan-African education programme for 15 countries, funded by our comrades from Sweden, and the ITUC-Africa has participated. So we work with them at all levels, because we are working towards the same agenda.And, even beyond that, if you take it like in the case of the ILO, we have the Governing Body, and we have positions that go to Africa – to our members. We will have to work together, but we just insist that it must be in the interests of Africa. So, whatever we do or whoever we work with, our work with ITUC Africa, we always insist that whatever is done must be in the interests of Africa. Once it is in the interests of Africa, it does not matter which organization we work with. That is why we are very close to a number of countries, like Sweden, Norway, China, our comrades in Japan. These are countries that respect us and we respect them, and we are happy to work together. So anybody that will work with us, that will respect us, and that will accept our principles – which is the development of the African worker – we will work with.
ACTRAV INFO: The forthcoming important discussion at the ILO and the United Nations is the post-2015 development agenda. At the level of your organization, how would you implement this agenda to reduce poverty and unemployment affecting African workers?
I think it is not the first issue. It is not about implementing. We want to be there when the agenda is being conceived. We want to be part of the process. That is why we are holding, from 13–14 March, in Addis Ababa, the OATUU is organizing some workshops. We are bringing African labour leaders from all 55 African countries together; to come and discuss what type of world we want in post-2015. It is not just about the African Union or the United Nations having an agenda for us. We must develop our own agenda and then make it as a contribution to these bodies. That is one of the things we are trying to do. For instance, we want and, of course, we are interested in decent work. We want to see employment as a means to an end. Once you are employed, you can have the basics of life. So we are also promoting what we call the basic needs also, which is an old ILO programme, where people can be guaranteed basic things. So we are interested in that.
We are interested in an Africa that can fast-track this integration process, because integration and more trade we feel we can develop ourselves. We can have more resources in the continent. We can also have more employment. So we are looking at things like that also. We are looking – Africa is 50 years this year, talking about the AU. So we are looking at the old theme about the Africa renaissance. So what we are doing at the level of OATUU is to come together to develop our own concepts, our own ideas and our own agenda, as contributions to post-2015. It is at that point, when we are at 2015, we can then talk about implementation. Of course, implementation is very key to us. We want to go beyond mere declarations, to actual work. We want to hold African leaders to their promises, to their agreements, on the post-2015. While we are working, we will be working with trade unions; our own agenda. We also want to make inputs, in terms of implementation of what can be generated because, once the African populace can be taken care of, the African workers can also be taken care of in the process. It is not possible for African workers to be discriminated against at that level. So that is what we want to do. We want to work with all the countries in Africa. We want to work with all the governments. We want to work with the AU. Of course, with the trade unions and, in fact, we want to work the system whereby, once the post-2015 agenda is agreed, we can simplify it for African workers, for the trade unions and also we want to use monitors in their countries. So they can report back and we can then give feedback to the AU, give feedback to the ILO, we can give feedback to the United Nations, and so we can see how far this is progressing.
Owei Lakemfa: Africa used to be a battlefield for individual groups and treaty organizations across the world. In 1973, we came together. There were three international labour centres in Africa. All agreed to dissolve themselves and come together to form one united organization. And that is the reason why we are that named – the Organization of African Trade Union Unity-OATUU. So, the main thing is that we achieved that and we came together.
What we have achieved mainly is that African workers are united and, being united, we can speak with one voice, carry out swift actions everywhere. With OATUU, African workers have their identity. Like our European comrades have the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), we have our own identity. So Africa has its own identity. We have our independence. We can decide on our own and we have respect. And also, fundamentally, OATUU has been able to link African workers with the African Union (AU). Do not forget that the African Union has been the main organization, carrying out projects and trying to unite the African continent, in line with the dreams of our founding fathers. So, OATUU has been able to take African workers into the AU system and, in the AU system, we are there represented at all levels, including at the summits of Heads of States. So we know what is going on in the continent. We are there when the discussions are held and then we can disseminate information. We can then know the feeling of African workers. Now, we have built this around what we call “pan-Africanism”. Pan-Africanism does not mean that we are not internationalists. This was what we were taught by our founders. I am talking about the founders of Africa. By that, Kwame Nkrumah and others in that mode, and then we show that we are pan-Africanists in thoughts and internationalists in action. You will find that people like that are all over the world. They were respected. They were part of what we call the non-aligned movement. But they were pan-Africanists and that is what we are building on.
In the last 40 years, we have built African trade unions to build capacity skills, especially in education, on gender issues, on health issues. We have a programme going on, called the PANAF, where, since about 1986 or 1987, we have been educating some African countries – at least 15 of them. In March 2013, we are going to start a new programme, with ten new countries in Africa. This time in collaboration with our comrades from China, to educate African workers.When we started some 40 years ago, in line with the Protocol agreement, the Government of Ghana gave us an office and a residence for the Secretary-General. We have added to that. We now have a bigger, better office, which we built on our own, with the assistance of our comrades from China. We now have what is called the Kwame Nkrumah Labour College, where we are going to train African labour leaders and even labour leaders from outside our continent, on trade unionism’s various aspects. So these are primary achievements that we think we have. But the main thing there is that we will be able to get African workers together to meet changes and to tackle challenges. And, of course, as you know, there are a lot of challenges everywhere. Even outside this sphere of work, you find conflicts, for instance. You know, we have had problems in Libya, we have had in Tunisia, we have had in Egypt, we have in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the Central African Republic etc. Even in countries that you might say are post-conflict situations – like Liberia, like Sierra Leone – you have to consolidate. But we believe that, once we are united, the people will unite and poverty will be defeated. That, once we are united, we can combat these problems.
Now, talking about our perspectives for the African trade union movement, it is simply that we must remain true to ourselves and remain independent of thoughts, independent of action. That whatever we are going to do, we will have to put the interests of Africa first. We are not going to allow anyone to dictate to us. We are going to carry out a lot of our decisions at our last conference, which was in Algiers in December 2012. It is for a united international trade union movement. That is one of the things we are trying to do.We also have to repair a lot of damages that have been done in the last few years. We used to insist, in OATUU, that we must have labour centres by country. It was not because we were against people’s democratic rights to establish organizations that they want, but we knew that, as far as trade union organizations were concerned, as the workers were concerned, the more united we are the better. But we now have the challenge of having multiplicity of unions, trade union centres, in many African countries. In fact, in many countries Trade union centres have increased by four. It just does not make sense and that is part of one of the things that we are trying to preach and carry out programmes for. We must be able to unite African trade unions and bring them together and let them speak with one voice.
ACTRAV INFO: OATUU is one of the regional organizations of the African trade union movement. Are there cooperation projects with the ITUC Africa, in the context of strengthening of the union movement in Africa?
We believe that any programme that will aid the African is fine. It does not matter by whom. And so when we had the whole issue about the pan-African education programme for 15 countries, funded by our comrades from Sweden, and the ITUC-Africa has participated. So we work with them at all levels, because we are working towards the same agenda.And, even beyond that, if you take it like in the case of the ILO, we have the Governing Body, and we have positions that go to Africa – to our members. We will have to work together, but we just insist that it must be in the interests of Africa. So, whatever we do or whoever we work with, our work with ITUC Africa, we always insist that whatever is done must be in the interests of Africa. Once it is in the interests of Africa, it does not matter which organization we work with. That is why we are very close to a number of countries, like Sweden, Norway, China, our comrades in Japan. These are countries that respect us and we respect them, and we are happy to work together. So anybody that will work with us, that will respect us, and that will accept our principles – which is the development of the African worker – we will work with.
ACTRAV INFO: The forthcoming important discussion at the ILO and the United Nations is the post-2015 development agenda. At the level of your organization, how would you implement this agenda to reduce poverty and unemployment affecting African workers?
I think it is not the first issue. It is not about implementing. We want to be there when the agenda is being conceived. We want to be part of the process. That is why we are holding, from 13–14 March, in Addis Ababa, the OATUU is organizing some workshops. We are bringing African labour leaders from all 55 African countries together; to come and discuss what type of world we want in post-2015. It is not just about the African Union or the United Nations having an agenda for us. We must develop our own agenda and then make it as a contribution to these bodies. That is one of the things we are trying to do. For instance, we want and, of course, we are interested in decent work. We want to see employment as a means to an end. Once you are employed, you can have the basics of life. So we are also promoting what we call the basic needs also, which is an old ILO programme, where people can be guaranteed basic things. So we are interested in that.
We are interested in an Africa that can fast-track this integration process, because integration and more trade we feel we can develop ourselves. We can have more resources in the continent. We can also have more employment. So we are looking at things like that also. We are looking – Africa is 50 years this year, talking about the AU. So we are looking at the old theme about the Africa renaissance. So what we are doing at the level of OATUU is to come together to develop our own concepts, our own ideas and our own agenda, as contributions to post-2015. It is at that point, when we are at 2015, we can then talk about implementation. Of course, implementation is very key to us. We want to go beyond mere declarations, to actual work. We want to hold African leaders to their promises, to their agreements, on the post-2015. While we are working, we will be working with trade unions; our own agenda. We also want to make inputs, in terms of implementation of what can be generated because, once the African populace can be taken care of, the African workers can also be taken care of in the process. It is not possible for African workers to be discriminated against at that level. So that is what we want to do. We want to work with all the countries in Africa. We want to work with all the governments. We want to work with the AU. Of course, with the trade unions and, in fact, we want to work the system whereby, once the post-2015 agenda is agreed, we can simplify it for African workers, for the trade unions and also we want to use monitors in their countries. So they can report back and we can then give feedback to the AU, give feedback to the ILO, we can give feedback to the United Nations, and so we can see how far this is progressing.