Saying that the ILO was only as strong as its 187 member states, Prof. Mdwaba who was addressing a Zoom press conference involving selected African journalists stressed that the failure of implementation at national level, at base defeated any ratification done by member countries.

“African countries are the highest ratifiers but do not implement.

“The ILO is as strong as the members it has. Without those members doing what they are supposed to do at national level, the ILO cannot function,” he stated.

Implementation

Prof. Mdwaba, who is currently the Adjunct Associate Professor of Law at the University of Western Cape with years of work experience at the ILO, said when the ILO came out with a convention, it relied on ratification of that particular convention, nonetheless, but laws that are formulated out of those conventions must be implemented by the countries concerned.

“Convention 190 for example on violence and harassment is being ratified right now throughout the world but I have been arguing for a very long time that it makes no sense that we focus on ratification which itself is ok.

“But mainly it is ok for the lovely photos that are taken but that is not good for the people on the ground because what really matters is implementation. There has to be implementation and monitoring of that which you’ve ratified.

“So assuming you ratify it and put it into your law, if you then don’t go and implement it and make sure that you’ve got the inspectorate to monitor via implementation, then there is a problem,” he explained.

Prof. Mdwaba said these in response to questions posed by graphic.com.gh on the issue of child labour and discrimination as well as the lack of fairness, inclusivity and equity when it came to the payment of salaries to women, whites and blacks for the same job.

Child labour

He referred to the incidence of children assisting parents in Africa being labelled as child labour while in other jurisdictions it was called internship or some kind of apprenticeship, as hypocrisy.

“Those kind of activities are supposed to be monitored by your country – your department of labour at base. For example, in your country, what would have to happen is that the department of employment and labour would have to monitor that you cannot have a situation where somebody runs an internship that is seen as child labour because you must remember that the protection and terms of child labour is that a child under 18 years must be protected.”

He listed other factors that should be taken into cognisance so it is not taken as child labour, such as whether the children are being paid for their labour and given the opportunity to go to school.

“The main issue is, do they go to school, do they have the chance to go to school? Once you have an internship, do you make sure that young people, the children are given the opportunity to educate themselves so that they will be able to develop and improve themselves?” he asked.

He intimated that there would be a conference on child labouron May 16 and 17 in South Africa to find out if child labour had reached universality, which is; if the Child Labour Convention had been ratified, why was there so much ambiguity about the practice?

Women, blacks, whites and jobs

Saying the same lack of clearness and ambiguity happened with the issue of the employment and remuneration for women, whites and blacks, he posited that “This is a failure of implementation at national level. This is the failure of implementation at base, at the source where it is happening.”

He said it didn’t mean there was “the lack of a conventions or standards that are able to help you to regulate that environment.”

He, however, admitted that the ILO could do more through its technical cooperation and education.

Prof. Mdwaba said there was, however, another challenge – the United Nations reform, which meant that the ILO now shared offices with all UN entities, which had posed some challenges as there is no ILO operative but a UN Resident Coordinator who has no clue about how ILO works.

“All the other UN entities work on the basis of the government being the decision maker, while the ILO always works with the constituents who are the social partners,” he explained, adding that a lot had to be done working with ILO members on the ground.

Race for ILO DG post

For the first time on January 20, 2022, the ILO held public dialogues, during which all five aspirants including Prof. Mdwaba, were interviewed as a precursor of interviews held by the Governing Body of the ILO which will be held on March 14, 2022.

The election of a new director-general for the ILO to replace the current DG, Guy Ryder from Britain, who steps down after 10 years in office on September 30 this year, will be held on March 25, 2022.

The other candidates for the ILO top job are the ILO’s current Deputy Director General, Greg Vines; France’s former LabourMinister, Muriel Pénicaud, former Togolese Prime Minister, Gilbert Fossoun Houngbo and former South Korean Foreign Minister, Kang Kyung-wha.  

Having already received the endorsement of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tripartite and the African Union (AU) to contest the ILO DG position, Prof. Mdwaba aspires to build a better ILO which is currently in its 103rd year.

ILO that cares

“I want to build an ILO that cares and an ILO that delivers and building an ILO that cares means that even people that work for the ILO must feel the love. We mustn’t go and make the whole world do certain things that we ourselves don’t do with our people that work for the ILO.

“And when you talk about an ILO that delivers, it’s an ILO that collaborates, it’s an ILO that knows that it has a role and a huge role to play when it works with the WHO, the World Health Organisation that is now being at the centre of the COVID-19 [pandemic], a sister organisation like the [World Trade Organisation] WTO, which is occupied by our sister from Nigeria…all these organisations as well as working for example, with the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement and so on.

“The ILO is not as known as it thinks it is. We need to do more for us to be known, especially because young people have no idea who we are. They have never heard of the ILO,” he said.

“There is a lot that the ILO needs to do at regional level…the first thing I am going to do when I am the director general is to go to every region and meet with the people in the regions, because every region is different.

“I don’t want to be elected because I am African. I want to be elected because I am the most competent, the most experienced, and the candidate that has the highest level of expertise, which I believe I do,” he said.