Unions have lost touch with the working class

REUTERS

Striking platinum mineworkers dance as they leave a feedback meeting on negotiations at Lonmins Marikana mine.

In Europe, people are accepting pay cuts in order to keep their jobs. In South Africa, people are taking part in violent strikes for more pay, as so tragically illustrated by the situation at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine.

This, as the world economy continues to stutter and falter and the fallout of the European economy sweeps across the world.

But, at least currently, the SA labour unease might very well represent more than mere worker demands for greater remuneration.

Semi-schooled workers in this country’s huge mining industry might be forgiven for not appreciating the global condition.

In fact, mineworker unrest should possibly not be considered as surprising as it has been, if a few growing, and vital, problems are taken into account.

Doctor Hamadziripi Tamukamoyo, a Zimbabwean researcher working at the SA Institute of Security Studies in Pretoria, call these problems “fundamental fault lines”, an accurate, if dramatic, description of a malaise in SA politics that has found a cosy home down the mineshaft.

But not only in the mineshafts.

The effects of this disease can also be seen in the sprawling working-class townships of both the big cities and rural towns throughout the country.

Effectively, it simply has to do with the re-disenfranchisement of the previously disenfranchised.

Both miner strikes and protests speak of the same thing – increasing disgruntlement among the poor with the political and union leadership appointed to look after their interests.

“I don’t think it could be expected of these workers [at Marikana] to think about global economic issues,” Tamukamoyo said in an interview.

The strike that had led to factional killings, the murder of two policemen and then the dramatic deaths of 34 miners in withering police gunfire, was essentially a so-called wild-cat strike over which neither of two competing unions had much control.

The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), which has been fighting the monolithic Cosatu-aligned National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) for influence and membership, might have had a measure of influence in the situation.

But the fact was that a large proportion of the striking miners at Marikana was not unionised, Tamukamoyo pointed out.

“Firstly, this shows that the unions are increasingly losing their ability to organise on the ground,” he said.

“Workers are increasingly disgruntled with their unions for cosying up to the ruling elite and looking after their own political and financial interests rather than taking care of worker concerns.

“You nowadays find union officials being paid obscene salaries, union officials earning as much as R100 000 a month…

Rock

“They rather represented the more well-paid employees and are losing touch with the worst-paid workers, such as the rock drillers who were mostly involved in this strike action.”

Tamukamoyo suggests this situation will continue as long as officials in unions and government are employed according to allegiance rather than on merit.

“…these miners were no longer asking their unions to negotiate for them. They called the strike on their own, they refused to listen to union representatives and they demanded to speak to mine management themselves. That shows a definite measure of mistrust in their union representatives.”

Tamukamoyo said the struggle between Amcu and the NUM had been going since 2001/2, when the split came.

“But looking beyond that struggle, as soon as 10 people died during the initial part of the strike, all stakeholders should have come together to do something constructive. They didn’t. Instead, we saw a deathly silence from the government and the unions. There was a complete lack of leadership.

“One would have expected the government to lead some sort of effort to resolve issues, but it didn’t. And it is disingenuous now of the unions to play the blame game – they should have put aside their differences and done what they are supposed to, by acting in the interests of members.

“It is a common thing on our continent and elsewhere. A freedom movement that, when freedom is achieved, looks only after their own pockets and interests.”

The current leadership of this country was incapable of proper leadership, he said.

Yet, politically, the miners do not see an alternative political organisation to support. The official opposition, the DA, is still seen as too white and too classist.

“Until a movement comes along that captures the aspirations of the poor, these people won’t vote against the ANC. They might not vote at all, but they won’t vote for another movement,” Tamukamoyo said.

The World Socialist Web Site, published by the so-called International Committee of the Fourth International, said “a river of blood now separates the miners from NUM, the central component of Cosatu, which is closely aligned with the ANC government”.

“The NUM has revealed itself as a tool of state repression and murder.

“The eruption of working class anger against the giant mine owners has put workers in direct conflict with the organisations that supposedly represent them.“

* Du Plessis is a senior staff writer for the Cape Argus