On May Day, for the first time since the birth of Cosatu in 1985, comrades who struggled together under the labour federation’s banner marched separately – on the very day that is supposed to celebrate workers’ unity and solidarity.
Such disunity can be good news only for the wealthy capitalist elite who know that workers divided can be defeated and forced to work for even lower wages and in worse conditions, so profits can soar.
Worse, this division comes as workers face a huge crisis in the country and their movement. South Africa has the eighth-highest level of unemployment in the world, more than 34 percent of its people are living in poverty and we are world leaders in inequality. Casualisation and super-exploitation by labour brokers continue unabated, despite laws to restrict them.
Big business and their allies in Parliament are looking at new ways to intensify the exploitation of workers, end collective bargaining, restrict the right to strike through compulsory arbitration and resist “unrealistic” demands for higher wages.
The government is pushing ahead with the anti-worker National Development Plan and dragging its feet on important reforms like the national health insurance scheme and comprehensive social security.
None of this is unique to South Africa and it reflects the changing nature of capitalism. Lenin, in his Imperialism, the Highest Form of Capitalism, long ago foresaw the replacement of the individual capitalist by monopolies and imperialist domination of the world economy.
Today, even the directors of global companies are being replaced as key decisions are in effect taken by a network of international financial institutions, fund managers and investment brokers who invest or disinvest vast amounts of capital at the touch of a keyboard, purely to ensure maximum return on their clients’ investments and with no thought for the social or employment consequences.
There is no democratic control of these bodies, and the system is policed by equally unaccountable credit ratings agencies, who blackmail companies whose policies they do not like, like Eskom recently, by downgrading their credit rating, or simply by threatening to do so.
Worse, they can blackmail democratic governments with downgradings even if they are implementing policies that were the platforms on which they were elected.
A good example are the negotiations on public service wages and conditions. These have been under way for six months. Business Day warned its readers on April 24 that: “The rating agencies are paying close attention to South Africa’s public-sector wage round, and they have made it clear that if the government and the trade unions settle on a figure that will bust the budget and derail the fiscal consolidation that Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene has promised, a ratings downgrade could follow.”
The “government” in this context means the Treasury, which has become the transmission belt for credit ratings agencies and the interests of monopoly capitalism. It is compelling not only labour and business to toe the line, but is sabotaging ministers who are trying to implement government policies.
The government has incorporated free market, liberal policies into its National Development Plan and moved further and further from the radical policies the ANC adopted in Polokwane.
That is why we so desperately need a strong, united workers’ movement to fight back and get the national democratic revolution back on track. That is also why so many workers are asking why we have the opposite – a trade union movement that is becoming weaker, more fragmented, paralysed and toothless.
Recent events in Cosatu – the expulsion of National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and its replacement by a shelf union, the Liberated Metalworkers Union of SA, the denial of the third of Cosatu unions who, in line with the Cosatu constitution, petitioned for a special congress, and the illegal dismissal of the general secretary – can help to answer this question.
There was one serious political argument that was a thread and which can be seen in other countries’ experiences – a concerted attempt to drive out elements in the workers’ leadership who were seen to be “anti-majoritarian” and too critical of the government. It was an argument for turning the federation into the ANC’s labour desk.
It is a strategy used in many former colonies.
Frantz Fanon, philosopher, revolutionary and author of The Wretched of the Earth, noted “the shocking behaviour of the (post-independence) national bourgeoisie”, whose “mission has nothing to do with transforming the nation but rather consists of being the transmission line between the nation and capitalism, rampant though camouflaged.”
In many countries one of the priorities of this post-colonial bourgeoisie has been to disarm the organised working-class forces who put them in power. The tragedy and nightmare we are going through in South Africa is what workers experienced in most parts of Africa.
The most common strategy was to buy off the leadership and absorb them into the new capitalist elite, with offers of seats in parliament, government positions, ambassadorships or directorships of state-owned enterprises, leaving the trade unions leaderless.
While I have never argued that no union leader or official should ever accept such offers, accepting them must not be at the expense of the effectiveness of the trade unions they are leaving. In the case of Cosatu, the federation remained strong and united for years.
The huge crisis of unemployment, poverty and inequality, casualisation, labour brokers and e-tolls made workers more militant.
A scheme was hatched to “hollow out” Cosatu by getting rid of its most militant affiliate, Numsa, and its general secretary, a scheme scandalously orchestrated by the South African “Communist” Party, in cahoots with the most right-wing sections of the ANC. They succeeded, but at an incalculable cost – a split, paralysis, and a rump of weak, compliant office-bearers.
Although there was little to celebrate this May Day, I was heartened by the emergence on the streets of thousands of workers who have rejected the witch-hunt and are seeking to rebuild a Cosatu that will reclaim that which will reclaim its militant, revolutionary heritage.
I shall continue to march with them, and not desert the struggle for workers’ rights and a socialist world.
* Vavi is the axed Cosatu general secretary.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Sunday Independent