Unions, political parties and society as a whole need to heed the warning signs before it is too late, writes Max du Preez.
There is wide agreement our political economy has shifted fundamentally over the past year or two – what was possible before is now often unlikely and vice versa. There is similar agreement that the political temperature has risen sharply recently.
And yet, we don’t see political groupings, the private sector, trade unions and the media adjust their own roles and approaches accordingly. To most of them, it’s business as usual. Are we going to wait until the pot boils over before we act?
Take trade unions as an example, a sector that has seen dramatic events during the last two years.
The drama at the Marikana platinum mine in August 2012 proved all was not well within Cosatu, especially the union that had been its backbone for so long, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).
NUM has been a branch of the tripartite alliance with the ANC and SACP for years, but during Jacob Zuma’s presidency it lost its critical voice and distance from the government.
It developed the same disease as the ANC: dominance by a small elite. This was evident at Marikana, where workers abandoned NUM in favour of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union.
NUM’s bosses were too occupied with being part of the governing elite to really care about the lives of mere rock drillers. NUM simply didn’t do its job as a trade union: really look after the interests of mineworkers.
This proximity of many Cosatu unions to the Zuma clique led to the dissension of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and its stated intention to start a new political party in opposition to the ANC.
But what all these union leaders don’t want to face head-on, is union membership has been waning seriously for some time now. Only the public sector unions have remained stable, while only about 15 percent of private sector workers are now unionised. And this at a time in our nation’s development where workers really need to make progress in their quest for a bigger slice of the pie.
Some union leaders say they realise this. Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi himself stated recently that workers’ issues “are being sidelined even by Cosatu itself”. But when confronted by a newspaper with the unions’ dismal record, he defended himself by saying Cosatu was in the forefront of fighting corruption and e-tolls. Not directly fighting for wages and working conditions, but political issues.
Numsa, no longer supporting the ANC, has been growing at the expense of other Cosatu unions. But its leadership spends much of its energy fighting its political enemies and campaigning for new economic policies rather than guarding the interests of its members.
The ANC Youth League is another example. It is in the process of being revived after its collapse when Julius Malema was expelled from the ANC. But already we get an idea what the culture is going to be: posing as “radicals”, making sweeping statements, defending the outoppies in Luthuli House with much aggression – just like Malema and Floyd Shivambu had done at first.
If the ANCYL wants to be relevant and make a difference, its leaders should park the fancy cars, store the Johnny Walker Black in the drinks cabinet and go work among the millions of young people in townships and rural areas. Most of these young people are not part of the political mainstream and thus have to vent their frustration elsewhere.
The ANCYL is well positioned to act in solidarity with this new lost generation, the greatest threat to our stability. It should agitate on their behalf, not least on the issue of disastrous education. It should be present at local protests on land, services and local corruption – more than one of them a day nowadays – and take these grievances back to Luthuli House instead of trying to out-EFF the EFF. And it should act as a watchdog on corruption.
The same goes for the DA’s youth structure, now apparently dormant. If they style themselves as representatives of the youth of South Africa, then they should occasionally leave their campuses and cushy jobs and focus on the young generation largely ignored by society. Otherwise they will remain an irrelevant social club.
I think we will one day look back at this time in our history and say: if only the politicians, the business community, the trade unions and the faith communities had seen the writing on the wall and acted in time…
* Max du Preez is an author and columnist.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
Cape Times