After Marikana, we can either point fingers or follow a new path leading to social consensus, writes Alastair Smith.
Johannesburg - Post Marikana, the role and relevance of social dialogue and the challenges facing the labour market have come strongly to the fore. The platinum-sector strike by the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union has given rise to loud noises about the labour market, its institutions and legislation.
Unfortunately much of the debate in the media tends to be sensationalised, misinformed and politically expedient. It is short-sighted to use our social dialogue institutions as political punching bags.
Those wishing to deflect attention seem to have conveniently forgotten commitments made by the social partners after the Marikana massacre, which should have ensured the beginning of a fundamental transformation of the mining sector.
Perhaps a more useful starting point would be an assessment of how far implementation has come since 2012.
We are a long way from the consensus-making ethos that characterised the early 1990s – an ethos that inspired all the social partners to create a labour-relations framework and its family of institutions, which includes Nedlac, bargaining councils, the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration and the sector education and training authorities. These were envisaged as spaces for negotiation, consultation, information-sharing, joint problem solving and co-operation. They are also institutions that act as shock absorbers to soak up the conflict in a country marked by high levels of unemployment, inequality and poverty. A country where destitution – even of those who have jobs – goes hand in hand with extreme excess and wealth.
Many of our upheavals have less to do with the design of laws or institutions and more to do with the capacity, conduct and commitment of the social actors involved.
This leads to a more intractable challenge for the future of social dialogue, tripartism and collective bargaining. It calls for strong leadership and a paradigm shift away from the culture of adversarialism and a greater focus on building relationships and a network of trust and collaboration rather than just legislative intervention and institutional redesign.
As a start it requires a deeper appreciation and a more frank conversation about the underlying causes of the apparent failures we are witnessing.
The ideal preconditions for successful social dialogue include a willing government committed to engaging social partners in a meaningful way. It requires social partners who are organised, competent and committed to engaging in consensus-seeking forms of engagement. It requires well-resourced and managed institutions to administer and support engagement.
It seems that the social partners are incapable or unwilling to make the types of changes that are required.
Increased polarisation is an unfortunate hallmark of our engagements. We are also witnessing the organisational weakening and fragmentation within the labour and business constituencies on the one hand and the lack of effective co-ordination within the government on the other.
The net effect is that social dialogue and tripartite-based institutions like Nedlac are severely weakened. It is, therefore, unfortunate that precisely when we need social dialogue the role and relevance of our institutions are under siege and rendered incapable of responding to the scale and urgency of the challenges at hand.
When we celebrated the dawn of democracy, many of us understood that our socio-economic legacy would require a massive collective effort.
We struggled for and then negotiated an end to political apartheid. But many of us accepted that socio-economic apartheid was intact and would require immense leadership resolve and commitment to overcome. Fast forward 18 years and we find a society mired in unemployment, poverty and inequality. Corruption is a scourge and social service delivery is faltering. Our economy is not growing fast enough at a time when the global economy is struggling to recover. It is likely that we will not reach the employment goals that we have set in the New Growth Path and National Development Plan.
We are at a crossroads: we can proceed to stumble along the same road and continue with baseless finger-pointing or we can follow a new path leading to a new social consensus: A new vision for new times, which addresses our new challenges head-on. If nothing else, Marikana should have prompted soul-searching among all the social parties.
A successful South Africa depends mostly on the commitment and capacity of the actors who sit at the main table. It is also about what is on the table. What are the trade-offs? Who can commit to what? Who is prepared to make compromises in the interests of the greater good?
Building a new social consensus is going to require bold leadership, common sense, cool heads and a willingness to listen and make compromises. If we, as the social partners, are not prepared to do this, we are at risk of continuing down a path that at best produces more of the same or being caught up in a spiral of increased social conflict and possibly repression and a reversal of our democratic gains.
We have an opportunity to rethink how we do business, how we govern and how we rebuild society. What this means is that we all need to start thinking and more importantly acting and relating differently if we are to survive these challenging times.
* Alastair Smith is the Executive Director of Nedlac.
** The views expressed here are not necssarily those of Independent Newspapers.
Pretoria News