Whatever the outcomes of a national congress, there is no Cosatu to win any more, says Vukani Mde.
It was just as well the South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) didn’t pitch for the press briefing called by seven disgruntled Cosatu affiliates on Monday. It would have been too awkward.
The seven had come together to announce that they were suspending their participation in the leadership structures of the federation in protest at the expulsion of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa).
Moreover, they would head to court to compel Cosatu to hold a special national congress of its membership, as the federation should have done as soon as a third of its affiliates called for this last year.
Most important, the fundamental objection of the Numsa-supporting unions is to the apparent death of internal democracy and worker control in Cosatu, two of the most important founding principles of the federation.
Sharing a podium with the Samwu national office-bearers would have cast doubt on their commitment to these principles.
The Samwu national leadership has all but hijacked the union and its assets for its own political and material interests.
In one of the most outrageous examples of grand corruption in a union, about R136 million is alleged to have been siphoned off Samwu’s emergency account. Its leadership has failed to proffer any reasonable explanation for this.
It continues to frustrate calls from Samwu members for a forensic audit.
Instead it has taken two steps to protect itself from scrutiny: it carried out its own internal “investigation” into the accounts, and then bumped up the salaries and benefits of members of the “investigating” team.
Unsurprisingly, the probe cleared the leadership, although its findings raised more questions than answers. The task team concluded that the “missing” money had been used for the legitimate day-to-day expenses of running the union, but failed to explain why expenses that were budgeted for were met by using an emergency fund.
The leadership’s second step was to hound out of the union every one of the members who had been a thorn in its side for months regarding the money.
This group, calling itself Save Our Samwu (SOS), were suspended and expelled by the unaccountable national leadership.
On Monday the high court in Joburg lifted these sanctions and reinstated the SOS members. SOS accused the Samwu national office-bearers of ignoring the mandate given to them by members by voting for Numsa’s expulsion.
“It is not just financial corruption that needs to be tackled, but also political corruption,” the group said.
At the recent Cosatu central executive committee meeting, three out of the four Samwu delegates voted to expel Numsa, in contradiction of the union’s policy.
“They must… explain why to the reinstated majority as a matter of urgency,” SOS said.
I’m afraid the explanation isn’t hard to fathom. The Samwu leadership, grimly holding on to office by means foul and unconstitutional, calculated that standing up for Numsa – or some founding principle they hold in low regard in their own union – would be unlikely to do them much good.
They switched sides and voted with Cosatu’s dominant faction.
The Cosatu leadership and its faction have given succour to all manner of rogues, whether guilty of anti-democratic behaviour in their unions or accused of grand corruption.
For example, the general secretary of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union appeared – in leg irons – in the commercial crimes court on charges of theft relating to the SARWU Enablement Trust, but he was not suspended by Satawu (where he and his faction hold sway) and remains welcome in Cosatu. Internal dissent was hounded out, leading to a loss of thousands of members and the formation of the National Transport Movement.
The leader of the chemical workers’ union, Ceppwawu, failed to hold a meeting of the national executive for over two years, breaching the constitution and ruling by diktat. They, too, are welcome in the highest echelons of the federation. The union’s general secretary is accused of moonlighting as a labour broker for Sasol, a company where Ceppwawu organises.
The truth is that in the new central executive of Cosatu, free of Numsa and its pesky supporters, Samwu’s barely legitimate office-bearers should be right at home.
But the most egregious example of the usurpation of the workers’ right to choose their own leadership and decide their unions’ political direction is to be found among the Cosatu office-bearers themselves. Cosatu deputy president Zingiswa Losi should not be in her position, and probably wouldn’t be if she wasn’t aligned to the dominant leadership faction.
Cosatu’s constitution is clear: “Only shop stewards, elected worker representatives and office-bearers of affiliates in good standing are eligible for election to the positions of president, first deputy president; second deputy president and treasurer.”
Losi qualified by virtue of being an elected Numsa shop steward until September, when the union’s powerful Port Elizabeth structures, who had elected her, saw fit to recall her.
This was a right they had, envisaged for them by the drafters of the Cosatu constitution, who rightly felt that any leader who had lost the confidence and democratic mandate of the workers of her union, should lose her office: “(They) must vacate their seats during their term of office if they cease to be members of an affiliate.”
Apparently the leadership of Cosatu disagrees, and has pulled out every stop to protect Losi from the constitution and the workers from whom she should derive her mandate.
Sadly, this week, Cosatu’s leadership sullied the name of the federation’s late and highly respected deputy president, George Nkadimeng, citing him as a “precedent” that supported Losi’s undemocratic hold on her position.
Nkadimeng, they opined, had been retrenched from the mine at which he had been elected as a shop steward by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). His union subscriptions lapsed and he was no longer a member in good standing with his union. Months later Nkadimeng found work in a boiler-making factory organised by Numsa. He resigned from NUM and joined Numsa.
But the differences between Nkadimeng, a victim of retrenchment, and Losi, a fugitive from democracy, are stark. Throughout his life as a unionist, Nkadimeng selflessly served Cosatu and its two biggest unions. Losi and her defenders, by contrast, would not be fit to shine his boots.
Losi resigned from Numsa rather than face the prospect of stepping down from her Cosatu position when Numsa workers withdrew their support for her. She then joined the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru), where she became an instant shop steward, and keeps her position only as a result of this ruse.
She has not at any time been employed in the police or prison services. Nor did any Popcru members vote for her to hold any position in their union. In a single desperate political manoeuvre, the basic principle of worker control was dealt a fatal blow in not one, but two Cosatu affiliates.
In yet another demonstration that the Cosatu leadership believes adherence to the constitution is a choice that can be put to a vote, it has announced a special central executive committee meeting for later this month to “decide” the matter of the deputy president.
No doubt the dominant faction will cite the Nkadimeng “precedent” and keep Losi in her financially lucrative post without a democratic mandate. That is the kind of Cosatu this is now.
All of which raises the question: Is it really even worth pursuing the fight for a special national congress to elect new leaders and chart a coherent political course for the federation?
I don’t believe so. I agree with the ANC that a special congress will not cure Cosatu’s ills, but for very different reasons. Whatever the outcomes of a national congress, there is no Cosatu to win any more, at least not as we knew it. Cosatu is dead.
All that a national congress will do is determine who has first dibs picking over the carcass.
* Vukani Mde is Group Editor of Opinion & Analysis at Independent Media.
Sunday Independent