Johannesburg - In what could be a shattering blow, leaders of the metalworkers union Numsa – traditional campaigners for the ANC – want to pull out of the tripartite alliance and dissuade their members from voting for the ruling party next year.
Numsa is also toying with the idea of forming either a civic movement or a new political party, thus cutting any ties with its political mother body, Cosatu.
It is also pondering the possibility of forming a labour federation, competing directly with Cosatu for a saturated workers market.
The plans of a breakaway labour party – which could change the country’s political landscape irrevocably – are contained in discussion papers prepared for the union’s special congress next month.
They are also an important part of the outcomes of Numsa’s recent national policy workshop.
The Sunday Independent has seen the documents.
We can also reveal that Numsa’s top brass want the organisation to pull out of the ANC-led tripartite alliance and form a civic movement or a socialist party.
The union’s national officials also say that should push come to shove, the union will form a federation of its own and invite its allies to follow suit.
Never before has a Cosatu affiliate – the majority for that – threatened an electoral boycott in spite of the perennial ructions and ferocious factional battles that have battered the alliance since the unbanning of the ANC in 1990.
Only in 1993 did Numsa and some unions threaten to break away from the alliance, but only after supporting the ANC in the first democratic elections in 1994.
Numsa has more than 320 000 members and contributes about R800 000 a month – which it is planning to cancel – in subscription fees to Cosatu and millions of rand to the ANC’s election campaign.
The protracted internal battles in Cosatu, triggered by general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi’s suspension, have resulted in the union withholding R8m budgeted for the ANC’s election campaign next year.
The union’s threat appears to be a protest, or its hard bargaining chip against the suspension of Vavi, whose major support came from the metalworkers. They have surpassed the mineworkers as the influential bloc in the federation, and thus its financial backbone.
In a secretariat report titled Part Two: What is to be Done? fiery Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim said all the union’s regions agree the alliance was dysfunctional and therefore the time had arrived to look for an “alternative”.
“Some comrades are appealing to the union to set demands to the ANC to enter into a pact with labour (and) to transform the alliance into a real political centre. We have not succeeded in achieving either of these things for the past 20 years,” he said.
“As the national office-bearers, we would like to persuade the national union that the time for looking for an alternative has arrived. It does not mean that we would form it tomorrow. We need to start to say that what exists today will disappear and that we need to start looking for building blocks for something new and different,” Jim said.
Jim said that the SACP – which is regarded as the vanguard party of the workers – was “embedded in President Jacob Zuma’s government and no longer represented the aspirations of workers”.
“From where we sit as national office-bearers, there are two forms of organisations that are required now. A front or coalition that can co-ordinate struggles both in the workplace and in the communities in a way similar to the UDF of the 1980s,” he said.
“Given the fact that the SACP has become embedded in the state, the task is for Numsa to explore the establishment of a movement for socialism,” he added.
A commission should be established to do a feasibility study of the formation of such a party and report by 2015 before Cosatu’s next elective congress, Jim noted.
Jim did not comment on the contents of the discussion documents and the recommendations of the union’s officials.
“Numsa has run local, regional and national policy conferences, in preparation for its special national congress. Upon evaluation and analysis of all the outputs from the policy conferences, the Numsa national office-bearers then produced a synthesis of key positions as drawn from the entire union. This is the document you have read,” he said.
“Provincial Numsa congresses are being held across the country to debate all this and prepare resolutions for the special Numsa national congress. It is this congress which will ultimately decide Numsa positions. That is all. No media speculations will be allowed to replace the Numsa special congress,” he said.
SACP spokesman Alex Mashilo said: “The danger is that we don’t want to comment out of context. However, the party’s engagement and relationship to power is guided by a party programme adopted at our last congress last year. That programme is about building working class hegemony in all key sites of struggle and power, the state being one of them.
“The party is not guided by infantile disorder.”
Unlike since 1994, members were free to vote a party of their choice, because the ANC had adopted the National Development Plan, which was an “assault” on workers, Jim said.
“In our view, if we were now to support an election campaign which is based on the very same NDP, we will lose all credibility. We would also lose any ability we now have to fight against it,” he said.
“We propose to the congress that we should not endorse the ANC’s 2014 elections campaign like we have done since 1994 because the ANC’s election manifesto is premised on the National Development Plan… As far as elections are concerned, every member must be free to support the party of their choice,” he added.
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said: “In the 1980s Numsa was committed to forming a workers’ party. That is an old debate. “We have an alliance with the federation not the individual affiliates. Cosatu has recommitted to working with the ANC.” Numsa seems to have fractured the only bond that has kept the major components of the alliance together, a drastic decision that could shift the tectonic electoral plates. The news of an imminent departure of Numsa from the alliance came in the wake of another heated Cosatu central executive committee this week.
Supporters of Vavi’s nemesis, Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini, pushed for the federation to take a decision to investigate “Numsa’s conduct”.
If Numsa succeeds to form a workers’ party, it will be following in the footsteps of the Workers and Socialist Party (Wasp), which was formed in the wake of the Marikana massacre last year. Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters was also formed on the back of Marikana, after breaking away from the ANC.
But it will not be the first time Numsa threatens to pull out of the alliance.
As early as 1993, the union, led by Moses Mayekiso, wanted to ditch the ANC and form a workers’ party.
Dlamini said it was no longer a secret that Numsa wanted to leave the federation.
“I have referred to this that this discussion is happening in Numsa. It will not be in anybody’s interest to liquidate Cosatu.
“Should Numsa or any Cosatu affiliate think that walking away from the federation is a solution, they must know that they themselves will not move as one. Workers will be divided. It is not Cosatu alone that can split. A union can split because workers won’t agree to leave Cosatu,” he said. He called on Numsa leaders to resolve their grievances inside the federation.
Vavi, on the other hand, upped the ante against his opponents. Addressing a Numsa KwaZulu-Natal congress on Saturday, Vavi said Cosatu needed to be liberated from its paralysis, whether Cosatu convenes a special congress or not. “The crisis… is a reflection of the class contradictions and class struggles that are broadly playing themselves out in South Africa and in the liberation movement,” he said.
“If we fail to unite the working class, especially those organised in Cosatu unions to defend their working class independence, militancy, revolutionary character, socialist orientation, anti-imperialist traditions, worker controlled and democratic organisation traditions, the fate of our struggle for a national democratic revolution in South Africa will be dealt a terrible blow,” he added.
Leaders who attended the Cosatu Central Executive Committee meeting this week said knives were out for Numsa, with some calling for the union to be expelled.
But hours after Cosatu had slammed Numsa during a media briefing this week, the metalworkers union hit back. Addressing the media at the union’s headquarters, Jim said that the ANC and SACP were involved in the machination to isolate Numsa.
“We don’t understand what is this particular focus on Numsa… Numsa is not a stepchild in Cosatu… Numsa will not keep quiet,” he said.
Jim’s deputy, Karl Cloete, attacked the leadership of Cosatu, saying they chose sides in the federation’s battles.
“The existing Cosatu national office-bearers are nothing but part and parcel of a faction of affiliates who want to reduce Cosatu into a conveyor belt. If the national office-bearers say they are for unity, they are for unity of a faction,” he said.
Asked whether Numsa will split from Cosatu and the alliance, Jim said: “Numsa remains very committed to remain in Cosatu. We have no reason to opt out of the federation.”
However, Numsa’s documents to the special congress let the cat out of the bag, as the union threatened to stop paying for its subscription if things continue as they are.
“If Cosatu is incapable of remaining united around a militant programme of action, we would have no alternative but to begin the process of forming a new federation,” Jim said in the document.
“As part of that fight, we will have to monitor closely how desirable it is to continue to pay subscriptions to such a federation (Cosatu),” he said.
Sunday Independent