Unbridled violence is not only senseless and counter-productive but in some cases profoundly alienating, writes Ebrahim Harvey.
Violence and killings during wage strikes have increased in South Africa over the past few years. The crux of this growing problem is twofold. On the one hand, it is the sometimes unbridled and uncontrollable violence during strikes, and on the other, the often unguided and reckless militancy driving and accompanying these strikes.
Violence and unguided militancy often appear to be two sides of the same coin, serving to mutually and dramatically reinforce one another in an orgy of confrontational stand-offs with the bosses, police or non-striking workers.
The result has often been many workers either killed or injured and great damage to property. Therefore, has the time not come for the leadership of trade unions to seriously take stock of these matters in a way that still preserves the integrity and strength of their wage demands but with less destructive and often counter-productive violence?
There are several reasons why such a serious review will not weaken, disarm nor disempower trade unions, but instead serve to strengthen them in the final analysis.
But for this purpose unions require a sober and dispassionate reflection on violence.
In this regard I am fully aware that strikes, especially over wages, have never been a Sunday picnic, especially in the context of a historical black low-wage economy, which basically persisted after 1994, and the decimating and debilitating erosion of buying power over the past few years, during which we have seen crippling increases in the cost of living, especially for working-class households.
But all those factors do not justify the perpetration of violence during strikes. Neither does the record show that resorting to violence is effective in forcing reluctant bosses to yield to wage demands.
In the tough mining industry, for example, violence, especially damage to mine property or attacks on non-striking workers, tends to harden and polarise attitudes, which makes desirable wage settlements harder to secure.
Violence is also very costly by exposing unions to criminal charges by bosses against individual members or the unions as such. Important time and scarce union resources have to be diverted to acrimonious court battles over charges of malicious damage to property or attacks on other workers. It is also physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausting for both perpetrators and victims.
Not even the inevitable frustrations by workers and their bitterness over wage disputes, especially when there is a chasm that separates their wages from the income of company executives, can justify destructive violence which can set back both the unions and the companies in various ways.
So serious are the consequences of unbridled violence during wage strikes that it is high time unions had serious discussions with their members about the rationale, wisdom and efficacy of violence.
Gone are the days when union leadership can glibly say violence reflects the justified anger of ordinary workers and be satisfied with such explanations.
No, ours is today a far more complex situation that requires an intelligent and rational appraisal of violence.
It requires real leadership, capable of advising workers against violence when necessary and strong enough to boldly call for an end to it once it begins.
This perspective has nothing in common with seeking to pacify or disarm the trade union movement.
No, I argue that there is nothing particularly revolutionary, good, progressive and attractive about violence and the continued association by many on the left between revolution or revolutionary actions and violence is inherently mistaken and misguided. We must never glamorise or popularise violence, no matter what the cause.
Destructive and mindless violence can and, I believe has, already weakened some unions and even many township protests by absorbing and deflecting lots of valuable energy which could have been much better utilised in non-violent union, community and public campaigns to support and strengthen just wage demands or the demands of township protesters for better housing or other basic services. There is nobody, for example, who can justify, on any basis whatsoever, the mindless burning down of libraries and clinics in townships, but it has happened many times.
In fact unbridled violence is not only senseless and counter-productive but in some cases profoundly alienating and in fact arguably counter-revolutionary.
Don’t forget, too, that unnecessary and provocative violence could be unwittingly playing into the hands of a police force which has had a penchant for disproportionate and in some instances utterly brutal retaliatory violence, almost straining at the leash it seemed.
Never before in the history of the trade union movement has an exhaustive discussion and debate about violence been more urgent than today, not though in any abstractly moralising sense, but in a profoundly organisational, political and strategic sense.
* Harvey is a political writer, former Cosatu unionist and biographer of former president and deputy president, Kgalema Motlanthe.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
Sunday Independent