Vuyo Mvoko
THIS week’s two-hour work stoppages, pickets and blockades at parastatals marked for privatisation — though weak in impact — portend a difficult relationship ahead for labour and the ANC-led government.
For organised labour the events “marked the beginning of a process of mobilisation against privatisation”, a policy the Congress of South African Trade Unions says will benefit only the elite and result in job losses, but the government insists will benefit the economy, black empowerment and the Reconstruction and Development Programme.
Labour was forced into a public display of humility at its joint press conference with government on Monday last week, nearly retracting the more robust parts of its criticism of the government’s privatisation plans. But now government may be in for a surprise over its announcement that parts of Telkom, SAA, Autonet, Transkei Airways and Bop Air are to be privatised.
Jeremy Cronin, deputy general secretary of the South African Communist Party and member of the African National Congress National Executive Committee, insists labour “succeeded in slowing down the speed” of privatisation. Indeed, it looks like the South African labour movement is no longer willing to be a conveyor belt for what it sees as top-down government
The ambiguous nature of Cosatu’s relationship with its alliance partner in government is demonstrated in the about-face of a tango they danced in the short space of a week: last week the allies tried to play down their tiff; two days later Cosatu general secretary Sam Shilowa supported a flash strike by transport workers; a day later this week’s protests and a day-long national strike for January were being planned.
>From the meeting with Cabinet ministers, labour emerged embarrassed and contained. Shilowa paradoxically told journalists that the three-hour meeting had been part of a pre- scheduled ongoing consultation process between the two parties.
When challenged by a reporter whether, had that been the case, all the furore could not have been avoided had government held back on the announcement of its privatisation plans until after this meeting, neither Shilowa nor Public Enterprises Minister Stella Sigcau wanted to reply. Then Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Pallo Jordan said the media “blew it (the disagreement) out of proportion” and got “carried away with itself”.
Perhaps the media was the culprit — if only it was not Cosatu which had expressed “shock and disbelief” at the government’s announcement; if only Nactu had not said it would not sell its members out; and if the Federation of South African Labour Unions (Fedsal) had not spoken of a “ridiculous
If, as Cronin tried to explain this week, “labour (simply) became suspicious of the strategic approach of the government” — or that government “first had to make public their position for purposes of transparency” before entering into negotiations with labour — then perhaps we deserve explanations for government’s monastic silence in the face of growing labour militancy.
Two days after the public kiss-and-reconcile session, Shilowa showed rage when he addressed an anti-privatisation rally organised by the South African Railway and Harbour Workers Union. A day later this week’s action and the January 16 24-hour strike was announced.
While Cosatu and the ANC, allies in labour and government, may have been born of the same liberation struggle, their interests are no longer synonymous. While it may be true, as Cronin argues, that the “priority mandate” of the ANC lies with the workers and the unemployed who voted for it, it is also true that very often governments attach greater weight to business interests. There is room for the “betrayal” of the workers.
Cosatu, on the other hand, may feel a lingering responsibility towards the RDP, its brain-child. Yet, just because the government is naming the RDP as one of the beneficiaries of privatisation, there is no reason for Cosatu to be cowed by this at the expense of disservice to its own membership.
Cronin, whose SACP seems to be carefully walking the tightrope, insists “there is no inevitability of a massive breakaway” in the tripartite alliance. Maybe so, but as Cronin himself admits: “The alliance is not a love