Despite the loss of many familiar faces in the labour movement, unions deny a lack of leadership, write Jacquie Golding-Duffy and Anthony Kunda
THE exodus in 1994 of many experienced unionists into the government and business dealt the labour movement a massive blow.
When the likes of Jay Naidoo, Alec Erwin and Cyril Ramaphosa left, murmurings about a drain of talent rippled across the industry. The whispers were laden with concern levelled by unions and management alike that the movement would falter.
This has not happened, and the Mail & Guardian spoke to four union leaders who have been credited by their peers with “strengthening” the movement following post- election losses.
They are National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) general secretary Kgalema Motlanthe; National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) general secretary Enoch Godongwana; Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) assistant general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi; and South African Clothing and Textiles Workers Union (Sactwu) general secretary Jabu Ncgobo.
One industry source says many of those who left the unions to take up government posts were recently returned exiles who had although contributed little to the movement.
“It is sad sometimes when people purport to know what is happening within labour,” he said. “Some of the people who hold high profile positions now really did not do any of the slog work that was required to build up a worker base.
“In some instances, they took the credit and did nothing. There were often people whom they left behind as shop stewards that deserved to be more than just that. Sometimes those union information officers or stewards were in actual fact general secretary material.”
Labour analyst Gavin Brown says a “serious crisis of leadership” still exists in unions. It is not just a question of “filling the gaps”, he says, but “nurturing and developing” leadership skills.
Brown says it is also difficult for the movement to compete with the better prospects and pay offered in government and the private sector.
The players:
ZWELINZIMA VAVI, assistant general secretary of Cosatu, was apparently born in 1962, or so he says. He has no exact birth date as he came from an “unfortunate family who lived on a farm and was uneducated”.
Vavi’s involvement in the trade union movement began at a young age, when he was still a student in the Congress of South African Students (Cosas).
He says there was an important slogan used at Cosas which prompted him into valuing the “skill of organising people”.
The slogan used was: “It is the duty of Cosas cadres to build organisations … When you are with women, organise them, when you are with the youth, organise them and when you are with the workers, organise them.”
Vavi says he started organising public service workers back home in an Eastern Cape rural town and developed a strong passion for organised labour. He then moved from the South African Allied Workers’ Union to work at a Vaal Reef mine in 1984 before being dismissed with thousands of workers during the National Union of Mineworkers’ 21-day strike.
Involved in civic, youth and unions simultaneously, Vavi became regional secretary of Cosatu’s Western Transvaal region and was “quite dynamic”, says one colleague.
The union, says Vavi, keeps the government in check and Cosatu, with its 19 affiliates and 1,8-million members, has proven that it is a force to be reckoned with