Ferial Haffajee and Sechaba ka Nkosi : WORKERS’ DAY SUPPLEMENT
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has decided not to field candidates in next year’s election. In a break with a tradition set in 1994 when the labour federation sent 20 top unionists to Parliament, it has now decided not to do so.
Among the Cosatu members sent to Parliament were current high-flyers like Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin and business magnate Marcel Golding who quit Parliament to take up a corporate career. This time around, Cosatu could instead seek an electoral pact with the African National Congress in return for putting its might behind that party in the run-up to next year’s election.
Cosatu representative Nowetu Mpati confirmed the decision not to field candidates.
Amid some unhappiness in Cosatu ranks over the outcome of its decision to “deploy” its leaders to Parliament in 1994, some militants are looking beyond the 1999 poll to the possible formation of new socialist party. Among the beefs of some members are that Cosatu MPs were not accountable to the trade union movement and some labourites speak of “betrayal” by former unionists who now support the macro-economic planning blamed by trade unionists for job losses in the country.
But for now, the debate within the federation remains focused on securing gains from the ANC in exchange for the union movement throwing its weight behind the campaign.
“We were never intended to be a labour bloc,” says one of the Cosatu MPs, Philip Dexter, adding “we went to Parliament on an ANC ticket.” Dexter was one of few MPs who attempted to stay in touch with his worker constituency. He regularly attended trade union congresses and executive meetings but adds that the pace of parliamentary work “makes it difficult to extend that accountability on the ground. Cosatu took the right decision at the time. It gave a strong signal to workers, but it was a special time. It was a once off, there’s no reason to repeat it.”
Mpati says Cosatu will still support an ANC victory in next year’s elections, but its members have to work in ANC branches if they want to be elected to office. “They must hope people in their communities will elect them.”
One of Cosatu’s key strategists, Mbuyi Ngwenda, says there is ambivalence in the labour federation about its election strategy. Some members urge a rethink on unconditional poll support for the ANC because “delivery” has been slow. “Others say the key question is how to give the ANC a two-thirds majority so that it can consolidate political power to deliver,” says Ngwenda, who is the general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa.
Cosatu is one leg of the tripartite alliance which also includes the ANC and the South African Communist Party. Its election strategy will be fine-tuned in the next two months when it will meet with the ANC and raise topics it wants to form part of the election manifesto.
Among the questions which the ANC is likely to field from its labour ally include the slow pace of delivering jobs and houses as well as the accountability of MPs and local councillors. “We might also look at the closure of the Reconstruction and Development Programme office and the lack of maximum consultation in the [tripartite] alliance,” says Ngwenda.
Ngwenda’s assertion represents a feeling shared by many in Cosatu. Yet this year’s May Day celebrations would provide some answers about the state of the alliance, and possibly the extent to which Cosatu will mobilise its resources for the ANC in the run-up to the election when relations among partners in the tripartite alliance have reached record lows.
This year’s celebrations will see Cosatu’s deputy general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi sharing a platform with ANC president Thabo Mbeki in Vryburg.
But in the shade of the stage, Cosatu militants have started criticising the paternalistic nature of the alliance and questioned whether it is still relevant in changing times.
The militants, most of whom belong to the federation’s educated and influential elite, represent workers who come mainly from more urban and literate industries such as metal, chemical and food and beverage factories.
But key individuals in these unions have also lent their support to the election pact argument. They want the election pact to deal directly with problems within the alliance, and secure clear undertakings that the disillusionment felt recently by many in Cosatu would be assuaged by 1999.
One of these militants is John Appolis of the Chemical Workers Industrial Union. In a recent discussion paper he criticised the alliance for being a fire extinguisher rather than a forum where policy issues are debated.
“The alliance is crisis-driven. In other words, it is only involved when there is a threat of mass struggle or a political disagreement with Cosatu,” argues Appolis, who is also considered one of the federation’s leading militants.