Peter Dickson
Simmering tensions between the African National Congress and the United Democratic Movement over the strike at Volkswagen’s Uitenhage plant exploded in the provincial legislature this week as the ANC accused the UDM of fomenting the labour dispute.
Introducing a snap debate on the strike on Monday, Eastern Cape MEC for Finance and former trade unionist Enoch Godongwana said there was “no doubt certain parties wanted to make political capital out of this dispute and of particular importance is the role of the UDM”.
The 1 300 employees at the car plant were on strike for two weeks to protest against the decision by their union, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) – aligned with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) – to suspend 13 shop stewards for “unconstitutional behaviour”.
Volkswagen eventually fired the strikers, who accounted for about a fifth of the company’s workforce.
President Thabo Mbeki slammed the strikers in his State of the Nation address, accusing them of damaging the country’s image in the eyes of international investors.
The conduct of the union in the saga is understood to have fuelled anxiety in the government about the competence and political maturity of the trade union movement, which has lost many of its best leaders to the ANC since 1994.
Godongwana, who rose to become Numsa’s general secretary before his Bisho appointment two years ago, told the house on Monday that the ANC are aware that the 13 Numsa shop stewards at Volkswagen had attended a UDM meeting and that the party was establishing a trade union.
A senior Numsa regional source said some of the strikers were veterans of the labour movement who were “disgruntled” and vulnerable to manipulation. “In the 1980s, the comrades here were very active in the trade union movement, the United Democratic Front and the ANC underground, but in the 1990s and [after] the unbanning of the ANC and the return of exiles they couldn’t find positions. They were often theoretically grounded; conditions had changed and new blood was needed.” Conditions, Godongwana argued, that were right for outside manipulation.
Eastern Cape Premier Makhenkesi Stofile backed Godongwana this week, calling the strikers “agitators without political vision”.
Stofile, the ANC’s provincial leader, told last week’s opening of the Bisho legislature that the strike was “scandalous” and “sheer anarchy under the guise of democracy”, and referred to “vulture parties that scratch around in the rubbish bins of labour unrest to score political points”.
But UDM provincial leader Chief Dumisani Gwadiso said the government and Cosatu were “responsible” for the strike, and allegations of UDM complicity were open attempts at slander of political opponents.
Gwadiso confirmed that the UDM had discussed the formation of a “non-aligned” trade union and that further discussion of a progress report was imminent, but that strikes were not the way in which such a union would be established.
In reply to Godongwana this week, UDM provincial legislature member Johan Malherbe said the party had been informed of “dissatisfaction” among Numsa members shortly before last year’s general election and had advised its Uitenhage members at the time to “challenge the Numsa leadership but not resort to industrial action which the UDM could not support”.
Malherbe said Numsa had identified the 13 shop stewards and 360 members as the union’s opposition and engineered an illegal strike to get rid of them, adding that this had happened shortly after a visit to Uitenhage by Cosatu leader John Gomomo and South African Communist Party deputy secretary general Jeremy Cronin.
Numsa has, however, branded the shop stewards as “populists” who tried to threaten the future of Volks-wagen’s lucrative export drive.