The tripartite alliance has not patched up its differences ahead of the municipal elections,
and deeper cracks remain Howard Barrell, Glenda Daniels, Jaspreet Kindra and Barry Streek Leaders of the ruling tripartite alliance came away from their meeting at a secret venue outside Johannesburg on Monday without having resolved any of the deep- seated policy differences between them. Participants in the talks said privately that the most they could claim was that they had found themselves, in the words of one, “searching in the same terrain for answers” to the most pressing dilemmas facing the government and workers – on low economic growth, continuing job losses and changes to labour laws. The African National Congress, the leader of the alliance, came away from the meeting having secured its main short-term objective. That was keeping the leadership of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) wedded to the alliance ahead of the union federation’s congress next week and of local government elections scheduled for November. Dissatisfaction with the alliance is expected to be a major agenda item at next week’s conference. Cosatu and the South African Communist Party also had some reason to be satisfied with the meeting. They encountered a new receptiveness among members of the ANC- government delegation to their demands that the state be more of an initiator and developmental agent in the economy, implement infrastructural projects to create jobs and stimulate demand, and pay greater attention to fostering and expanding the manufacturing sector. “They [the ANC and the government] are in trouble and they know it. We’re heading for only 2% growth this year. So they were listening and looking for answers,” said one of those at the meeting. Cosatu’s position may also have been substantially strengthened by recent developments in Zimbabwe. Another participant in the talks noted: “It took the labour movement [in Zimbabwe] only six months to put together the Movement for Democratic Change” – the party that very nearly defeated President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party in Zimbabwe’s general election. “[Cosatu] is much more mature than the Zimbabwean unions were.” Cosatu leaders’ anxieties about the summit were eased somewhat in the week leading up to it by bilateral behind-the-scenes meetings at the National Education and Development Labour Council (Nedlac). They believed the federation was making some progress in rolling back some of the government’s recently proposed amendments to labour laws, seen by most observers as being marginally more business-friendly than labour-friendly. After Nedlac’s meeting this week parties said that no agreement was reached on amendments, and warned that this would inflame unions at the congress next week. But the key factor in participants’ success in holding the alliance together appears to be a reformulation of the government’s controversial policy on growth, employment and redistribution (Gear) at the recent ANC national general council meeting in July. The policy is being termed “a necessary but not a sufficient condition” to achieve government economic objectives. Cosatu and SACP leftwingers believe this formulation gives them space to suggest amendments to Gear targets more freely and to push for greater state involvement in the economy. At the same time it enables Gear loyalists on the ANC-government side to maintain that Gear remains sacrosanct. The thinking of Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin, who continues to be a central committee member of the SACP, is crucial to trying to bring these two different points of departure together. The idea of developing a programme to boost South African manufacturing massively has been under informal discussion for some months among alliance leaders. It came up again at Monday’s summit – and was alluded to obliquely at the subsequent press conference.
There, ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe, Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi and SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande said the government’s macro- economic policy had not paid sufficient attention to developing South Africa’s manufacturing sector. The plan was to build manufacturing capacity by concentrating on industries that exploited the country’s raw material and energy resources. This would generate jobs for the unemployed masses in the country, they said. Detailed planning was under way, they said. Speaking privately, other participants in the summit said it had been conducted in a friendly, but frank, atmosphere. The attitude of President Thabo Mbeki towards some Cosatu and SACP leaders – blamed on occasions in the past for heightening tensions in the alliance – was also described as “friendly” by one of those present. “But that can change,” he said. Among ordinary union members there has been considerable scepticism in response to the summit. Some have characterised it a sideshow, while other Cosatu unions say they were not even consulted in the run-up to it. Union members interviewed were similarly unenthusiastic about the “new plan” for the economy. The kinds of industries being envisaged are unlikely to be labour-intensive. A National Union of Metalworkers’ of South Africa (Numsa) member said: “The timing of the 10-a-side meeting is significant. I have a feeling this is just a stage-managed show in response to bubblings among the different affiliates. There will be no change in policy on the ANC’s part. The statement that they have released is just too bland. It says nothing, especially nothing about Gear, which actually does have an industrial poli-cy, but which stipulates competitiveness. They have got to say whether they are going for this or not.”
Serious tensions within the alliance have spilled into the public domain in recent weeks. Two of Cosatu’s largest unions – Numsa and the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) – expressed doubts just weeks before the summit over whether the ANC should continue to lead the tripartite alliance. And Cosatu leaders have warned there could be “blood on the streets” if the government pushes ahead with its proposed amendments to the labour legislation.
Motlanthe said an alliance task group working with the ANC’s economic transformation committee was expected to table the new economic plan at its next tripartite alliance meeting next month. Samwu general secretary Roger Ronnie said Cosatu had not consulted his union on the issues to be raised at the 10-a-side summit. “We have not been party to the discussions and don’t know if any real progress has been made,” he said. Numsa representative Dumisa Ntuli said that it was necessary to chart a way forward and the problem of tensions in the alliance had arisen because of a lack of communication between the partners. “I don’t think the ANC will back down on its economic policy but nor will we back down on our demands for job creation. Gear has had disastrous effects.” Meanwhile, Cosatu this week published a 224-page report sharply criti-cal of the government’s policies and actions. It is entitled Accelerating Transformation: Cosatu’s Engagement with Policy and Legislative Processes During South Africa’s First Term of Democratic Governance.
Although the trade union federation admitted it had suffered “serious setbacks” since 1994, it said “interventions by the organisation have probably had a significant impact in limiting the inroads by forces with an agenda hostile to our new democracy.
“Who can say what the situation would be if Cosatu had not made the interventions …?” The underlying message of the document is, however, that Cosatu, through its engagement with Parliament and the government, has kept the ruling partly largely on the straight and narrow. But, the document says, “The workings of the alliance itself have been uneven and problematic over the past period, and the alliance has not been given the space to drive governance in a meaningful way.” The document threatens to adopt “more creative legal strategies, including possible constitutional challenges on issues such as the mandate of public enterprises, the advancement of socio- economic rights and the empowering of Parliament to amend money bills”.