As millions of workers downed tools this week to protest against privatisation of state assets, Howard Barrell, Glenda Daniels and Sipho Seepe spoke to Cosatu president Willie Madisha on the tensions between the trade union federation and the government and ANC leadership
Glenda Daniels: What forms of privatisation or restructuring are you objecting to and why, and which do you accept?
Willie Madisha: This action we are undertaking now is a continuation of what we began last year when we went into action to save jobs, to deal with poverty. Our point now is that the majority of the people must be able to get access to amenities and services like water, health, education, electricity, telephones and so on. It is the parastatals providing these services that we do not want to see privatised because privatising them will undermine access for the poor and will lead to job losses. So we are concerned about the main parastatals: Eskom, Telkom, Denel and so on. We are not talking about a restaurant at this or that tourism resort.
But I am not saying we support privatisation of any area. We are saying that we as the working people must sit down together with government and talk about the broad restructuring of the economy. This is something that has never happened.
Sipho Seepe: But in meetings with government and with your alliance partners, have you not been able to raise those issues?
Madisha: We have. [Minister of Public Enterprises] Jeff Radebe has been constantly saying that [the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu)] has been consulted on restructuring and therefore privatisation. Yes, we have been consulted. But Radebe wants to make out that because we have been consulted on something, this means we have agreed to that thing. That is not right. We have been consulted on privatisation but we have not agreed to privatisation.
People refer us, for example, to the National Framework Agreement [NFA]. Yes, we have agreed to the NFA, but privatisation has happened in areas not covered by this agreement. For example, the NFA does not cover the areas such as the parastatals in the provinces and forests in the Eastern Cape that are being privatised. Local government is not covered by the NFA altogether and that is the area that affects all people directly. When we protest against a particular move, we are told that the party has agreed. And that is all.
Also, the NFA says we must all sit down and discuss when the government and the department want to restructure or privatise something that is not covered by the agreement. But they often do not follow that agreement. That is a very serious problem.
When we have been able to send our people to consult under the NFA with government to make improvements, Cosatu has been left with no room to come up with other alternative proposals.
We have said: “Comrades, can we sit down and relook at the National Framework Agreement and, while we are doing that, please implement the areas we have agreed on properly.” But the government has refused to do that.
We want restructuring of the economy to happen because we cannot operate the way we did during the apartheid system. But we are being attacked today by our comrades for saying that we don’t want the restructuring of the economy. They are wrong to do this. We’ve been saying: “Comrades, here are our papers; here’s the research that we have done; you can look into this.” But you see the alliance today is the sick man of the revolution. It needs help. It has not been able to deal with this question. When it has met this has been because there was a crisis, or because there are elections.
Seepe: Why then do you guys continue to give unconditional support to the African National Congress?
Madisha: It’s not the leadership of Cosatu who decide that. It is the workers who go to congress after congress and say: “We want the alliance and we must strengthen it.”
Daniels: But I’ve heard it said that it is the Cosatu leadership that wants the alliance to continue whereas the workers do not. At the last congress, I remember Sadtu [the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union], Numsa [the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa] and the other larger unions I spoke to there saying: “We are fed up with what’s happening in the country, with the job losses, with the macroeconomic policies. But our leadership says the alliance is important for historical reasons.”
Seepe: I remember being at the conference when the president moved in. He was booed and you, Willie, had to call the congress to order. So that indicates that the workers are sick and tired of the unconditional support that the ANC gets.
Madisha: I remember what happened. But it is the debates and the results of these debates that I am talking about. There are a lot of Cosatu members who will tell us in the leadership: “This [the ANC and congress movement] is our movement. Are you going to let it be hijacked?” The members have that view. They are saying: “Why leave this organisation to others who’s interests are not in line with the Freedom Charter and the Reconstruction and Development Programme [RDP], and so on?
The view that says we must safeguard the alliance is not necessarily a sell-out view. Instead, Cosatu members are saying: “This is ours. Why give it away?”
Daniels: But the RDP seems to be a thing of the past. Do you still have any hold on the ANC?
Madisha: I was just letting you in on some views of workers.
Daniels: Well, those are now historical, sentimental ties.
Madisha: Members of Cosatu are tied mainly to the ANC and to the broad congress movement by history. They might be dissatisfied with a number of things but they ask which other party can provide an alternative. And they have found no alternative. So they say: “We have fought for more than 340 years for liberation and we cannot simply hand over the fruits of our revolution to those people who caused us to suffer all those years. The ANC is the movement that will not sell us out, because basically it has fought for us since 1912 and it has stayed true to its objectives.” So people say the ANC should be the liberation movement that we are behind.
Seepe: Their manifestos are very progressive.
Madisha: Of course.
Daniels: Until now, that is.
Madisha: Our members are saying this is the history and we hope that this past will continue into the future.
Daniels: Where’s that hope right now?
Madisha: I’ll come to that. To recap, people say: “We must strengthen the ANC, make sure it serves our interests like it has done since 1912 and so satisfy our hope.” The other liberation movements are not able to rise to the occasion. Therefore people say there is no alternative, this is our movement.
But we have now reached a point of the differing interests within the ANC itself. What Cosatu and the SACP [South African Comunist Party] have said frequently is that we must make sure that the interests and ideals of the working class reign supreme. So when you go to the congresses of Cosatu, people say let’s contest with the few in the ANC who believe in capitalism and who want to line their pockets, who will use the name of this movement to make sure that they are able to loot and so on.
This leadership of Cosatu is striving for two things. Number one is the primary mandate of each affiliate organisation of the alliance. Cosatu’s primary mandate is working people. We are an organisation of workers. Our primary mandate is to make sure that the ideals and resolutions of the working people are taken forward. We will not sacrifice that primary mandate on the altar of political expedience.
The second thing we are striving for is our independence. The alliance is a formation of three organisations, which must each be independent. To this leadership, independence is extremely important. If we are not independent, we cannot serve our primary mandate.
Howard Barrell: What you seem to be saying is that you, as Cosatu, have been drawn into a process around restructuring and privatisation and then been told that, because you have been involved in this discussion process, you have agreed to restructuring and privatisation. You seem to be saying that you feel you have been hoodwinked. Is that what you are saying?
Madisha: I can’t agree with you more. To add to your point. Ever since 1996 when Gear [the growth, employment and redistribution strategy] was introduced, we have been complaining that it is wrong and that we can’t agree with it. But our comrades [in the government] have said: “By virtue of the fact that you have put us into government, it means that you have agreed with everything that we’re going to do.” That is wrong.
Barrell: A few years ago, I did a thesis on the ANC. At one stage, it involved doing a study of ANC propaganda when we were in exile. The underlying reasoning of ANC propaganda often went as follows: “We, the ANC, are fighting for the liberation of the South African people. We have been doing it for longer than anyone else. Our ranks are open to anyone fighting in that struggle. The unions have just mounted this or that strike inside South Africa that will advance the fight for liberation. From this it follows that we, the ANC, are responsible for that strike and that we, the ANC, can henceforth decide what the future aims and actions of the union movement should be.” That kind of reasoning is nonsense. But the ANC has been able to use it to considerable effect.
Madisha: I’m talking about independence here and now. I want to emphasise that. Cosatu will be independent like the ANC. The communist party must be independent. And we’ll come together as the alliance.
We in Cosatu refuse to be a labour desk, for example. We are an independent organisation, we go to our congresses and the members take decisions there and those decisions must be implemented. I mean I’m not going to be a president that sits there and does not implement the decisions of our members. I’d be betraying these workers. It would be wrong. Under this leadership, Cosatu will assert its independence and interact as an independent organisation in an alliance formed by independent organisations. That’s one thing to be emphasised.
Seepe: Are you saying that, at the moment, the ANC is not following through its manifestos and you see this as a betrayal by your leading partner in alliance?
Madisha: We have not arrived at that kind of situation yet. We have sat with the ANC to draw up election manifestos. Last year in the local government elections, we again sat with the ANC and drew up the election manifesto. If you remember, last year when we went on strike about labour law amendments. One point we were raising was that the ANC had still not amended Section 189 of the Labour Relations Act [which deals with retrenchments]. It had promised in its election manifesto to do this if it came to power. We had said this amendment was a matter of urgency. People were losing their jobs in their thousands. That was when the minister of labour basically told us to go to hell. We then said: “We are taking you on toe to toe here.” That’s when we initiated the Millennium Labour Council, and went to business and said: “Gentlemen, lets talk directly. So that once we’ve agreed we can go to government.” Major steps have been taken in the Millennium Labour Council.
Daniels: You say the strike is the only option you have to shift government policy. Do you think there is any chance that you are actually going to change its economic policies?
Barrell: Can I put this to you. The ANC and communist party are both split down the middle. Both are split over exactly the same economic issues. In conversations with old friends of mine still in the ANC and SACP and very much on the left, I’ve repeatedly asked them over the past three years: why not split away and form a mass-based left party? And I’ve heard them come up with all sorts of reasons for not doing so. But month by month, I just see them getting weaker and weaker. The chances of a mass-based left party outside the ANC just recede. I see the prospects of their actually being able to contend successfully for the heart and soul of the communist party receding as well. And, more and more, I am left with the view that the reasons they give for not breaking away are nonsense and that what we are dealing with in their case is a failure of political will. Nothing more and nothing less.
Madisha: What we have is a class struggle in South Africa. It’s an open class struggle. Other leaders of Cosatu have made the point that there are some people in the alliance who want to centralise power, who say that whatever anyone says must be subject to what the centre says. On the other side are the working class who are saying we must protect our tradition and our history, and that means we must have democratic accountability. So there are these two approaches: democratic accountability versus the centralisation of power.
Cosatu will continue to fight to make sure that democratic accountability is secured and protected. We believe this congress movement was built around it. Yes, there might have been periods when massive attacks by the apartheid system meant there was a centralisation of power in the congress movement. But we have now won our democratic Constitution, and the centralisation of power and the denial of free debate are not what we need.
Seepe: In other words you accept that there isn’t free debate in the alliance and that there is a centralisation of power.
Madisha: I agree, Sipho. That is the case if you have people saying: “This is policy. It’s not negotiable.” That means there is a problem.
I believe in the unity of the working class. What I’m saying is: this is a true class struggle. It’s a contestation really between bourgeois democracy and the ordinary people of our country. The right to participate in our democracy is something we have won. To participate in the democracy is not negotiable. When someone like Coleman Andrews is brought into South African Airways through the back door, and costs the country hundreds of millions of rands, we cannot be told: “Don’t ask about that.” Where is democratic accountability then?
Barrell:How many members of the ANC and SACP leadership can you rely on to back you on this point?
Madisha: I know that there are men and women there who believe in these things that we believe in and who want the success of this revolution along the same lines as the working class of our country. So I believe that the leadership of the alliance can take us forward.
Barrell: The current leadership of the alliance?
Madisha: Let me rephrase. This alliance will take us forward. It can take us forward, it can. But, there is an element that is a problem. It is the element that says: “Let there be no democratic debate. Let there be no democratic accountability.”
Seepe: And the leader of that element is Thabo Mbeki?
Madisha: I have not said that. I am not saying that.
Seepe: Do you guys realise that holding the strike at this particular time when tens of thousands of people are in South Africa for the World Conference against Racism will embarrass the president who has been trying to market himself as a saviour of Africa?
Madisha: We resolved to embark on a strike long ago. Our central demand is: “Stop privatising. Let’s sit down and find the framework that can be followed. We want economic consensus.” Two successive congresses have taken decisions on this demand. On very many occasions since then we have put this to the government and the ANC. When they refused, we continued to engage them for more than a year. The strike is not something we have just decided on. We did not wake up to say we’re going to embarrass the president or that we don’t want the anti-racism conference to take place on African soil. We want the World Conference against Racism here. We know what the people of Palestine are going through, we know what the Aborigines are experiencing. We set the date of our strike independent of the conference. It is therefore coincidental that the two are on at the same time.
If we had wanted to disrupt the conference, we would have organised in such a way that indeed we disrupt the conference. We have not done that. Cosatu has gone out to prepare for the conference. I’m leading a delegation of more than 100 people to that conference. Some of them have left already. Cosatu spent millions of rands to prepare for the World Conference against Racism.
It’s a coincidence. But, at the same time, yes, we want to derive the maximum benefit from any strike. You don’t lead people out on strike just for the sake of it. You take people to strike to ensure that there’s the maximum benefit of that strike. Now, if this coincidence is going to serve us, then so much the better. If it can assist us, that is fine. If people, who are in leadership positions in government see a danger to the conference in our strike then they should have come to us to say: “Let’s talk and resolve these things.”