Drew Forrest
Humorous, animated, speaking in a blur, Neva Makgetla seems an improbable Svengali.
Yet in the aftermath of last week’s general strike, unnamed government officials have reportedly portrayed her as the minence blanche behind the Congress of South African Trade Union’s (Cosatu) hardening anti-privatisation stance.
Not everyone in the government sees the federation’s public sector policy coordinator in this way. One senior official warned against the dangers of personalising conflict between the unions and the state, adding that any whispers against Makgetla carried the insulting suggestion that black union leaders could not think for themselves.
It was a view echoed last week by the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, which described the focus on her as “racist”.
Makgetla is aware of the perceptions, which she ascribes to “one or two people in the public enterprises department”.
Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe is rumoured to have referred to her at a meeting of the national working committee as a key ideologue and source of division. Radebe dismissed this, saying there had been no focus on Makgetla.
Makgetla (44) is an unusual figure that scapegoat-seekers might well single out. United States-born but a naturalised South African, she is the daughter of left-leaning academics who lectured at various African universities.
Few union officials anywhere are Harvard-trained economists, and her academic background and ferocious intelligence must intimidate the state representatives she confronts in various forums.
An undercurrent in the whispering campaign is that she is a stranger to the struggle of Africans but her association with the African National Congress and the ANC government is a long one.
Her first encounter with the movement was in 1973, when she typed for it in Lusaka. She worked for the ANC’s department of economic policy in exile, helped draft the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), and after 1994 served in the RDP office and labour and public service departments.
Her husband, Zeph, is a former Umkhonto weSizwe man she met in exile who now works as a government cinematographer.
Makegtla’s breach with government came not long after the appointment of the new Minister of Public Service and Administration, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, whose mandate was clearly to get tough on the public service unions.
On Fraser-Moleketi, she comments: “I would be more comfortable if there was more vision. Eighty percent of public servants are teachers, nurses, police and prison personnel. Yet all policy is now geared towards senior management.”
She was replaced as chief state negotiator during the 1999 pay talks which climaxed in a unilateral employer wage award and a strike.
Makgetla denies the charge said to have been levelled by Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel, among others that she was soft on labour. There has even been a suggestion that was a kind of Cosatu mole in government.
“We negotiated much more flexible and decentralised labour practices,” she says. “Government does not appreciate the risks the unions took to advance transformation.”
She denies, also, that she dragged her heels on public service retrenchments. “This was basic change management, a complex and time-consuming process. To this day no one knows who should be retrenched.
“There was pressure to cut the personnel budget, but no one wanted to do it. You’re mainly talking about people in poverty-stricken rural provinces who would never get another job.”
Focusing on her role in Cosatu’s anti-privatisation campaign, she believes, is an escape-hatch for those in government who consider themselves on the left. “They’re trying to say: we have no problem with labour, they’re just being misled.”
The message was that workers, and elected worker leaders, had no rooted opposition to privatisation.
Makgetla insisted Cosatu’s view was not that a Chinese wall should be raised between the state and the private sector. The unions had, for example, made concessions on the Blue Train.
But they were against the “simplistic” view that equated competition and free markets with efficiency, and wanted to protect basic services, employment and national infrastructure. The public sector had shed 200 000 jobs since 1994.
The larger issue was the need to restructure the economy, and the role the state had to play in this.
Makgetla said government had erred by walking away from negotiations in the 1999 public service pay talks, when a settlement was in sight, and was repeating the error over privatisation.
“The attitude is: you guys are misrepresenting us? go away. All we’re saying is: you haven’t looked at the impact of the process; you haven’t analysed the costs and benefits. Talk to us seriously about the problems.”