There is no prospect of a split in the tripartite alliance for the foreseeable future, writes Drew Forrest
The African National Congress’s relationship with its union and communist allies recalls the marriage at the centre of Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the din of battle masks the underlying strength of the bond.
Vultures started to gather at the height of last year’s bitter exchanges, principally over economic policy, between the alliance partners.
Identifying space for inroads to the ANC’s left, both the United Democratic Movement and the Pan Africanist Congress moved in on the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). Even the odd unionist could be heard to mutter that the alliance seemed to be on the skids.
Yet a number of bilaterals and an ANC lekgotla later, a mood of cautious optimism prevails. Unionists say relations remain delicate, and that the ANC’s stated commitment to an inclusive quest for growth has still to be tested. “Another blow-up in six months’ time is quite possible,” one remarked.
They add that an element in the uneasy rapprochement is the ANC leadership’s keenness to bring the left on board before party elections at its national conference this year.
But they also see new signs of government flexibility on the economy, prompted in part by the waning of “neo-liberal triumphalism” worldwide, in part by continued economic woes at home.
Even Cosatu president Willy Madisha viewed by ANC conservatives as an alliance sceptic with ideas of becoming South Africa’s Morgan Tsvangirai sees new space for engagement.
ANC national executive member and South African Communist Party high-up Phillip Dexter says last year’s public acrimony “disturbed” alliance members. “There were differences in the past, but this was the first time such a thing had happened so publicly.”
Sources say a rethink started last October after countrywide ANC regional council meetings called to test rank-and-file feeling on the national executive committee’s “briefing document”. Alleging a far-left anti-government conspiracy involving Cosatu leaders, the document was essentially an outraged response to labour’s earlier anti-privatisation strike.
Said one insider: “Instead of taking sides, council members told the alliance to get its act together. This had a definite sobering effect.”
In fairness, the mudslinging was a two-way affair Cosatu, for example, had accused the government of hatching the growth, employment and redistribution (Gear) policy in cahoots with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The tense bilateral between ANC and Cosatu leaders two weeks ago, at which unionists were again accused of plotting to undermine the government, but fought back, seems to have had a cathartic effect.
The peculiar nature of the alliance is one source of its strength. “It’s not a formal pact between separate organisations, like the Democratic Alliance,” says transport unionist Jane Barrett. “The vast majority of Cosatu officials and members, including myself, take part in the structures of the ANC, or vote for it. There is hardly an ANC branch where unionists do not play a leading role.
“It is not just votes that are at issue. It is a question of keeping structures alive.”
The hard left, typified by commentator Ebrahim Harvey, believes union bureaucrats are stifling spontaneous worker militancy and pressure for a separate political platform. The reverse is probably true: the lower one moves down the union hierarchy, the more direct the felt connection with the ANC.
Workers may voice disappointment with the ruling party, Barrett argues, but continue to view it as their political vehicle. “The municipal election stayaway suggests the real threat is not of an alternative, but of popular disengagement from politics.”
Whatever the differences over economic and Aids policy and they are real the alliance’s mass constituency is bound by gut-level historical and philosophical ties.
The ANC is not merely seen as the liberator. Unchallenged by significant splits for close to a century unless one counts the PAC hive-off it has entrenched itself in the popular mind as the prime political representative of black South Africans.
Its ties with organised black labour, temporarily disrupted by the annihilation of its labour wing in the 1960s, reach back to the Great Mineworkers Strike of 1946 and beyond. More importantly, they were forged in conditions of shared repression.
“The history is not a manufactured one, like that of Inkatha,” says SACP deputy secretary general Jeremy Cronin. “It is a lived reality for many of our members.”
Actively repudiating the workers’ movement, as opposed to attacking individual labour leaders, would be an immensely difficult step even for the rising black business, professional and political classes the ANC has increasingly come to represent.
The continued influence of the left perspectives that pervade the congress movement should not be underrated, even in these circles. An entrepreneur like ANC MP Peter Mokaba, who flaunted his natty little BMW coup at the party’s Mafikeng conference, cannot think outside a Leninist framework.
This is not to deny new strains in the relationship, most particularly those brought on by the ANC’s shift from radical opposition to the government. “Tony Leon and the SACP can make up whatever policies they like,” Cronin observes. “The ANC must have policies on everything under the sun, and implement them. That brings huge pressures.”
Alliance sources say a policy-making drain from party structures to the new state paralleled in Britain by a similar tendency when the Labour Party is in power has been a point of friction. The Cosatu backlash against Gear was in part a response to its “bureaucratic” imposition.
The point is also made that surface conflict between the ANC and Cosatu often masks broader disagreement between the government and the congress movement as a whole. “Many ANC people are confused and unhappy about Aids and economic policy, but don’t have the organisational space to express it,” says one insider.
Arguing that the alliance is a potent source of stability, Cronin believes the way forward lies in better management of the relationship in part by “not getting demagogic on each other”.
Common campaigns, including the letsema volunteer programme announced early this year, would help bridge the gap between “the bureaucratic delivery of change and popular mobilisation”.
Much depends on how seriously ANC leaders take the claims that Cosatu is out to topple the government, and to what extent they can tolerate dissenting voices, and even independent action, among their left-wing allies.
One thing is clear for the foreseeable future, there no realistic prospect of an alliance split. The alternatives are improved conflict management, or a continued cycle of crisis and reconciliation.