At its “watershed” eighth national conference next week, the two million-member Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) will launch a programme aimed at putting the working class in the driving seat of South Africa’s transformation process.
A congress document penned by Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi explicitly attacks “high-level ANC members” on the right of the party who “side with capital” and try to suppress debate within the African National Congress.
“The congress [in Midrand] is going to be more than a talk shop, and is our most crucial congress ever,” said Cosatu central executive committee member Xola Phakathi.
Among the strategies the trade federation and its 21 affiliates will consider as part of their “2015 programme” will be building the South African Communist Party and its own ideological capacity. It will try to prevent the ANC from falling into the hands of an “authoritarian and right-wing clique and capital” by flooding it with workers.
The strategy, to be in place by 2015, is spelt out in Vavi’s report to the congress, which was released this week. “We want ANC leaders and activists motivated by the goal of mobilising our people for change, not dreaming of a new 4×4 and a set of golf clubs.”
Vavi continues: “Whereas historically the ANC has seen no contra- diction between the struggle for socialism and the national democratic revolution, today they see a major contradiction…
“In 2001-2002, Cosatu noted a tendency by a small clique — the right of the ANC — to try to suppress open debate. This clique does not hesitate to use labels, including personal insults. They regularly question opponents’ bona fides and raise the stakes in order to batter opponents into line.
“They have become quieter in 2003. But they remain high-level members of the ANC and could return to the headlines again after the 2004 election, which have led to a renewed emphasis on unity.”
Vavi also says a minority within Cosatu has formed “a loose coalition” with conservative elements in the ANC.
He pours scorn on “an equally weak but increasingly vocal extreme-left grouping” both inside and outside Cosatu, which “expects socialism to fall from the sky and government should simply decree it”.
This grouping apparently wants Cosatu to hive off and form a workers’ party. Yet, says Vavi, Cosatu would not support such an initiative.
In a congress resolution on the “tripartite alliance”, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) jointly note that some ANC leaders “denounce the federation whenever it disagrees with the government, and show a degree of intolerance against open debate and discussion within the alliance”.
Numsa also notes that the “right-wing tendencies among some ANC members threaten the sustainability of the alliance”.
Vavi’s report says the “heart and the soul of the ANC” is increasingly being contested fiercely and openly, particularly by business and a party leadership whose economic condition is changing.
He says that from 1989 business lobbying of the ANC leadership became intense. “Capital has employed both carrots and sticks, including the threat of holding off foreign and even domestic investment,” says the report.
At the same time, potential black capitalists, many of them former activists in the liberation movement, “now have objective interests separate from those of the majority. Some of them would be satisfied with a larger share in the existing economy, rather than demanding greater equity and opportunity for all.”
This group, writes Vavi, “is frustrated by the fact that big capital remains closed to black actors. It therefore increasingly looks to the ANC to use state power to champion its cause. Often it finds close allies in the new black officials in state departments who have substantial influence on government policy.”
The report says the ANC has evolved from a “party where no one earned much to a party that offers high-paying career opportunities, mostly by giving access to government positions”.
Vavi believes the gap between the top leadership of the ANC and the party’s core constituency has widened. “This gap appears in terms of housing, cars, schools, clinics and ultimately associates at work and on the golf course,” he says.
“Meanwhile, the current national executive committee of the ANC contains no serving trade unionists, and very few capitalists of the mass formations who do not depend on the state or capital for their livelihood.
“The situation affects the contestation for hegemony in the ANC. In the long run, a person’s material conditions, and associates at home and at work, and economic interests will, to a large extent, determine their class perspective.”
The 2015 programme says the SACP is the “workers’ true political assurance”. Vavi notes that leading SACP activists are part of the ANC caucus and are often put in difficult positions when they disagree with government policies.
“The SACP’s strategic challenges are aggravated by resource constraints,” he writes, hence the need to help it build “greater capacity and strength”.
NUM general secretary Gwede Mantashe, however, laid greater emphasis on building the federation, which was fighting a spate of job losses. He told the Mail & Guardian: “We have to develop a programme which will ensure Cosatu will not need the alliance, but the alliance will need Cosatu.”
Phakathi said that the congress will represent, for the “first time since its inception, that the federation will be discussing its medium- to long-term plans and the real issues affecting the decline of its membership”.
Mantashe said Cosatu had always represented the independent voice of the working class, but “we want to work within the [national democratic] movement” and not become an “oppositionist social movement”.
On the other hand, a congress resolution proposed by Numsa suggests that Cosatu should initiate talks with “all progressive social movements”, including those outside the alliance. It says “differences in approach should not distract the federation from its key mission of uniting the working class, defending it and striving for socialism”.
Numsa has proposed the congress pursue a previous resolution to plan a “Conference of the Left” to fight global capital, privatisation and “war-mongering imperial powers” among other issues.