Key parts of the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s (Cosatu) strategy to slowly unravel the cords that bind it to the African National Congress were revealed at its eighth national conference, held recently.
A majority of the trade unionists, communists and ANC members — including President Thabo Mbeki — might not agree with this particular observation, but any neutral observer can see that the two organisations are headed in very different directions.
Most political observers always dig out the old debate around ideology, claiming that socialism will be the final wedge between the three alliance partners. It is indeed a fact that Cosatu and its political leader, the South African Communist Party, swear by socialism, a word most ANC leaders cannot even utter in public without choking. But it seems the debate has moved beyond the question of simple ideology, it is actually cultural.
As Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi’s report to the congress reflects, the culture of the ANC has changed with former activists now part of the new black capitalist class. Vavi was trying to underline that this change in the culture of the liberation movement is the main reason for the divide between the ANC leadership and their constituency, largely the working class and the poor.
It is obvious that in the past 10 years the working class, the labour federation’s constituency, has not been well catered for by the ANC government. Cosatu and the SACP claim that more than a million formal-sector jobs have been lost in the past five years. With increasing casualisation of workers, the federation is battling to survive a drop in membership and a weakening of its financial situation.
So from Cosatu’s point of view, the federation should rather back a political horse that will ensure that its interests are taken care of. Thus Vavi remarked at the congress: “The SACP is our only political assurance and insurance.”
But getting the workers to root solely for the SACP is easier said than done. The communists lack organisational and financial resources and there are emotional ties between the workers and their liberation movement, the ANC.
These emotional ties may make the workers’ memories short enough for them to overlook the ANC leadership’s fierce reaction when they took to the streets last year to protest against government’s attempts to privatise parastatals and its reluctance to make anti-retrovirals, drugs that ease the effects of Aids and reduce the spread of HIV, freely available in the public health system. The protestors were labeled “unpatriotic” and in instances charged with conspiring with the First World.
The message ahead of the ANC’s national conference last year was also quite clear — that the ruling party had no room for those demanding it maintain its historical working class bias. This was another clear signal that the culture of the organisation had changed.
Then again, the point made by Vavi that the workers “get treated as voting fodder” is also pertinent. This year, with the ANC congress behind him and the general election looming ahead, Mbeki appears to be suffering from a convenient bout of amnesia when he says there were never any problems between the ruling party and the labour federation. Suddenly the ANC leadership was reclaiming the workers.
But, despite these election tactics, the split between Cosatu and the ANC is an inevitable eventuality that will probably be amicable and will happen over time. The federation, in its final statement on the congress, pronounced that “the complex challenges facing the working class demand a long-term vision to build a strong trade union movement and to assert working class leadership. We need a medium-term plan because it has become clear that only deep-seated transformation of our economy and the state can bring about the aims of the national democratic revolution.” The aim of the national democratic revolution, according to the federation and the SACP, is the establishment of a socialist society.
Since breaking away from the alliance is not a realistic option at the moment, the medium-term plan — formally known as Consolidating Working Class Power for Quality Jobs Towards 2015 — is to press for a constituency-based electoral system. This will give the federation and the SACP an opportunity to build their grassroots base by allowing their representatives to work directly with communities.
They also aim to launch a massive recruitment drive for organisations in the alliance, which they maintain will flood the ANC with members who will re-establish the working class bias in the organisation. The ANC can hardly object to Cosatu and SACP bringing it new members. Cosatu, which currently has about 1,3-million members, has set itself a target of four million members by 2015.
Not that the ANC does not attempt to neutralise the federation and the SACP by coopting their leadership. Sweetheart union leadership, as in the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union, and communists such as the Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe are examples.
Senior SACP and Cosatu leaders have in the past suggested that the leftists should try to take over the alliance from within. But their track record is dismal. At the ANC national conference in Stellenbosch, last year, they attempted to secure an influential bloc on the ANC’s national executive committee. Only four representatives on the list of “preferred socialists” made it on to the 61 strong committee.
So, while turning the ANC into a pro-worker organisation sounds very lofty, it is an unrealistic plan, and deep in their hearts Cosatu and the SACP realise they are unwelcome guests in the ANC’s party.