Despite the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) reaching breaking-point last week over leadership squabbles, the election results released on Thursday reflected resounding confidence in the union’s current leaders.
The union’s general secretary Slumko Nondwangu and president Mtutuzeli Tom were re-elected for the next four years. The new treasurer is Philemon Shiburi.
Of a total of 723 votes cast, 407 voted Tom back in and 404 supported Nondwangu’s bid for re-election. The only member of the current leadership not reinstated was the national treasurer, Omar Gire, who lost support following an accusation he made earlier last week that his colleagues in the Ekurhuleni region are corrupt.
The seventh national Numsa conference, held at Gallagher Estate, was marked by political divisions along provincial lines, which Congress of South African Trade Unions general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi warned could destroy the union.
”To destroy the union in our quest for positions is tantamount to cutting off our nose to spite our face. Whenever a union is engulfed in internal squabbles, workers suffer the naked brutality of the employers.”
The two factions comprise, on the one hand, the Western Cape, Hlanganani, Western Transvaal, Wits Central West and Mpumalanga, and on the other, a smaller group led by the Eastern Cape, Ekurhuleni, Northern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal regions.
Nondwangu and Tom are both originally from the Eastern Cape and have been supported by the latter group throughout the congress. The former group has accused its rival of being too close to the African National Congress and of ”using union resources and organisational space to open a campaign, while giving no room to legitimate challenges”.
A document circulated by the leftist faction at the congress complains that ”the current leadership professes to be more ANC than anyone else in Numsa. Their self-proclamation has been that they are ‘Luthuli [House’s] advance detachment’”.
Asked about these allegations, Nondwangu told the Mail & Guar-dian: ”We are close to the [tripartite] alliance — that’s what the previous congress resolved we should be. However, we remain independent when it comes to members’ interests. The challenge now is to rebuild and consolidate the union.”
The congress reached crisis point on Tuesday when Gire and Eric Linda, the Mpumalanga secretary claimed to have received death threats.
The congress has also been rocked by two court battles.
The first, involving a power struggle between candidates in the Germiston region, was dismissed on Wednesday on a technicality. The second, brought by the Hlanganani region, succeeded in reopening nominations for national office.
The origins of the rift are unclear, but it appears to stem from the fifth national congress in 2000 in Mafikeng, where the left group lost to the current leadership.
”This is a recurrence of what happened in the congress four years ago,” said Vavi. ”We had hoped that these types of divisions ended at that congress. Obviously we were wrong. Our own assessment of events suggests that this congress is in a worse state than four years ago.”
The document circulated by this group slammed the rival faction for accusing it of being ultra-left. ”Without any theorisation of what ultra-leftism is, our detractors have opted for political labelling. Without an indication of the social basis of our ultra-leftism, those who oppose us resort to the old reactionary tactic of rubbishing opponents,” it said.
The only unifying feature of the congress was the treasurer’s report on Thursday, which showed that for the first time in five years, Numsa is in the black. Accumulated funds have jumped from R13-million in 2002 to a whopping R28-million in 2003.
Gire said there were many rea- sons for this, including the appointment of a national accoun- tant and the introduction of internal auditing controls.