Always an unconditional supporter of the African National Congress, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has for the first time publicly mooted an independent future and a different political mate. In a path-breaking document released last week, the organised working class is presented with five visions of its political future.
Two weeks earlier, the South African Communist Party launched a similarly historic document that boiled down to an ultimatum to the ANC: The ruling party should revert to a ”socialist-orientated” path to development or the SACP would break with the alliance. The two documents together presage a shift in South Africa’s body politic.
The 27-page document, Possibilities for Fundamental Social Change, questions whether Cosatu’s 2015 Plan — designed to build working-class power — can ever succeed if Cosatu remains part of the alliance.
In preparation for its election conference in September Cosatu has proposed five scenarios for its members to debate and decide on. The next three months will be critical to the future of the alliance, but analysts remain doubtful that it is finally at break-point.
Possible scenarios
Continue without change
This envisages the maintenance of an ANC-led tripartite alliance which ”marginalises” Cosatu and the SACP, while Cosatu ”pretends” that its eighth national congress, at which the 2015 Plan was adopted, did not take place. Cosatu would continue ”with no consensus within the tripartite alliance on what interventions are required to change the accumulation regime”. Cosatu’s role would be restricted to mobilisation during elections. ”Substantially, there is no alliance as conceived by Cosatu and we continue to zigzag from one political crisis to the other,” says the document .
Vigorously drive the 2015 Plan
Cosatu would drive the 2015 Plan to bolster its membership to four million through a fresh recruitment drive. A new policy framework would ”create a conscious and politicised proletariat … to swell the ranks of the ANC”, while the ANC ”led by the working class at all levels is not hostile to socialism and manages internal contradictions … towards fundamental transformation of society as envisaged in the Freedom Charter and the Strategy and Tactics document.”
Force a pact
An enforceable pact with the ANC and the SACP would be signed, stipulating how the alliance should operate. The left-wing alliance partners would exert more leverage on the policy direction of the government. In addition, the SACP would contest elections, probably only at a local level, but remain in the alliance. Cosatu expressed concerns that its focus on the ”macro-issues” in the alliance — aimed at curbing the ANC’s tendency to circumvent its alliance partners on policy decisions — had resulted in its ”abandonment of the workplace”.
Cosatu walks out
Cosatu would leave the alliance and call on the SACP to contest elections, or start a new working-class party that would unite labour, social movements and civil society formations ”committed to radical transformation and socialism”. Cosatu, through the new political party, would challenge the ANC’s majority.
The alliance disintegrates
The ANC would be ”hijacked to drive a narrow bourgeoisie class agenda while purging those calling for fundamental change”. Cosatu and the SACP would split along ideological lines and loyalty to personalities in the ANC.