The political future of Silumko Nondwangu as leader of the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s powerful National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) appears to be in tatters.
He is due to appear before Cosatu’s disciplinary committee for agreeing to be on President Thabo Mbeki’s national executive committee list in defiance of the labour federation’s formal endorsement of African National Congress president Jacob Zuma.
Now the Mail & Guardian has learned that the campaign to topple him as Numsa’s general secretary has intensified ahead of the union’s elective congress in October. Sources within Numsa told the M&G that some leaders within the union structures aligned to Zuma have been working hard to persuade its members to oust Nondwangu.
The Zuma group is pushing for Irvin Jim, Numsa’s regional secretary in the Eastern Cape, to replace Nondwangu as the union’s general secretary.
”There is a strong view within Numsa structures that he must go. Politically, he is not where other unionists are,” said one provincial leader who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Within Cosatu, some leaders who are sympathetic to Nondwangu believe the federation’s intention to charge him aims at preventing him from succeeding Zwelinzima Vavi as Cosatu’s general secretary.
The Zuma group wants Vavi’s successor to be Fikile ”Slovo” Majola, general secretary of Cosatu’s health and education union, Nehawu.
Nondwangu’s ideological conflict with other Cosatu leaders is an open secret. He is one of the few leaders in Cosatu who has criticised the federation’s endorsement of Zuma as ANC president. He also objected to the federation’s decision to identify people who should be included in ANC leadership positions. His argument has been that, instead of Cosatu interfering in the ANC’s internal affairs, it should be paying more attention to workers’ interests.
His view is that the trade union movement should not allow itself to be an instrument for attaining political office for individuals.
In a discussion paper titled The NDR and the Struggle for Socialism: Can Trade Unions Lead the Struggle for Socialism?, which he presented at the Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture last year, he wrote: ”Perhaps the real and fundamental debate that we should pursue is not whether trade unions can or cannot lead the struggle for socialism, but rather the possibility of them being turned into instruments for struggles for political office —
”There is a body of literature in many parts of the world where this has happened. The continent has got a fair share of this experience. We are yet to learn how far the MDC [Movement for Democratic Change] in Zimbabwe will have abused the ZCTU [Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions].”
He added that Frederick Chiluba in Zambia brutally used the Zambian Congress of Trade Unions not only to become president of the country but to reverse 30 years of gains Zambian nationalists had won for Zambian workers.
”Have we taken the time to study — these experiences — and to understand how, in the midst of confusion and generated expectations of the post-colonial society, ordinary workers become the most vulnerable instruments for — sometimes dubious political projects?” he wrote.
Nondwangu quoted former SACP general secretary Joe Slovo saying that a trade union would be committing suicide if it tried to simultaneously play trade union politics and have an overall revolutionary leadership. ”A trade union cannot carry out this dual role — the very nature and purpose of the trade union disqualifies it from carrying out tasks of a revolutionary vanguard.”
He argued that it was difficult to find a balance between overburdening a union with class politics and reducing it to a burial society which members join on the basis of what benefits the union provides.
”The fundamental issue, though, is to safeguard trade union independence — irrespective of the immediate interests and conditions.”
He warned against the union clamping down on differences of opinion within it.
”I have strong views in this regard that unions are gradually becoming what one comrade in Nigeria told me recently: ‘A group appropriating an organisation for its own sake and not for the masses.”’