The Political Role of the Trade Unions in South Africa

Article by Richard W. Johnson
Black trade unions first sprang to political prominence in South Africa with the Durban strike wave of 1973, which was followed by rapid and nation-wide unionisation. Although the unions – mainly grouped in the Federation of South African Trade Unions (Fosatu) – were not aligned to any political party they were emphatically anti-apartheid and, with the ANC, PAC and SA Communist Party (SACP) still all banned, the unions became the principal black anti-apartheid force in the country. Naturally the ANC and SACP tried to draw Fosatu within their ambit and this was essentially achieved with the launch of the Congress of South African Trade Unions in 1985, with Cosatu taking an openly ANC line, attacking Inkatha and openly subordinating the union movement to the wider anti-apartheid struggle.

This had major consequences. Cosatu now frequently found itself involved in violent clashes with Inkatha-supporting workers and given that a key role in the freedom struggle was played by the ANC's urban terrorist Mkhonto we Sizwe movement, there was no doubt that violence was seen as a legitimate tool of struggle and that this now applied to the trade union movement too. The inevitable result was seen in strike action in which violence was quite normally used against workers who did not wish to join the strike and also in campaigns against employers. In just the same way that the use of torture by the apartheid police ultimately weakened proper police detective work, so in the same way trade unions which found violence to be a viable short cut in getting their way quickly lost the habit of using more traditional trade union methods of industrial struggle. Thus in the two month strike by security guards in 2006 there were frequent violent clashes with the police and with non-strikers which left over 60 dead.

Once the ANC and SACP were unbanned in 1990 Cosatu became part of the triple alliance with them. In practice the SACP soon recruited not only the Cosatu leadership but the general secretaries of most of the constituent unions, so that today Cosatu occupies a position vis-a-vis the SACP very much like that historically occupied by the French CGT and Italian CGIL towards their local Communist Parties. This has had a variety of results. On the one hand Cosatu benefits from government patronage and many of its activists have been upwardly socially mobile through the ANC, becoming MPs and even ministers. In addition, the biggest single union, the National Union of Mineworkers has provided the ANC with its last three general secretaries, all of them Communists at least at the time of their election. However, in power Cosatu found itself increasingly frustrated by the ANC's assumption that it alone ruled and pressed, unsuccessfully, for a more equal alliance – which would effectively give the SACP a two-thirds vote – and a more left wing economic policy. Cosatu's key bargaining card is that it has 1.8 million members and is by far the largest active organisation within the alliance. This means that it often provides the ANC with most of its organizational muscle at election time.

Such considerations led Cosatu to support Jacob Zuma in his struggle against Thabo Mbeki and
Zuma's victory was very much theirs. They then confidently expected Zuma to make a sharp
leftward turn upon his election as President – which, however, Zuma failed to do, so that Cosatu, to its frustration, found itself in much the same oppositional situation as under Mbeki. At the same time Cosatu cast all disguise to the wind and has openly embraced dialectical materialism and proletarian dictatorship as its key objectives.

On paper it may seem difficult to see how any ANC leader can stand up to Cosatu but in important respects the organization is weaker than it seems. First, it has lost members in the recession and its true membership is now probably under 1.6m. Secondly, it has lost much of its industrial muscle –with white collar and public sector workers now providing the bulk of its membership. Third, at least as many workers again belong to other, non-political trade unions unaffilated to Cosatu.  Above all, South Africa has a real rate of unemployment of around 40%, so that the unions really represent a small labour aristocracy. They have pushed strongly both for high wages and very restrictive conditions of employment, both of which cause employers to shrink their workforces so that Cosatu often finds itself claiming to represent the masses while actually advancing the interests of the employed against the unemployed.

There has been continual speculation that at some point the triple alliance will split up, with the
SACP and Cosatu heading off to found their own left-wing party. The threat exists but it has never seemed likely. Opinion polls show that the SACP could only win 2%-3% of the vote in opposition to the ANC. Even a concerted mobilisation were to increase that figure to 10% it is difficult to see how any other arrangement could give the SACP and Cosatu more power and patronage than they have now. Similarly, it is difficult to see that the ANC will ever want to desert the alliance given the advantages it brings to have Cosatu's muscle and the SACP's intellectual and activist input. All such scenarios tend to assume, however, that the ANC will remain at or close to its present two-thirds
of the vote.

What really could destabilize the alliance is the ever-growing corruption of the ANC and the
entirely connected fact of its low and declining ability to deliver even basic services competently. This has already seen the ANC lose power in the Western Cape and a continuous frenzy of township discontent at poor service delivery, discontent which is only quelled by increasing displays of police and armed power. Should the ANC continue on this downward trajectory a split would become practical politics, for the Left would see no reason to go down with the ship and would anyway be happier itself championing the mass discontent rumbling beneath.
 

RW Johnson

This article first appeared at FNF's online conference " Go for it South Africa - opportunities and challenges for an emerging economy hosting the World Cup