Maximilian Robespierre, 1792: "Citizens, did you want a revolution without
revolution?"
("Citoyens, vouliez-vous une révolution sans révolution?")
Is "turning point" another way of saying "revolution"?
No, it's a way of NOT saying revolution.
_____
Workers Museum, 21st November 2014
Zwelinzima Vavi
SALB 40th Anniversary, Speech
First let me say congratulations to the South African Labour Bulletin on its
remarkable achievement of 40 years of uninterrupted critical publishing.
Thank you for the honour of this invitation. For 40 years you have provided
a voice to the voiceless; you exposed the brutality of the capitalist system
that continue to brutally exploit workers; you have created space for policy
debates that shaped the policies not only of trade unions but of the
liberation movement as a whole.
The question posed to me today on the face of it is very easy to answer. I
could simply say yes and sit down, because of course all of us in this room
know that the future of COSATU is currently on a knife-edge, and that
whatever happens to the Federation will have a massive impact on the labour
movement as a whole. So yes, labour is at a turning point.
The big question is - which way will it turn?
But before I talk about the current crisis, and the possible scenarios going
forward, I should share with you my analysis of the root cause of the
current divisions in COSATU.
The root cause does not lie, as many shallow commentators would have it, in
personal differences between the President of COSATU and me. Neither does
it lie in the outcome of an alleged discussion between President Zuma and
Irvin Jim and Cedric Gina about my future – a discussion by the way, of
which I have absolutely no knowledge.
The underlying differences within the Federation revolve primarily around
two distinct views on the ANC government’s economic agenda and what this has
meant to workers’ demands enshrined in the Freedom Charter.
The first view, as expressed through adopted resolutions in every National
Congress and Central Committee since 1997, is that our government has
pursued a neo-liberal economic agenda at the expense of the working class,
and that this should continue to be vigorously challenged by COSATU. The
opposing view is that this criticism is too harsh and the Federation should
take a “nuanced” view. In the past two and a half years the latter view has
found expression in the public arena.
What was our track record on economic policy before the current crisis? And
what tensions has this generated both within the Federation and between the
Federation and its Alliance partners?
In the early 1990s and running up to the first democratic election, COSATU
advocated a Reconstruction and Development Programme, based on a radical
transformation agenda. The idea gained wide support within the Alliance and
was formally adopted as a key policy. We celebrated as our founding General
Secretary was appointed as the RDP Minister. But the Ministry was to be
allocated almost no budget and it was to be isolated from other Ministries,
which were packed with World Bank advisors. And after just over a year in
power, in 1995 the ANC government unilaterally announced GEAR. Practically,
this meant the announcement of a neoliberal programme of privatisation of
major state enterprises, the adoption of conservative policies on exchange
control and inflation, and a rapid reduction of protective trade tariffs to
below even what the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was demanding at the
time.
While COSATU succeeded in stopping the privatisation of most major state
owned enterprises, massive privatisation at municipal level proceeded. This
was part of a project to promote the interests of both existing and emerging
capital. While new small businesses were emerging, big business was
restructuring and rationalising in order to maximise profits.
This led to the restructuring of the working class itself that saw a direct
attack on decent jobs leading to massive casualisation and introduction of
the concept of labour brokering. This, together with the rapid lowering of
trade tariffs, resulted in an unbelievable loss of 1 million, largely
private sector jobs in the period 1996 to 1999.
The political project underpinning this economic project was to convert the
ANC from being a mass-based movement into a political party whose members
had almost no access to decision making and who were to become a significant
force only at election times.
The combined economic and political project was described by COSATU as “the
1996 Class Project”, with the then Deputy President Mbeki personifying it.
COSATU called its first post-1994 major general strike in May 1999 in
protest against these policies and their impact on workers and the working
class in general. This produced tensions with the ANC, with some leaders
labelling COSATU populist, economistic, ultra-left, or agents of
imperialism. But a united COSATU was able to win some concessions. There was
some loosening of the conservative macro-economic policies, and alleviating
poverty (though not inequality) was put at the centre of the 2004 ANC
Manifesto.
While COSATU’s opposition to the 1996 Class Project was consolidating, other
interests in the Alliance were starting to share an opposition to the
leadership of President Mbeki, albeit for very different reasons. The 52nd
Conference of the ANC at Polokwane in 2009 produced what I called at that
time a “coalition of the walking wounded” to remove President Mbeki from the
Presidency of the ANC and replace him with comrade Jacob Zuma. This
succeeded, but more importantly a number of resolutions were adopted which
COSATU believed would chart the way forward to a new radical economic
agenda.
The Polokwane resolutions were never really to see the light of day however.
By 2010 the COSATU CEC observed that there was a paralysis in government
caused by policy zigzags, the rise of tenderpreneurship and lack of decisive
leadership. In this CEC paper we complained that the macro-economic policies
of GEAR were still in place. Concerns were raised that the progressive
elements of the National Growth Path document were being ignored by the ANC
government, and that little was being done to resource and vigorously
implement the industrial policy action plan or restructure the colonial and
apartheid economy. At the same time a criticism was raised against the
General Secretary of the SACP for taking up a position in Cabinet, and
thereby diluting the independence of the SACP.
The leaderships of the ANC and the SACP did not take kindly to the
criticisms of the COSATU CEC. Nevertheless at the ANC NGC of 2010 the
Polokwane resolutions were reaffirmed.
It was at this point that differences within COSATU started to emerge,
initially expressed in a debate on the National Democratic Revolution in the
Central Committee in 2011. Agreement was eventually reached. But differences
emerged on issues such as e tolls, the Protection of Information Bill and on
the appointment of Mogoeng Mogoeng as head of the Constitutional Court. In
each of these cases the differences were expressed only after the SACP had
taken a contrary position to that taken by the COSATU CEC.
The political report to the 11th Congress in 2012 was consistent with
COSATU’s long-standing critique of the 1996 Class Project and advanced the
view that a radical break with the past was required in order to propel
South Africa into a “Lula Moment” where poverty, inequality and unemployment
were addressed head-on. Despite having been endorsed by the CEC, the report
was brutally attacked by the leadership of some affiliates when it reached
the Congress floor. The report was said to be too critical of the ANC
government and too candid about COSATU’s internal weaknesses. Both the ANC
and the SACP waded in to support this view.
The 11th Congress ended with an uneasy truce, but in the February 2013 CEC
the leadership of the three biggest public sector unions accused the General
Secretary of being “the elephant in the room” who was dividing the
Federation from the SACP and the ANC. Unfounded allegations were also made
that he benefitted on the sale and purchase of the COSATU buildings. A
demand was put to establish a Commission of Enquiry into the General
Secretary. This was defeated in favour of the establishment of a facilitated
process to engage on the political, ideological, organisational and
administrative differences within the Federation.
What unfolded after this is well known: - the failure of the facilitated
process, the demand made by nine affiliates for a Special National Congress
to resolve the areas of difference, the seven month suspension of the
General Secretary, the appointment of an ANC Task Team, the expulsion of
NUMSA on the 7th November, and the events of this week. Seven unions
announced that they are suspending their participation to the CEC in protest
to the dismissal of NUMSA. The extent to which this period has seen an
organisational paralysis is also widely understood.
It is no accident that one of the central (though not exclusive) fault lines
has been that of the public sector unions vs. private sector unions. Workers
in the manufacturing and services sectors have borne the brunt of capital’s
brutality and government’s conservative economic policies. They have
suffered job cuts and fragmentation through outsourcing and sub contracting.
On the other hand their comrades in the public sector have seen relative
employment stability.
This is not to say that life has been cushy for public sector workers – far
from it. But their slightly different perspective on the world of work has
made it not that difficult for some of their leadership to be persuaded that
the state is an eternal ally, and that any class based opposition to the
state neoliberal policies is counter revolutionary. This perspective shows
up one of our own internal weaknesses – that we have paid insufficient
attention to building class solidarity around concrete issues both within
and beyond the Federation.
So where do we go from here?
The easy option might appear to be to simply walk away from it all by
announcing a split and the formation of a new Federation, forged around a
radical economic agenda combined with a determination to start afresh to
entrench accountability and workers’ control. I know too many of you in this
room this sounds like a good option. But this is not as easy or desirable as
it might sound. In a context in which temperatures are running high, and
fierce loyalties are felt in one direction or another, any split will
produce multiple conflicts at every level.
We have 230 COSATU shop stewards locals across the country, which bring
together shop stewards from all Affiliates. There is likely to be a tussle
in every one of those, as shop stewards argue with one another about which
faction to follow. We have eighteen Affiliates, each of which also has
multiple structures from company shop stewards committees upwards. Workers
in these structures will also argue about which direction to move. Some of
their arguments will result in an escalation of the purging phenomenon we
have already seen in some of our unions over the past few years.
Other arguments will spill over into violent confrontations. Rational
discussion about the underlying differences might just go out the window.
Questions such as: Should we re-organise ourselves along different
demarcation lines? How do we advance broader trade union unity? How do we
build class solidarity? Should we stay in the Alliance? are unlikely to come
to the fore in these multiple conflicts. For those of us who lived through
the wars on the ground in both Eastern Cape and KZN in the 1980s this is not
an attractive thought.
The first prize then has got to be maintaining the unity of COSATU. At the
same time we have to ensure that the space is opened to engage on the
underlying differences that have emerged. That space can only exist if
agreement is reached on a number of immediate and pressing issues. The first
has got to be NUMSA’s reinstatement in the Federation followed by the
informal discussions amongst leaders as announced yesterday in a CEC press
conference and the second is the holding of a Special National Congress
sooner rather than later to honestly debate and resolve on the areas of
difference. At the same time the Federation and its Affiliates will have to
pay very special attention to work place organisation as part of reducing
the distance between leadership and the rank and file that we already
identified in our 2012 Congress. Such a focus will be critical in rebuilding
unity from the bottom up.
There is also a need to agree what we mean by trade union independence. Some
quarters have already described the whole idea as some sort of liberal
notion, which is not class based. Others believe trade union independence is
a prerequisite for asserting a working class specific agenda. There are many
comrades who have noted the danger of transforming COSATU into a labour desk
of the ruling party as a tendency that needs to be challenged and completely
rejected. There are others who see the insistence on trade union
independence as a threat that will undermine the Alliance.
Certainly in the context of the Alliance, and relations with Government,
there is a need to explain that worker-controlled organisations cannot be
subjected to the imposition of policies from other quarters. Worker control
means that unions and federation must be given space to discuss all manner
of issues, and must be able, and especially within their own democratic
constitutions, make decisions and push for changes that they believe will
move the working class forward.
The reactions to the NUMSA Congress decisions of December 2013 are a case in
point. The amount of time and energy that has been spent attempting to prove
that NUMSA is being divisive and anti-ANC and anti-Alliance shows how far we
have to go to reassert the right of unions to decide their own policies. In
raising this principle, I am not in any way endorsing or passing a judgment
on NUMSA Special Congress resolutions. I am asserting the right of all
workers to assemble, think, analyse their situation and take resolutions.
My argument is that worker control and trade union independence are two
sides of the same coin of workers’ power. One without the other means that
we have no currency to negotiate or campaign.
Let us remind ourselves that workers’ power is based on the ability to forge
unity around class based demands, and then to be able to mobilise our
members to take them forward. But if those demands are not forged at the
base of our organisations, and reflect the real and pressing needs of the
working class, borne from their own day to day experience, then it will be
impossible for workers to have ownership of the demands, and a willingness
to fight for them.
This then poses the absolute necessity of trade union democracy. Whatever
happens over the next few months inside COSATU, the issue of reasserting
trade union democracy and accountability within COSATU affiliates needs
urgent and careful attention.
We simply cannot have a situation where a small group of leaders decide
everything, or take actions, which undermine trade union principles and
worker unity. We cannot have a situation where Unions say one thing in the
public arena, say for example on the need to tackle corruption and then
refuse to be accountable in their own unions. We cannot complain about the
gap between the rich and the poor, if trade union leaders are living like
royalty while their members do not receive a living wage. We cannot escape
these contradictions.
They will come and haunt us, but worse, workers will begin to see their
leaderships as not part of the solution, but part of the problem! Who can
deny that the dilution of internal democracy in our movement has contributed
to the diminishing of our power, and that’s why it must be addressed as a
matter of urgency.
Unity then is not something that must be at any cost. If we are wedded to
unity for its own sake we will run the risk of sliding rapidly into a state
of yellow unionism. Such a form of unionism will see us becoming less, not
more accountable to workers. It will see us narrow our line of sight, and
will see us becoming tamer in both our economic and political demands. We
will become a shadow of our former selves and will eventually slip into
mediocrity and stagnation. The possibility of broader trade union unity
based on a militant and fighting agenda will be lost for many years to come.
We have a small window of opportunity right now to find the path back to a
united militant, and hopefully bigger and broader COSATU. The fate of the
Federation now more than ever is in the hands of the Affiliates. It rests on
them to open up the discussion in their own ranks, to seek mandates, and to
forge a new path for all workers.
Should the chosen path prove not to be a united COSATU, we will all have to
do everything in our power to prevent a slide into multiple conflicts. We
will have to put our faith in the power of workers to re-build what we have
lost.
There are so many other issues that we could address. What I have done is to
try and elaborate on a pressing few. I am grateful to the SALB for always
providing a critical space, free of hectoring or rigid ideological barriers
that prevent honest discussion from taking place. I hope what I have touched
on today will be taken up in the SALB and engage many others in a clarifying
and ultimately uniting discussion on a way forward for labour.
Whatever path we take from the crossroads where we stand, it has to be one
characterised by openness, accountability and an assertion of workers’
control and independence. It has to acknowledge that the historic role of
the working class is to play a vital part in transforming South Africa into
a socialist society, where poverty, inequality and all forms of oppression
are overcome. Above all, the path we take must be based on a deep love,
respect and passion for the working class and the future it can build.
Amandla!!
Patrick Craven (National Spokesperson)
Congress of South African Trade Unions
110 Jorissen Cnr Simmonds Streets
Braamfontein
2017
P.O.Box 1019
Johannesburg
2000
South Africa
Tel: +27 11 339-4911 Direct 010 219-1339
Fax: +27 11 339-6940
Mobile: +27 82 821 7456
E-Mail: [email protected]
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