Monday 30 November 2015

Welcome home, Numsa

The trade union federation that was formed in 1985 (the year that I first visited South Africa, as it happens) would appear to be on its last legs, with the expulsion of its largest member group, Numsa.  There are scenarios that might see this reversed some day through an appeal process or via the courts, but it seems like “all the King’s horses and all the kings men can’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.”

In today’s City Press, Ferial Haffajee writes (after a convincing litany of her own socialist leanings):

Cosatu’s split is good

The weakening of the tripartite alliance is vital for the country as it is holding us back. Both Cosatu and the Alliance have atrophied and are unable to meet the challenge of modernity head-on.


Cosatu and its members have become a labour aristocracy (a self-interested elite) which stands against basic public goods like a youth employment incentive or government’s efforts to make the state capable.


The public sector unions – who rule the roost in Cosatu – hold us to ransom with low productivity and high demands.


The teachers’ union, Sadtu, is the single biggest factor retarding a final end to Bantu Education.
 

And, in the private sector, Cosatu affiliates hold strikes so violent that they have accelerated the trend to mechanisation.

Reading through union documents is like tripping the dark fantastic to outmoded Soviet days – if their wayward economics is ever implemented, a failed state is a serious risk.
 

Yet, Cosatu members are a proper middle-class: they reflect a dangerous disjuncture between word and deed.

A split and decline in Cosatu heralds the end of an important epoch but it holds shoots of new potential for South Africa.


I second the emotion!  I am a “civil society watcher” – that social space that is the natural habitat of nonprofits working in welfare, social development, the arts, sports… and usually, trade unions.  So for over a decade now, I have been lamenting that civil society in South Africa misses the presence of its trade unions.  You can check the “silo” of commentary on Philanthropy hosted by C4L (visit <trilogy-philanthropy.blogspot.com> ) and find that I have lamented that on more than one occasion!

Thus the title of this article… Welcome home, NUMSA.  It is my hope that other unions will follow you – some sooner, some later.

I agree that the ruling alliance has tried to keep unions “on a leash” for far too long.  Basically, government shows an intolerance for dissent that has manifested itself in various ways…

Interfering in Policing


This began with dismantling the Scorpions.  Hugh Glenister’s heroic efforts to challenge this in the courts finally won the day, but too late to prevent it from happening.  By the time that the courts pronounced it unconstitutional, it was already a done deal.

Another article in today’s City Press illuminates how the quality of policing has deteriorated over the past 200 years under this ruling alliance – largely by using affirmative action as a cover for cadre deployment without regard to competency.

Yet another article summarizes opinions from a poll: “Mpumalanga residents were least satisfied with the police, giving the men and women in blue an ugly -21%”.  That’s not just 21%, folks, that’s a minus 21%.  Once again I second the emotion.

A fourth article reports the conviction of 5 people for attempted murder and arson related to a R14.8 million tender.  They tried to burn down the Municipal Manager’s home, and the constable who arrested them was injured in an attempt to force him off the road while driving.  This happened 4 years ago.  It took that long to reach convictions!

It was only 2 years ago that C4L reported fraud in a government programme and experienced a nasty backlash from the powers that be.  This is still on its way to the courts, in several civil and criminal cases.  I write this to emphasize – from personal experience – that I can well imagine government wanting to diminish Cosatu to a mere Labour Desk at the ruling alliance.  The unions can be a far more potent force in favour of their members outside of government.  Capitalist cronyism or crony capitalism (which ever title you prefer) is no place for honest-to-God socialists to be.

Diminishing Section 9 institutions


Again I have written on more than one occasion about the intrepid Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela.  Government’s latest efforts to sideline her by ignoring her report on Nkandla and by siege warfare – that is, by squeezing her department’s budget.

Destablizing the Loyal Opposition


The latest manoeuvre is to unilaterally punish the new EFF party for its contentious confrontation of President Zuma in Parliament – to “pay back the money”.

I have repeatedly compared Julius Malema of the EFF to Tommy Douglas of the CCF.  Both were more populist than socialist, and both arose from a context of high unemployment and extreme Inequality.  In Canadian politics, organized labour was stronger in the industrialized east, compared to the CCF’s home on the agrarian prairies “out west”.  In due course, these two movements merged into the New Democratic Party or NDP.  It has been elected at provincial level in several provinces, both east and west, and has climbed its way to the status of being the Loyal Opposition at present.

Could history be repeating itself?  Will we see the United Front that Numsa is forming, as it departs from the ruling alliance, merge with the EFF some day?  It seems like the only option Left!

Remember that organized labour represents its members, and they are employed.  So who represents the unemployed?  And those who aren’t unionized?  EFF claims to speak for them and the ranks of the unemployed could out-number the number who are working.

What advice could we offer to Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi?

Nkruma said that Africa did not need to look to the right, or to the left, but to look ahead – to the future.  Unity is vital, of course, but is that unity of the labour unions, or of the Left?  Socialism in South Africa must think of ALL those that crony capitalism has left behind.  Many of these are NOT employed and thus not union members.  But they still need a voice.

Also, to Vavi, let it be said that immorality is less about sexual behaviour and more about Inequality.  Affluent Irene and poverty-stricken Thembisa are only 10 kilometers apart – THAT is immoral.

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