The Big Read: We are drifting down

19 August 2013 - 08:51 By Jay Naidoo
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THE ANGER REMAINS: The commemoration on Friday of the massacre at Marikana. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary leadership, the writer says.
THE ANGER REMAINS: The commemoration on Friday of the massacre at Marikana. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary leadership, the writer says.
Image: MOELETSI MABE

One year ago I wrote: "The headlines scream 'Marikana Massacre', 'Killing Fields of Rustenburg'.

Radio and TV talk shows and social media all display the anger and expose the psyche of a nation badly wounded. The bloodiest security operation since the end of apartheid has left us shocked and asking what went wrong. The reality is, many things went wrong. Way too many things went wrong, for way too long now."

I journey back to 1987, the year of worker discontent. It had been less than a decade since black workers had a legal right to join trade unions. Starting from small beginnings the strands had come together into a fighting force united by the repression of a brutal regime and the exploding anger against an arbitrary and exploitative cheap labour system, ruled by an authoritarian management system.

Cosatu, barely two years old, had become a magnet for workers and it plunged into battle.

Tens of thousands of workers had launched rolling mass action that year, fuelled by the Cosatu Living Wage campaign. Seeing Cosatu as the most serious internal threat to its power, the apartheid state imploded our headquarters , hoping to permanently disrupt our logistics and organisational capacity. But we were undeterred.

Years of organisation building and education training had built an army of tens of thousands of Cosatu shop stewards connected to the needs, aspirations and hopes of workers. We were ready.

We stood ready to slug it out, in spite of leaders being victimised and offices bombed.

On the morning of August 9 1987 around 360000 mineworkers marched over the shaft floor in disciplined regiments. What followed in the next 21 days shook the foundations of apartheid. Close to 50000 workers were dismissed and shipped back to the homelands and SADC region, their leaders blacklisted forever. Going on strike often meant that or death. It was a conscious choice.

While we lost the battle, it was a watershed that would define the war and eventual negotiations process. The system was ready to implode. A political stalemate had been reached, on the shop floor and in the country. Our choice was a descent into a full-scale racial civil war or a political negotiation.

Guided by the extraordinary leadership of Nelson Mandela on our side, we chose the latter.

Turn the clock forward 25 years to August 16 last year and we have Marikana, the pinnacle of a growing ferment in our land.

The people in our workplaces, townships, rural areas and squatter camps are bitter that democracy has not delivered the fruits they see a tiny elite enjoying.

Our leaders across the spectrum are not talking to our people, they are not working with them systematically to solve problems.

Thousands of workers are deserting Cosatu's unions. They have lost trust in branch leaders.

I'm told: "We do not see union organisers. We don't know what is happening in our union. Our leaders are too involved in politics."

It is true. Union leadership is more engaged in looking up to the political jockeying than down to the base of its members, where its real strength on the shop floor gives it voice. We cannot hide the disunity and divisions that cripple Cosatu today.

Alongside millions of South Africans, I feel bitterly disappointed. There is a deep-seated anger growing. And yet the leaders are not at the coal face.

People feel powerless. In the absence of strong, legitimate political organisation in communities, they see violence as the only language their leaders will listen to.

Marikana is a festering sore on the body politic of our country. These are not issues a judicial commission will resolve. It requires political action from our political and union leaders.

In the 1990s, a National Peace Accord was set up to deal with a torrent of violence as covert forces sought to destabilise the transition. It was a roadmap based on political principles that established freedom of speech and assembly. It had the structures that brought together the contesting parties and the state, especially the security forces. We had a roadmap that instilled confidence in our communities, compelled us to work together in structures that brought the key protagonists together and created peace monitors drawn from all parties to ensure we isolated those who sought to deepen the divisions .

My greatest fear is that the massacre at Marikana has become the watershed of our post-apartheid journey. It has wrought untold physical, financial and psychological damage on all sides and on our social fabric.

If this is not acknowledged and we continue our drift towards the shrill language of divisive finger- pointing and muddled leadership, we will end up where we were in 1990.

My hope is that we ask that extraordinary leaders rise from our ranks and take extraordinary actions to put our country back on the path to the better life that we promised our people in 1994. I hope we will rise from broken promises and rebuild trust, and that we do this with the absence of political arrogance and with a humility and honesty that compels us to serve not the interests of leaders, but the interests of our people.

* Naidoo was the founding general secretary of Cosatu, a former minister and the chairman of GAIN, a global foundation fighting malnutrition. This article was first published on www.maverick.co.za

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