PATRICK BULGER | A luta continua: it’s Lenin and Cosatu vs Cyril and the ANC

In a country where people have restricted access to quality education, healthcare, water and housing because they can’t afford these things and are unable to find any sort of a job, it’s interesting that our constitution is silent on whether we have the right to work.

Yet its framers went to unusual lengths to elaborate on our other rights. Human dignity, life, privacy, freedom of (but not from) religion ... it’s a long list, which includes, at 22, the right to choose one’s trade, profession or occupation. Nothing about the right to sell one’s labour though.

If the opportunity was missed in section 22 to give constitutional force to the little matter of work, arguably humanity’s second-oldest activity, it was missed again in section 23, “Labour relations”. It reads: “Everyone has the right to fair labour practices. Workers have the right to form and join trade unions and go on strike. Employers have the right to form and join employers’ organisations.’’ 

It’s no great coincidence that the right to work, if that is what it is, is interpreted in our constitution almost exclusively through the prism of necessarily antagonistic relations between boss and worker, the right to “go on strike”. If the clause succeeds in attempting to redress the injustices of the past, it fails though to offer any hint of a sustaining vision beyond the narrow confines of political trade unionism. It’s been a gift to Cosatu, arguably the world’s most pampered trade union body, for doing almost nothing in return. 

Labour’s starring part in our constitution was not that surprising given the political role Cosatu played in the liberation struggle, and given the legacy of exploitation and the fact that SA was built on the back of cheap black labour. Partly as a reward and partly in recognition of this reality, not only was Cosatu given a permanent power niche by the Labour Relations Act, but its alliance with the ANC would ensure it was at the centre of power. And it’s been downhill ever since. 

Instead of meaningless strikes over a few hundred rand, wouldn’t the National Union of Mineworkers be better employed in securing for its members meaningful share schemes that will deliver long-term wealth to workers and their families?

Having landed a cushy deal, Cosatu saw no need to adapt its tested formula, which was to make demands with little or no regard for market conditions and go on strike to enforce the demands. This pattern of militant action is in the best tradition of British adversarial trade unionism, of the sort that turned Britain into a second-rate industrial power after World War 2 and energised Margaret Thatcher’s rampant and widely popular antitrade unionism. 

If Cosatu has gone on with business as usual since 1994, the ANC also moved into its own comfort zone of corruption and misrule. Billions were looted from state-owned entities, and while the middle class bemoans the extent of corruption from the comfort of their armchairs, for working people it means no trains, fewer jobs because of an unreliable electricity supply, a proliferation of informal housing, unrestricted immigration, a breakdown of infrastructure and a near-total absence of reliable and incorruptible law enforcement. 

Workers have obviously not been blind to the enrichment that has taken place among the political class and union stalwarts. Nor have the unemployed. And even though fewer than 30% of SA’s workers belong to a trade union, the industrial seating is arranged for the almost exclusive use of the unionised. 

But instead of meaningless strikes over a few hundred rand, wouldn’t the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) be better employed in securing for its members meaningful share schemes that will deliver long-term wealth to workers and their families? Perhaps the NUM should ask itself why, if it’s so powerful, it hasn’t negotiated for its members a deal so they too would be cashing in right now. Instead, in the tradition of militant nostalgia, the NUM and Cosatu hide behind the very real problem of inequality in SA, using it as a battering ram to turn every industrial action into a proto-revolution to address the injustices of the past. Is this really the way to build a prosperous and inclusive economy? Pay is vital, obviously, but wouldn’t Cosatu, if it wants to make a lasting difference, want to bring muscular engagement to the process of transforming workplaces? And where are the workers’ universities? Their housing schemes? Their schools? Their holiday resorts? The reality is people are paid according to their skills and the relative scarceness of those skills, to which Cosatu seems oblivious. 

The federation’s track record in respect of HIV/Aids is one that should be replicated in other areas of society. It needs to rediscover the courage of real leadership and perhaps tell its members a few other uncomfortable truths about SA’s economy and where we are.

In its most recent useless strike action, at Sibanye-Stillwater gold division, the workers have lost tens of thousands, even though in bargaining they have secured more than was initially offered. To underline their weakness they have made much of CEO Neal Froneman’s R300m pay package for last year and SA’s acknowledged inequality. Predictably, they have sought government “intervention’’ to get their way and government has obliged in the “public interest”. What’s the point of negotiations then? 

Meanwhile, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), our biggest and richest union, which left the Cosatu fold to pursue militant struggle and a socialist workers’ paradise, quotes Vladimir Lenin and is convinced SA now stands at the same point as Russia before the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. This is how ingrained revolutionary romanticism has become in SA’s trade unions. 

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s fawning reaction to being humiliated at Cosatu’s Workers’ Day rally, “the workers have spoken”, says as much about his idea of leadership as it does about how obligated he seems to feel to this constituency. Can we not rightly ask: haven’t we all “spoken”, and do so every day? Perhaps Cosatu should ask itself, if it is to have any relevance into the future, whether it can serve two masters: the workers and the ANC. The federation’s track record in respect of HIV/Aids is one that should be replicated in other areas of society. It needs to rediscover the courage of real leadership and perhaps tell its members a few other uncomfortable truths about SA’s economy and where we are.

Instead, and not to be outdone by Numsa’s Lenin card, Cosatu’s national spokesperson, Sizwe Pamla, quotes “the Marxist revolutionary and political theorist Leon Trotsky’’, as he did this week in blackmailing (sorry, warning) the ANC, which is surely SA’s most pointless activity. Erudition never harmed anyone too much, but perhaps Cosatu should try the dull stuff about German trade unionism after World War 2 and playing a constructive role in building a new nation rather than the ritualistic re-enactment of militant struggles and the intoxicating cul de sac offered by the Russian revolutionary romantics.

More construction, less demolition.