Jay stirred Cosatu pot that is now boiling over

JAY Naidoo has been wringing his hands. Cosatu, which he had done so much to build, is falling apart.

“Over the course of this terrible week, and as the complex and intricate labour federation – one that took apartheid-era activists decades of sweat and blood to build – tragically implodes, I've been asked time and time again: Jay, what’s going to happen next. Frankly, I have no idea,” he admitted.

Now Naidoo is a man of real stature – someone whose easy charm is difficult not to like. But it is hard to accept statements like these, as if he had no hand in the origins of the current crisis.

Let me explain by taking a journey into the past.

South Africa’s trade union roots go deep into her soil – with the first organisation going back at least a century. But it was the period immediately after the National Party came to power in 1948 that was a critical moment.

To implement apartheid the new government first laid into the Communist Party (which disbanded itself, later reforming underground and in exile), and then the ANC.

In their attempt to resist the steamroller of racist legislation and repression, the ANC and the Communists turned to their union allies  – in the South African Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu).

The Congress Alliance deployed Sactu as a battering ram to fight its battles. The unions crumbled and were all but destroyed.

Sactu ended up a shadow of its former self, eking out an existence in London and Lusaka.

For around a decade the white regime ruled supreme. It was only in 1973 that the Durban strikes re-lit the torch of union militancy. With the support of the wages committees organised by white students (including myself), the union movement was painfully rebuilt.

It was a slow, unsteady process. But the foundation on which it was constructed was workers’ control.

The aim was simple: never again would unions be treated as a Leninist conveyor-belt, delivering workers to the Communist Party. The unions would be worker led, and worker controlled. There was an emphasis on shop-floor democracy and report backs. Leaders would be accountable to the membership, and not some Stalinist clique.

As Professor Eddie Webster put it: “The ‘shop-floor’ unions that first emerged in 1973 eschewed political action outside production. They believed it was important to avoid the path taken by Sactu in the 1960s.”

This approach was not without its critics. It was labelled “workerism” by ANC-aligned cadres, who were, in turn, described as “populist”. The emerging unions chose their allegiance.

Living in exile, Sactu’s leadership argued that it was impossible to build real unions inside the country.

In June 1977 John Gaetsewe, Sactu general secretary, issued a paper arguing that in South Africa unions had to collaborate or be crushed, since it was a “fascist” state.

This was reiterated as late as 1982. “Sactu was forced underground. And there is nothing to suggest that the apartheid regime will ever tolerate a strong, progressive and open trade union movement for very long. It would be a mistake to act on this basis.”

While apartheid repression was intense, Sactu was simply wrong.

A high price was paid to build the unions, but they were painfully re-constructed. In April 1979 the Federation of South African Trade Unions (Fosatu) was born.

It brought together 12 unions representing 45000 members. The unions that formed Fosatu were characterised not just by a non-racial perspective, but also a determination to root the union movement firmly in the workplace.

While by no means hostile to the ANC, there was a feeling that a certain distance was required from the movement, if the unions were to truly represent their membership.

Fosatu adopted a deliberate strategy of first building economic muscle before becoming involved in community and political issues.

Sactu feared that it would be outflanked and displaced on the left. From exile it denounced the new movement as “yellow” (or company controlled) unions.

Aware that its independence was under threat, Fosatu decided to lay out its stall. In a major policy address, the then general secretary, Joe Foster, spoke to the federation’s annual conference in April 1982.

What he said ranks among the most important statements of principle delivered to a South African labour movement – charting the course ahead.

It was an attempt to define how workers should situate themselves in the struggles that lay ahead, looking beyond apartheid to an era in which the ANC was in power.

The speech –  adopted as Fosatu policy – challenged the most cherished beliefs of the ANC and Communists. It predicted that because the ANC was a populist mass movement it would, in the end, go the way of all other anti-colonial movements in Africa and turn on its own working class support.

“It is, therefore, essential that workers must strive to build their own powerful and effective organisation even whilst they are part of the wider popular struggle.

“This organisation is necessary to protect worker interests and to ensure that the popular movement is not hijacked by elements who will in the end have no option but to turn against their worker supporters.”

While carefully not repudiating the ANC, the Fosatu statement spelt out the party’s limitations, and demanded action to protect workers’ interests. As one union leader put it: “Of course we want Mandela to be prime minister, but we must make sure that when he is, workers control him.”

The powerful critique also held out the implicit threat that Fosatu could be the launch pad from which a workers’ party would be formed.

The Communist Party went on the offensive. Fosatu was denounced as “syndicalist” and the federation was accused of attempting to substitute itself for the Communist Party as the party of the working class.

The ANC did more than issue angry denunciations. It mobilised its forces inside and outside the country to ensure that it not only won the unions to its cause, but to its political perspective.  The ANC and the Communists were determined to bring the unions under their control.

Within four years the party had managed to exert enough political muscle and persuasion to transform Fosatu itself into the Congress of South African Trade Unions – Cosatu – adopting the Congress label as an indication that its loyalty was to the Congress Alliance.

On November 30 1985, beneath a banner proclaiming: “Workers of the World Unite!” the movement was launched.

Just eight days after the formation of Cosatu, the organisation’s general secretary,  Naidoo, went to Harare, for a conference of the World Council of Churches.

On December 9 a statement announced that Naidoo had met members of the ANC and Sactu for informal talks.

In his autobiography Naidoo gives few clues as to the discussions that took place inside Cosatu ahead of the meeting. “It was our first public function... and everyone was very interested in Cosatu,” he explained.

Naidoo admits his action caused disquiet within the unions. The federation had agreed to adopt a more political line, but some were wary of the ANC’s embrace.

“There was considerable conflict about this in the federation and some people were asking: ‘Are Naidoo and Barayi (Cosatu’s president) taking Cosatu into the ANC camp?’

“But I had made sure that the office bearers, then in the major unions were behind me.”

The Cosatu central executive committee met in February and resolved that it would be independent of all political organisations, while working with all progressive organisations fighting oppression.

It agreed to send a delegation to meet the ANC to discuss policy and clarify the goals of each organisation.

Naidoo, supported by NUM general secretary Cyril Ramaphosa, met the ANC in Lusaka on  March 5 and 6 1986. The ANC had assembled its key players. Oliver Tambo, was joined by Thabo Mbeki, Chris Hani, Mac Maharaj and John Nkadimeng, of Sactu.

Apart from Tambo, all were also members of the Communist Party central committee. In reality, Cosatu was negotiating with the Communists – hardcore Stalinists, who had spent decades plotting and planning. Naidoo and his team were eaten alive.

By the time they reported back to their union comrades, it was all over. Those opposed to these developments could do little more than complain that Naidoo had acted without a proper mandate.

The metalworkers’ union issued a paper arguing that the Cosatu leadership “should not have agreed to Cosatu struggling under the leadership of the ANC”.

Rather, the unions “should have made it clear that Cosatu ... would struggle together with other progressive organisations, but independently, under its own leadership”.

It was Naidoo’s decision to take Cosatu into the bosom of the ANC and the Communist Party that led – finally, but inexorably  – to the present crisis.

The “workerist” perspective lived on inside the union movement, with the metalworkers of Numsa the chief standard bearer. But it was always an uneasy compromise.

Finally it has snapped, with Irvin Jim denouncing the “rot, corruption and complete loss of revolutionary morality in the ANC and the SACP”.

And – just as Fosatu had predicted back in 1982, a workers’ party is once more on the cards.

This is the background: Naidoo may bewail the consequences, but it was his hand stirring the pot that has now boiled over.

Martin Plaut  is the former Africa editor of the BBC World Service News and has reported on the continent for more than 20 years. He co-authored “Who Rules South Africa?”