South Africa’s public sector: a new wave of
struggle
In a massive show of force
public-sector workers took strike action over three weeks. Desperate to
dampen down the flames of revolt, however, the union leaders succeeded
in suspending the action. But the neo-liberal policies of the ANC
government, growing anger at the yawning class divide, and the workers’
rising militancy point to a period of intensified struggle ahead.
WEIZMANN HAMILTON, Democratic Socialist Movement (CWI South Africa),
reports.
AFTER THREE WEEKS of
determined struggle, the South African public-sector workers’ strike was
suspended in early September. The union leaders’ position is that they
have still not accepted the ANC government’s offer of a 7.5% salary
increase and R800 ($110) housing allowance and would consult their
members. Although this implies the possibility of a resumption of the
strike, it is highly unlikely that the leadership has any intention of
calling the members out should the resumed negotiations fail. Nor is it
likely that the membership would respond. The strike is effectively
over. Workers are bitter and angry, not only at the government, but also
towards their leaders.
Prior to the suspension of
the strike, in an extraordinary exhibition of verbal gymnastics, the
union leaders appeared to refuse to accept their members’ rejection of
the government offer. They argued that workers had not ‘fully
understood’ and insisted on a second round of report-backs. On the
substantive issue of salaries and the housing allowance, the union
leadership has capitulated. What will be negotiated will be issues such
as the terms for a return to work and other matters for future
bargaining. The government has already offered an amnesty for essential
service workers who defied the court interdict. Instead of being
dismissed, they will receive final written warnings which will be
removed from their personnel records after six months. In addition, the
unions will demand that there be no deductions in terms of the no-work,
no-pay policy.
As in 2007, when millions of
workers also took action, for many this will feel, if not a defeat, then
certainly an opportunity lost. Although a week shorter in duration than
the 2007 mass action, the 2010 strike more than matched it in intensity,
combativity and militancy. For most of the 21 days the strike held solid
in defiance of government arrogance, state repression, including court
interdicts, rubber bullets and the use of water cannon, and the arrest
of over 300 workers. If anything, the government’s propaganda, trying to
take advantage of actions involving health workers and educators,
reinforced the strikers’ determination.
As the bosses pledged support
for the ANC government’s intransigence and exerted pressure by warning
of dire consequences for the economy should the government capitulate,
the courage of the public-sector workers inspired pledges of solidarity
action from those in local government and the private sector. On the
social landscape, the lines of class division stood out in sharp relief:
the government and the bosses on the one side; the working class on the
other. Forced to reflect the mood of the working class, the Congress of
South African Trade Unions (Cosatu – the main trade union federation)
threatened to bring the economy to its knees in a general strike in
solidarity with the public sector.
For left-wing doomsayers on
the fringes of the working-class movement, everything short of the
overthrow of capitalism is a defeat. Unwittingly, they echo the views of
capitalist analysts who, particularly in the last week of the strike,
repeatedly predicted its end on the basis that the workers had already
lost more in no-work, no-pay deductions than what they would gain
through salary increases. However, even on the narrow issue of wages, to
regard as a defeat the fact that 7.5% is only half of the workers’
original 15% demand, and short of the workers’ final revised demand of
8.6%, is to take an entirely one-sided, ‘economistic’ view. From an
initial 5.2%, the government was forced to move twice to reach 7.5%, an
increase worth more in real terms today than in 2007 given that the
official rate of inflation is currently 3.7%; an issue that capitalist
economists have repeatedly condemned workers for.
Deep political consequences
DESPITE THE GOVERNMENT’S
hard-line stand, its claims that any salary increase for public-sector
workers would have to be taken from budgets allocated to other service
delivery priorities, alongside a vicious propaganda campaign by the
capitalist media, the pressure of the million-strong public-sector
strike forced the government to retreat.
More importantly, the workers
did not settle for this offer. It was rejected overwhelmingly by Cosatu
members and half of the smaller Independent Labour Caucus (ILC – mainly
made up of former white conservative unions). This was not so much a
settlement as an imposition – a deal struck between the trade union
leaderships, led by Cosatu, and the ANC government. Workers have every
right to feel betrayed.
But it is in the political
sphere that the true significance of the strike lies. The strike was
against the government of Jacob Zuma, a president portrayed by the South
African Communist Party (SACP) and Cosatu leaderships as pro-working
class, and in whose ascent to power the role of the public-sector
workers, through their action in 2007, was pivotal. That meant that,
politically, this strike began on a higher level than in 2007.
To argue, as some do, that
the intra-Tripartite Alliance conflict that formed the background to
this strike was a ‘fake contest’ with predetermined results, is to
completely misunderstand the interplay of class and political processes
at work. The public-sector strike was, in the first instance, as much a
conflict between the classes as strikes in the private sector.
At the same time, it was a
political strike – a public affirmation by public-sector workers and,
indeed, as the solidarity pledges by workers in the private and
parastatal sectors indicated, by the entire working class. It concerned
the conclusions they have reached: that the ANC government is not a
workers’ government but a government of the bosses.
History does not simply
repeat itself in an endless replay of processes, with the same outcomes.
The 2010 strike was built on the experience of 2007. The performance of
the Zuma administration had demonstrated, as the Democratic Socialist
Movement (CWI South Africa) warned, that in terms of economic policy, it
was a continuation of Thabo Mbeki’s capitalist government. The stance
adopted by the Zuma government in the strike obliterated any difference
from Mbeki’s, rendering its class character indistinguishable from its
predecessor. If anything, its capitalist character is even more
pronounced, reflected in escalating corruption, the looting of the
state, and a culture of entitlement within the political and economic
elite.
Where the 2007 public-sector
strike was pivotal in cementing the Zuma coalition, ending Mbeki’s reign
and precipitating the first split in the ANC since it came to power (and
the biggest so far in its history), the 2010 strike has shattered a
fracturing coalition. It brought Cosatu into collision with its
ideological mentors, the SACP, for the first time. A process of
political differentiation has been set into motion that will end, in
time, in the break-up of the Tripartite Alliance. It will prepare the
conditions for the emergence of a mass workers’ party, uniting organised
workers, the poor involved in service delivery protests, and youth and
students fighting financial and academic exclusions from tertiary
education institutions.
Workers learned far more
about the class character of the ANC and the role of the Tripartite
Alliance during the three-week strike than in the entire period since
the end of apartheid. The speed with which the government fell back onto
the negotiating tactics of the Mbeki administration, and its adoption of
an even more hard-line attitude, accelerated the development of
consciousness.
In addition, much more than
in 2007, workers are very angry at their leaders. The statement of the
Gauteng regional South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) leader,
in advance of the official announcement, that the strike had been called
off because certain leaders had sold the workers out, reflects a
widespread view among workers. Unlike 2007, this time there is likely to
be rank-and-file action to recall some leaders in the forthcoming
congresses of several unions. The DSM will be circulating a model
resolution in Cosatu unions summarising the political conclusions from
this strike and calling for the rank-and-file to take Cosatu out of the
Tripartite Alliance and to establish committees to launch a campaign for
a mass workers’ party on a socialist programme.
General strike
THE POSSIBILITY OF a general
strike played a critical role in determining the course of events on the
sides both of the union leadership and government. Faced with this
threat, and despite claims that the public-sector workers’ demands would
‘damage the public finances’, the government increased its offer to 7.5%
and the housing allowance from R700 to R800. Such was workers’ anger and
determination, however, that the offer was rejected outright by members
of the Cosatu-affiliated Sadtu and by an overwhelming majority of the
three other Cosatu affiliates, the National Education Health and Allied
Workers Union (Nehawu), the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru),
and the Democratic Nurses Organisation (Denosa). The smaller ILC was
evenly split, meaning that more than 75% of workers across all unions
had rejected the revised offer. The scene was set for the general strike
to proceed.
Fearful of the political
implications of a general strike against the ANC government and the
threat to the Tripartite Alliance, the Cosatu leadership stepped up
efforts to end the strike. In fact, from the onset, Cosatu leaders did
not have the stomach for this battle. They felt obliged to reflect the
fury of the workers, with trenchant denunciations of Zuma’s salary and,
in the words of Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu general secretary, "the
predatory elite feeding at the public trough like hyenas". But behind
the scenes they were engaging desperately with the government to secure
a deal. News reports were dominated by the focus on efforts by the trade
union leadership to sell the offer to the members, against the
instruction of their members! The leaders had redefined their role as
mediators between their members and the government instead of their
members’ representatives!
The ILC spokesperson called
upon workers to "do the right thing and return to work where they should
be". The Cosatu leadership had been embarrassed by the fact that the
ILC’s biggest affiliate, the Public Servants Association, in a break
with tradition, had gone on strike before the Cosatu unions. Now they
were preparing to follow the ILC back to work, hiding their own
political cowardice under the skirts of their more conservative but
weaker counterparts.
The Cosatu leadership
capitulated in spite of the fact that, in the private sector, the
federation’s most powerful affiliates, the metal and mine workers’
unions, are currently on strike in the tyre, petrol retail and mining
industries, having rejected wage offers of 6-8%. The National Union of
Metal Workers has just concluded a victorious eight-day strike in the
motor industry, after winning a 10% increase and, most significantly, a
ban on labour brokers. All Cosatu was required to do was to activate the
section 77 notice (the Labour Relations Act section providing for the
right to strike over socio-economic issues) that was filed months ago to
protest against excessive electricity price increases.
Instead, in spite of the fact
that the conditions for a solidarity general strike were highly
favourable, the Cosatu leadership marched its soldiers half way up the
hill only to lead them down again, in an attempt to engineer a headlong
retreat.
Widening divisions in Tripartite Alliance
COSATU LEADERS FEARED that a
general strike would open up the widening cracks in the Tripartite
Alliance into an unbridgeable chasm and create pressures to form a
political opposition workers’ party. This idea forced itself onto the
political agenda by the shattering of the coalition of forces that
recalled Mbeki and brought Zuma to power. In addition, the realignment
of bourgeois politics, which began with the 2008 formation of the
Congress of the People – the biggest split from the ANC in its history –
and the recent marriage between the Independent Democrats (led by ex-Pan
Africanist MP, Patricia De Lille) and the white-led Democratic Alliance,
has broken the spell of ANC political hegemony and legitimised the idea
of an opposition to the ‘party of liberation’.
In the past, the Cosatu
leadership took refuge from the political implications of protests
against the government’s neo-liberal economic policy, privatisation and
even the 2007 public-sector wage strike – the longest and, until now,
most politically significant in recent SA history – behind the fiction
that they were protesting "against the government, not the ANC". The
2007 rebellion against Mbeki, fuelled by the class polarisation it
indirectly expressed, provided a handy cover for this spurious piece of
political evasion.
The DSM warned that the Zuma
administration would be the last hideout for the Cosatu leadership. It
is caught on the horns of a dilemma. It can stay within the Tripartite
Alliance and adhere to the rules of engagement between the alliance
partners, which the ANC leadership is attempting to rewrite through this
strike. Or it can depart from the alliance and be forced to go into
opposition. But then what would Cosatu’s programme be, if its leaders
simply wanted to create an opposition labour or social democratic party
working within capitalism?
Recoiling for these reasons
from the idea of breaking from the Tripartite Alliance, a number of
Cosatu leaders are warning Zuma that he can be recalled as Mbeki was.
The problem, they say, is not with the ANC, but with the leaders it
elects. In this way, they perpetuate the illusion that the class
character of the ANC has not yet been decided. The reality is that it
does not matter who is elected into the leadership, the ANC is a
capitalist party and therefore bound to attack the working class. While
2010 has reinforced the lessons of the 2007 public-sector strike for the
rank-and-file, for the leadership these lessons remain a closed book.
Should the surrender of the
Cosatu leadership hold, it will amount to no more than a truce – a
postponement of the reckoning between the classes that the crisis of
capitalism guarantees. As the World Bank warned, an economic recovery to
return to the pre-recession conditions could take 15 years. Reserve bank
governor, Gill Marcus, added that the economy never recovered from the
recession and is headed for a double-dip decline. Further redundancies,
short time and lay-offs are inevitable. The conditions that produced the
arguments used to justify the government’s current stance on the
workers’ demands – the same arguments about a "lack of fiscal space", an
"unsustainable public-sector remuneration bill" and "a narrow tax base
and the limits of social welfare spending" – will apply with renewed
force. No matter how the negotiations are conducted, with or without
trading insults, there is no prospect they will produce a satisfactory
outcome regarding wages or benefits. The problem lies with the
government’s capitalist polices.
This is what the SACP, if it
was a communist party worthy of the name, should be pointing out, and
making the case for socialism. Instead, the SACP, with its debilitating
ideological grip on the Cosatu leadership, only pledged perfunctory
support for the public-sector workers after being criticised by the
Cosatu leaders for its silence. This exposes the distance between a
party that claims it is the official leader of the working class and the
workers themselves. The SACP has studiously avoided placing itself in a
position where the possibility of it contending for power in parliament,
in its own right, is posed.
Zuma: after me, who?
ZUMA APPEARS TO have used the
collapse of the coalition that brought him to power by posing the
question to the Cosatu leadership: after me, who? To this, the Cosatu
leadership had and has no answer. What is more certain is that in
questioning the motive behind the indefinite public-sector strike, Zuma
was posing the question more directly, after the manner of British prime
minister, Lloyd George, to the trade union leaders in 1919, when
confronted with the threat of a general strike: "If you carry out your
threat and strike you will defeat us, but if you do so have you weighed
up the consequences?... For if a force arises in the state which is
stronger than the state itself, they must be ready to take on the
functions of the state or withdraw and accept the authority of the
state. Gentlemen, have you considered, and if you have, are you ready?"
Like his 1919 counterpart,
Zuma has called the Cosatu leadership’s bluff – with the same results.
The Cosatu leaders have been frightened into running away from their own
shadows.
Despite the capitulation of
the British trade union leaders in 1919, the class struggle continued.
Under the impact of the October revolution in Russia, in 1918 the Labour
Party in Britain adopted a clause (Clause IV, Part 4), committing the
party to the socialist transformation of society. A general strike took
place in 1926.
The Cosatu leadership may
succeed in ending the public-sector strike and averting a general strike
for now. But what this strike shows, and the successful strike wave in
the private and parastatal sectors also, is that the willingness of the
workers to struggle is unbroken. However this struggle ends, it merely
postpones a further reckoning between the working class and the bosses
in the private sector, and the political managers of their system, the
ANC government.
The bosses are reacting to
the crisis of capitalism, the worst since the great depression in the
1930s, in the only way they know how: to make the workers pay through
short time, lay-offs, retrenchments and savage cuts in social welfare
spending. The ANC government is managing the economy in accordance with
the dictates of capital.
The working class has no
alternative but to resist. If its leaders in the trade unions stand in
the way they will be swept aside. There is enormous anger among Cosatu
public-sector workers over the role of their leaders. The Cosatu
leadership appears to believe that history merely repeats itself. But
there will be consequences for the betrayal of 2010 – for that is what
the leadership is preparing.
Contrary to the illusions
fostered by the Cosatu leadership, equality in relations between the
Alliance partners was never possible, nor would the strategic centre (of
decision-making powers) ever have been relocated to the alliance. From
the point of view of the ANC, the role of Cosatu in the Tripartite
Alliance is to act as the prison warder of the working class – to
deliver the working class to the bosses, bound hand and foot in chains
(called the ‘national democratic revolution’).
The liberation of the working
class can be achieved only through the break-up of the alliance, the
establishment of a mass workers’ party on a socialist programme to unite
organised workers, the poor masses involved in service delivery
protests, youth fighting for jobs, and students resisting financial and
academic exclusions, in a struggle to abolish capitalism in South
Africa. This must be part of an international struggle, to lay the
foundations for the creation of a society of genuine social solidarity
and prosperity for all.
This is an edited version
of a fuller article published, on 13 September, on the CWI website
