South African workers return to centre stage
WHEN SOUTH Africa’s largest and most militant union
federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu),
organised a one-day general strike on 7 March it was embraced by the
working class as a long-awaited rush of fresh air. Cosatu had been
avoiding the question for months and called off several previously
announced strikes. Despite what can, at best, be described as a
half-hearted mobilisation by the union leaders, there was a big turnout
for the marches in Johannesburg (100,000), Cape Town (20,000) and Durban
(20,000). Demonstrations were held in 29 other cities and towns in what
is said to have been the largest protest since the anti-apartheid
movement of the early 1980s.
Many industries, in particular mining, metal and
other manufacturing industries, as well as retail stores, were severely
affected. Workers took the opportunity to express their anger against
the super-exploitative practice of labour broking (the outsourcing of
employment to manpower companies), and the effective privatisation of
the motorways through an ‘e-tolling’ system. They also displayed a more
generalised anger at the relentless attacks on living standards and at
the shameless corruption and self-enrichment of the ‘politically
connected’. South Africa is the most unequal country on the planet, with
one half of the population receiving 92% of the national income while
the other half gets 8%.
A large part of the workforce, up to 30%, is
employed by labour brokers or under similarly precarious conditions.
Typically, they work for as little as a third of the wages of
permanently employed workers, without any job security, pay progression,
benefits or organisational rights. This is enriching an army of
parasitic middlemen. Labour broking is a tool to divide the working
class, already ravaged by a 40% unemployment rate, and to intensify its
exploitation.
In its 2009 election campaign, the government of the
African National Congress (ANC), led by president Jacob Zuma, promised
that labour broking would be banned. Last year, it proposed amendments
to the labour laws, including outlawing temporary employment for work of
more than three months’ duration, and different pay for similar work,
and introducing other regulations which would effectively end labour
broking.
The government has been under intense pressure from
horrified employers to abandon the amendments. But they have also been
rejected by the Cosatu leadership, which demands an explicit ban –
although, without a programme of concerted action, this amounts to
little more than radical posturing. Workers, however, are desperate for
an effective way to counter the neo-liberal onslaught and many have
bought into Cosatu’s stance.
The negotiations have dragged on and the employers’
side has already made inroads, with an extension of the time allowed for
temporary contracts to six months. And the fact is that most of the
gains that are already inscribed in the labour laws are not being
enforced.
The introduction of a new road-toll system, due to
be introduced in Gauteng province (which includes Pretoria and
Johannesburg) in April before being rolled out in other provinces, will
mean dramatically increased costs of living, not only for motorists. It
will also drive up prices generally. Anger is widespread against this
plan, including among the middle class.
The Cosatu leadership had shied away from calling a
general strike, despite the stepping up of action with the massive
public-sector strike in 2010, and as the logical conclusion of the
strike wave of 2011. When the strike eventually took place, after two
stillborn efforts, the union leaders’ approach was hesitant. There was
practically no public mobilisation or campaigning, with not a single
poster of leaflet appearing in Johannesburg, and leaflets distributed
only late on the afternoon the day before the strike in Durban. Outside
of what appears to have been a patchy mobilisation within Cosatu’s
affiliates, campaigning was limited to the media, and most of this was
done at the last minute.
The Cosatu leadership, for all its love of radical
phrases, even appeared shy to state that this was a general strike,
speaking instead of ‘national marches’. Only the day before the march
did the leaders communicate, through the media, that this was a general
strike notice. As a result, the threatened shutdown of the economy was
far from complete.
The large turnout shows the willingness and ability
of the working class to fight. And, despite its half-heartedness, the
Cosatu leadership the leadership tried to gain maximum credit for its
‘militancy’. In his speech in Johannesburg, Cosatu general secretary,
Zwelinzima Vavi, called the strike "a warning shot" and promised
follow-up action, including blockading the motorways, to massive cheers.
Cosatu’s president, S’dumo Dlamini, speaking in Durban, said a second
strike could be held in August. The strike has certainly wetted the
thirst of workers and youth, who are itching to take action.
The Cosatu leadership is riddled with divisions that
appear to be deepening rapidly. On the surface, these relate most
directly to the looming leadership battles in the ANC, Cosatu’s
political partner. Cosatu was joined in the action by the ANC Youth
League president, Julius Malema, who has been expelled recently from the
ANC by its disciplinary committee. The presence of Malema was welcomed
by many on the march in Johannesburg. On the other hand, in Limpopo,
Malema’s home province, strikers reportedly refused to be addressed by
ANC figures associated with Malema.
The attempt by the right-posturing-as-left demagogue
Malema to join the Cosatu leadership in riding the working-class tiger
adds a complication to the development of the working-class movement.
But this can be clarified in the course of the struggles, which will no
doubt be unleashed in South Africa over the next few years.
Further big class struggles will see the organised
workers rejecting the policies of class collaborationism, and the rank
and file campaigning for democratic control of their unions and for the
formation of a mass party of the working class. Such a party could unite
all the fighting strands of the working class - in communities,
workplaces and social movements – and struggle with independent class
policies for a government of workers and poor people.
