South Africa’s biggest ever public-sector strike
THE MORNING edition of the Johannesburg daily, The Star,
reported: "South Africa’s biggest strike kicked off with an extraordinary sight
this morning – middle aged white teachers toyi-toying outside one of
Johannesburg’s top schools… 57 of 58 teachers at Parktown Girls High Schools,
led by principal Anthea Cereseto, waved placards, donned t-shirts and
toyi-toyied before heading for Pretoria to join the march". (16 September) The
front-page headline of This Day read, Total Shutdown.
Contrary to the assurances of the public service minister,
Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, schools throughout the country were deserted. All
teaching unions joined the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) – the
biggest public-sector affiliate of the 1.8 million-strong Congress of South
African Trade Unions (Cosatu) – in mass action in their second ‘chalks down’ in
as many weeks.
Marches were organised in over 20 towns and cities as a
majority of the 800,000 unionised government employees struck in a show of
unprecedented non-racial workers’ unity. It was South Africa’s biggest strike
ever in a single sector. In Cape Town, 50,000 struck, Durban 45,000, and
Pretoria 90,000 – more than double the numbers of teachers on strike on 2
September.
The burning anger was directed particularly towards the
minister, whose SeSotho surname, Moleketi, has been punned into the Afrikaans
‘moeilikheid’ (trouble) – expressing the bitter animosity at her arrogant
negotiating style and derisory 6% wage offer. She has become the target of
struggle songs previously directed against the apartheid regime. In Pretoria,
marchers chanted, ‘Voetsek Moeilikheid’ – voetsek is a word used to chase away a
dog. At the rally, she was howled down as she shouted the traditional struggle
slogan ‘amandla!’(power). She left in tears after plastic missiles and other
objects were hurled at the podium.
Sadtu’s 100,000-strong 2 September national
strike provided the spark that lit the veld-fire of government employees’ anger
raging across the country. A cauldron of discontent had been simmering since the
government’s imposition of its wage offer in 1999, after Fraser-Moleketi had
walked out of the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council. It swept
through like a hurricane, whose course, size and impact is never precisely
predictable even when expected.
Despite the explosion of anger at the special Cosatu
congress coinciding with Fraser-Moleketi’s 1999 walk-out, the Cosatu leadership
held back from the 48-hour general strike delegates demanded. That left the
public-sector workers to fight alone. Despite what was then the biggest
public-sector strike, it failed to reverse the government’s attack.
That capitulation weakened the unions in subsequent salary
negotiations amid bitter divisions between the leaderships of Sadtu and the
National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu). Nehawu leaders
were determined to win the beauty contest as the ANC government’s favourite
sweethearts. The government pushed through a three-year deal – just above
inflation increases, with cuts in housing allowance, medical aid, sick leave –
with the full agreement of the leadership.
The subsequent deterioration of conditions of service and
the decline in infrastructure and quality of health and education services have
resulted in an exodus of teachers and health workers overseas. In addition, the
sense of alienation and exploitation felt by the masses has been inflamed by the
newly-enriched black millionaires – who now number over 700 compared to 100 in
1994 – flaunting their wealth ostentatiously.
Electricity and water cuts, evictions for non-payment of
rent and rates, containment of wage increases and retrenchments have further
provoked the masses. Since the ANC’s election landslide, there has been pubic
outrage over corruption and an attempted cover-up in the ‘Travelgate’ scandal –
30 MPs are under investigation by the Scorpions (South Africa’s FBI) for
lucrative deals with travel agents for luxury cruises and overseas holidays for
their families and partners.
As the ANC celebrated ten years of democracy and its 70%
landslide, there was an outbreak of student protest against cuts, starting at
the prestigious University of the Witwatersrand and spreading across the
country. The Socialist Student Movement (linked to the Democratic Socialist
Movement – CWI South Africa) called mass meetings at Wits and a 500-strong day
of action in Durban on 9 September. A week before, police opened fire with
bird-shot on high-school students protesting against poor services in the Free
State, killing a 17-year-old.
There have been outbreaks of protests on housing in Protea
Glen in Soweto. In Diepsloot, just outside Johannesburg, a youth was shot dead
by police. He was trying to protect his mother from being manhandled by the
police, who were guarding officials cutting-off their electricity.
In the mid-year wage negotiations, thousands of
private-sector workers have successfully struck, or merely threatened strike
action, to secure wage increases higher than those offered to the public sector.
This latest education strike showed up important changes in
the workers’ movement. The new Nehawu leadership, elected at its June congress
as the negotiations stalled, replaced leaders who were seen as corrupt. In the
words of the Cosatu general secretary, they had turned the union into lapdogs of
the ANC government.
But the new leadership, forced into the ring like a
reluctant fighter, took cover at the first whiff of grape shot. As Sadtu
declared a strike, Nehawu leaders sent out a circular arguing ‘there was no
prospect of strike now or in the immediate future’. They looked into the water,
saw the surface calm of the past five years, mistook the image of their own
cowardice for that of the membership, and issued a weather forecast that made no
provision for a hurricane.
An infuriated rank-and-file in a number of provinces
participated in the 2 September Sadtu marches with no guidance or support from
head office. A DSM comrade on the Pretoria region executive sent a letter to
head office denouncing the circular as a betrayal and a sell-out. He accused the
leadership of turning the membership into strike-breakers and agents of the ANC
government.
So shaken was the leadership that the public spokesperson
actually wrote back! While defending the right of national office bearers to
express their views, he said he disagreed with their position and believed the
union should strike. Within five days of the first circular, the national
officers sent out a second circular claiming that their position had been
misinterpreted. Astonishingly, the circular repeated the same position while
acknowledging that if the membership wished to strike then that would be the
position of the union. At a special national executive committee, the national
officer’s miserable protestations were swept aside by an overwhelming vote for
strike action in all nine provinces.
Even the Sadtu leaders, whose actions appeared to reflect a
greater combativity, were prepared to settle – along with Nehawu and eight
public-sector unions – at the special bargaining council meeting on 3 September,
for the very 6% they had called the workers out against.
Scenting blood, the minister attempted to force the leaders
already on their knees onto their bellies. She stuck to her 6% and insisted on a
three-year agreement with the second and third year increases limited to
inflation. She proposed that should inflation fall below this year’s level next
year, salaries would have to be adjusted downwards! The workers were being
offered a loan!
Even for these spineless leaders this was too much. Sadtu
general secretary, Thulas Nxesi, pointed out: ‘We have a membership to take
account of’. If they had gone back to the membership with what amounted to a cut
in real terms, they would have been lynched. A leadership, until then huddling
together in a corner, had no alternative but to come out fighting.
The leadership was caught between the hard place of
government intransigence and the volcanic rock of rank-and-file anger. The
success of this strike was due entirely to the determination and class
solidarity of the membership. Had the Nehawu members not defied their leadership
during Sadtu’s strike it could potentially have damaged public-sector unity,
causing long-lasting damage throughout Cosatu. The membership saved Cosatu from
a process of agonising disintegration.
Another important feature is the political conclusions
workers are drawing. President Thabo Mbeki denounced the strike, but in a way
that will make the ridiculous position of the Cosatu leadership – that this was
not a strike against the ANC but against the government as an employer –
impossible to sustain. He pointed out that the Cosatu leaders who had campaigned
for an ANC vote were now leading strikes against it.
It will no longer be possible for the Cosatu leadership to
pretend that the ANC as a political party and the ANC in government are two
different political personae. In both the Pretoria and Cape Town demonstrations,
the slogan ‘viva ANC’ was conspicuous by its absence. ANC flags were nowhere in
sight. Even the South African Communist Party (SACP) had a very low profile,
repeating the mealy-mouthed appeals of 1999 for both sides to resolve their
differences.
Having drawn back Nehawu and Sadtu from the brink of a
near-total breakdown of class solidarity, rank-and-file workers are beginning to
witness with their own eyes what the DSM has been warning about for some time:
that whilst the Tripartite Alliance (ANC, Cosatu and the SACP) was being
maintained in the name of unity, it has become a source of disunity. The outline
of the consciousness necessary for the re-assertion of the class independence of
the working class through the break-up of the Tripartite Alliance is beginning
to take shape. The situation is pregnant with the possibility of a mass workers’
party, although as yet in the first month.
The survey, carried out by Cosatu’s research arm, into
whether workers would support the establishment of a mass workers’ party to
stand in the elections, found 33% in favour in September 2003 – just over six
months before the last general election. No doubt, today, hardly six months
after, that figure would be significantly higher.
The Cosatu leadership has called a two-day public-sector
stay-away on 20/21 September [as we go to press]. Called in haste at the rally
itself, it might not be well supported as the government is rigorously
implementing the no-work no-pay policy. The leadership is creating, consciously
or unconsciously, the conditions for accepting the settlement on the basis that,
despite their anger, workers could not sustain the action. Much better would
have been a rolling campaign of mass action based on one day a week, involving
workers reporting for duty until ten o’clock, leaving for a rally and returning
at lunch. This would have made the no-work no-pay policy an administrative
nightmare, maintained the momentum of 16 September, and served as a basis for a
general strike of the private, public and parastatal sectors.
The workers may not win this dispute, although there is no
reason they could not if the leadership was prepared to fight. But the
leadership is fearful of the political implications of escalating the action. It
would tear away at the credibility of the Tripartite Alliance with which many of
their careers in the corporate world and senior government posts are tied up.
However, even if the workers are defeated, they will have lost after a fight.
They will have learned profoundly important lessons. The class polarisation and
the political differentiation will continue.
Even so, a concession from the government is still not ruled
out, as sections of the ANC leadership may regard the collapse of the Tripartite
Alliance as undesirable and premature despite the ANC’s 70% majority in the last
elections.
Weizmann Hamilton,
Democratic Socialist Movement,
CWI South Africa
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