{"id":520,"date":"2016-04-29T19:29:03","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T19:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/2016\/04\/29\/factors-behind-cosatus-ongoing-crisis-terry-bell-2016\/"},"modified":"2016-04-29T19:29:03","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T19:29:03","slug":"factors-behind-cosatus-ongoing-crisis-terry-bell-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/2016\/04\/29\/factors-behind-cosatus-ongoing-crisis-terry-bell-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Factors Behind COSATU’s Ongoing Crisis – Terry< Bell (2016)"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nFACTORS BEHIND COSATU\u2019S ONGOING CRISIS
\nby Terry Bell
\nThe American writer and humourist Mark Twain once wrote, following an erroneous report
\nof his death, that it was an exaggeration. The same can be said about Cosatu.
\nHowever, reports of the imminent death of the labour federation persist. And little wonder
\ngiven the manner in which the Cosatu leadership and its allies continue to approach the
\nsituation the federation finds itself in. Rather than address reality, they continue to wallow
\nin myth, tinged with apparent paranoia that owes more to the Cold War past than to the
\npresent.
\nTake the speech by Cosatu president S\u2019dumo Dlamini to last week\u2019s national congress, for
\nexample. He laid the blame for the recent \u2014 and highly damaging \u2014 turmoil and
\ninfighting in Cosatu on an apparent American sponsored plot. According to Dlamini, \u201cmany
\nof our union leaders have been taken to the USA to undertake various trainings\u201d. These
\nunion leaders, Dlamini maintained, were \u201cagents of the Americans\u201d.
\nWhile he conceeded that there had been a crisis within Cosatu, he told the assembled
\ndelegates that \u201cwithout any ambiguity\u201d it had been \u201cplanned and driven from outside\u201d. In
\nother words the leadership of the federation was completely without blame or responsibility;
\nthey had merely been victims of a dastardly international plot.
\nHad any evidence been advanced to support such wild claims it would have created a major
\ninternational incident. But, of course, there was no evidence, merely rhetoric that added
\nfurther confusion to an already confused situation.
\nAnd the address to the congress by President Jacob Zuma did nothing to improve matters.
\nRambling and ideologically incoherent, Zuma indulged in some simplistic capitalist bashing
\non issues such as the price of bread and petrol. But while he maintained that the enemy was
\nthe capitalist class, he also stressed that the ANC was a \u201cmulti-class organisation\u201d including,
\nobviously, capitalists.
\nPerhaps, given this sort of analysis, it should have been no surprise, that there was a strong
\nmove among Cosatu affiliates to support billionaire businessman and deputy president,
\nCyril Ramaphosa to succeed Zuma when the president\u2019s term ends in 2019. One reason
\nadvanced was that because Ramaphosa already had so much money, he was unlikely to be
\ncorrupt.
\nThat Ramaphosa was a director of Lonmin at the time of the Marikana massacre and sent
\nemails in support of tough police action against the strikers does not appear to have counted
\nagainst him. This is, however, a side issue, because what it boils down to is that Cosatu
\nremains unconditionally allied to the ANC.
\nAs Zuma explained, without any irony, it was a matter of a multi-class ANC battling to
\nbring about a \u201cnational democratic revolution\u201d while the workers fought to improve wages
\nand conditions and the Communist Party (SACP) strove to overthrow the capitalist order to
\nusher in \u201cthe dictatorship of the proletariat\u201d.
\nEach element of the alliance should therefore unite behind the ANC \u2014 \u201cunity is the key,\u201d
\nsaid Zuma \u2014 despite often diametrically opposed interests. At a bureaucratic level,
\npolitical affiliation therefore becomes the priority and seems to be the underlying cause of
\nCosatu\u2019s problems.
\nThis point was perhaps inadvertently made by the newly confirmed general secretary of the
\nfederation, Bheki Ntshalintshali. In an interview, he blamed the crisis in the federation on a
\nfallout between members of a self-syled \u201cprogressive leaders\u201d group.
\nHe named SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande, ANC secretary general, Gwede
\nMantashe, public works minister Thulas Nxesi, ANC MP Fikile Majola and former Cosatu
\ngeneral secretary, Zwelinizima Vavi. What he failed to say was that all are, with the
\nexception of Vavi, central committee members of the SACP.
\nMantashe was also a former general secretary (G-S) of the National Union of MIneworkers,
\nFikile G-S of the public sector union, Nehawu and Nxesi the G-S of the major teachers\u2019
\nunion, Sadtu. Not mentioned by Ntshalintshali were two other major players in this crisis,
\nIrvin Jim, G-S of metalworkers\u2019 union, Numsa and his deputy, Karl Cloete.
\nBut like Vavi, Jim and Cloeta were also, until fairly recently, members of the SACP, with
\nCloete being a former provincial secretary of that party in the Western Cape. This falling
\nout among members of a party known for insisting that all \u201ctoe the party line\u201d clearly played
\na major role in bringing the crisis to a head.
\nThe \u201cline\u201d is to continue giving full support to the ANC-led alliance headed by President
\nJacob Zuma. But Vavi, Jim and Cloete, backed by considerable rank and file support within
\nthe labour movement, rejected this.
\nThere are, of course, other factors involved, including personal ambitions and the
\nbureaucratic structure the unions have developed. But nothing has been adequately dealt
\nwith, and so Cosatu goes into its fourth decade, neither dead nor dying, but carrying all the
\ndamaging detritus of the past.
\nTerry Bell
\nwriting, editing, broadcasting
\nspecialising in:
\npolitical\/economic analysis and labour
\nP.O Box 373, Muizenberg 7950 South Africa
\nTel: +27 +(0)21 788 9699
\nSkype: belnews \u2022 Twitter: @telbelsa
\nBlog: terrybellwrites.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[61],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}