{"id":542,"date":"2016-09-09T09:55:03","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T09:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/2016\/09\/09\/of-state-and-union-capture-terry-bell-2016\/"},"modified":"2016-09-09T09:55:03","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T09:55:03","slug":"of-state-and-union-capture-terry-bell-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/2016\/09\/09\/of-state-and-union-capture-terry-bell-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Of State and Union Capture – Terry Bell (2016)"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nInside Labour: Cosatu and the ‘conveyor belt’ threat
\nSep 09 2016 06:41 by Terry Bell
\nOf state and union capture
\n<\/strong>
\n<\/em>
\nSTATE CAPTURE. These are two of perhaps the most used words in recent political and social commentary in South Africa.
\nAnd here they seem to have a very specific meaning: the attempt \u2014 or possible success \u2014 of a single family, the Guptas, in being able to exercise great and undue influence over the government. In this case by allegedly controlling President Jacob Zuma who, in turn, ensures his control via ministerial appointments and patronage.
\nHowever, this is not a peculiarly South African development. What makes the local situation different is that it is so blatant, even crude, with senior ANC figures complaining that they were offered ministerial posts, not by the president, but by the Gupta family.
\nEven this is not unique. In several parts of the world and certainly in Uttar Pradesh, home state in India of the Guptas, similar allegations about the direct and undue influence of business figures on government is commonplace. Mostly, however, such \u201ccapture\u201d is very low key and seldom makes headlines. But, when business is involved, the common denominator is always money.
\nFor politicians in parliamentary systems, power is sometimes the priority, although large crumbs of largesse from the business table always seem to be welcomed if not expected. This creates a symbiotic relationship between business and political elites that often starts well before individual politicians reach posts of serious influence.
\nIt is this that has apparently caused widespread disillusionment with the established order, its politicians, political parties and their policies. Donald Trump in the United States is a product of this time. But so was the emergence of Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, and of proclaimed socialists, Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain.
\nIn these turbulent economic times, and in a much smaller way, this gave rise in South Africa to the populist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). But it has also given a renewed boost to the Communist Party (SACP), so causing strains within the alliance.
\nFor these parties and others, the illusion of democracy \u2014 in which voters every four or five years go to the polls to put crosses on ballots to hand over the power they collective have to a political elite \u2014 provides the route to power, to state capture. However, the SACP still remains part of the governing ANC-led alliance.
\nSince the expulsion of the National Union of Metalworkers\u2019 union (Numsa) from Cosatu (and its leaders leaving the SACP) the grip on the labour movement of traditional communists has been weakened. Now, with four heavily SACP-influenced Cosatu unions agreeing to host the congress of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in Durban next month, a new capture looms. This because Cosatu remains affiliated to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) that does not regard the WFTU as a legitimate labour organisation.
\nThe reason for the ITUC stance is that the WFTU has its roots within communist parties once allied to the former Soviet bloc. As such, it has within its ranks state-dominated unions in countries such as Syria, Vietnam and in North Korea a country that provides an even more grotesque parody of socialism than did the Soviet Union.
\nThe language used by the WFTU also echoes the jargon-ridden rhetoric of the Cold War era, referring to European trade union leaders as \u201cspineless agents of the bourgeoisie\u201d and attacking social democratic parties as being in league with \u201cclass enemies\u201d. Yet the ANC is classified social democratic and is a member of the Socialist International (SI).
\nThat the SI is a rather ineffectual polyglot of often only vaguely labour oriented groups that have tended to adopt neo-liberal, anti-worker policies has helped the WFTU re-emerge from relative obscurity. It has also revived the almost religious belief among traditional communists that the only alternative to the present system is that which was practiced in the former Soviet bloc.
\nThe WFTU is solidly within this tradition as it tries to \u201cbring Cosatu home\u201d. Yet Cosatu emerged from the independent \u201cworkerist\u201d unions of the 1970s that were opposed by the WFTU and the self-exiled, SACP-run SA Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu).
\nTheir opposition was based on their then dogma that there could be no \u201creal\u201d trade unions in a South African \u201cfascist state\u201d. This position changed when it became obvious that independent, worker-run unions had emerged.
\nUnion capture then became the name of the game, along with the myth that Cosatu represents a mere extension of Sactu. So next month\u2019s WFTU congress will honour the SACP unionists \u201cwho pioneered Cosatu\u2019s predecessor, Sactu\u201d.
\nHowever, missing from the congress will be Numsa, the biggest union in the country and the prime supporter, in 2012, of WFTU affiliation. Because Numsa, which like the WFTU, classifies itself as a \u201cMarxist-Leninist\u201d organisation, was expelled by Cosatu.
\nThis all seems to indicate that it is high time Cosatu unions learn the lessons of their democratic origins and do not fall prey to the statist, \u201cconveyor belt,\u201d alternative proposed by the likes to the WFTU.
\n* Add your voice or just drop Terry a labour question. Follow Terry on twitter @telbelsa.<\/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\/542"}],"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=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}