The sidelining of the SA worker
The start of the desperate and increasingly ugly fight for political relevance that is being played out in South African politics can be traced back to the early hours of November 8 2014.
After a marathon of deliberation at a special meeting of Cosatu, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) was voted out of the trade union federation by 33 votes to 24. The official reason for its expulsion was on ideological grounds, but the reality was that this time it had overplayed its hand and the ANC simply didn’t need it any more.
Unsurprisingly, Numsa’s leadership was caught off-guard. Numsa was, and remains, the biggest single trade union in SA. Prior to its expulsion, it was also the largest affiliate within Cosatu — the country’s largest trade union federation. As a result, it had historically played a key role in the tripartite alliance, which, in turn, had dominated South African politics for the preceding two decades.
More to the point, ideological disagreement among the members of the alliance was nothing new. The tripartite alliance was a purely strategic political alliance based on the necessity that the members were reliant on each other’s support.
Despite frequent and very public tensions among its members, the balance of power between the members meant that there was never any question of who would stay and who would be let go.
At the time, Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim was as stunned as he was resolute in his position that the tripartite alliance had failed workers.
In hindsight, we can see that he was right; over time, the alliance had strayed from its socialist origins and, as is slowly being unpacked by the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture, the ANC as an organisation had become riddled with compromise and greed.
Jim desperately tried to defend the union from accusations made against it, but in the end realised his protests were futile.
Powerful individuals within the ANC had already driven a shift in SA’s political landscape, away from the cosy clientelism that benefited unions like Numsa and towards a far more direct structure of patronage.
By 2014, these new patronage networks were well established, and became publicly apparent when Numsa was expelled from Cosatu.
This shift from historical clientelism to direct patronage has primarily been driven by two factors. The first and most obvious driver behind the shift is the emergence and dominance of state capture. Corruption was a feature of both the Mandela and Mbeki administrations, but it was only during the presidency of Jacob Zuma that state institutions and key government departments were systematically undermined and infiltrated by Zuma loyalists with a specific licence to loot.
Under a state that had been “captured”, the centres of power were shifted away from the unions — whose members formed the basis of their political power — to powerful provincial leaders, who were able to leverage their close relationships with the ANC to secure even greater political power.
Quasi-institutionalised corruption meant that politically connected individuals could “buy” votes in a region, bypassing the need for pesky and ideologically driven unions.
A second and even more pervasive influence over the shape of South African politics has been continued weak economic growth.
There are many and varied reasons SA has performed below its economic potential for so many years, but the end result is undeniable: stubborn unemployment, rising inequality and persistent poverty.
This combination has provided fertile ground for populist politics but also eroded the relative importance of the unions.
To put it bluntly, you can only be part of a union if you are employed, which, in SA, makes union membership almost as elitist a pursuit as being a member of the Bryanston Country Club.
If you don’t believe me, consider the staggering lack of concern around President Cyril Ramaphosa signing the Minimum Wage Bill into law last week.
This should have been a big deal for both unions and business, but hardly anyone batted an eyelid. The simple reason being that the number of people in formal employment earning less than the new national minimum wage is negligible. The new bill was merely an exercise in legislative virtue-signalling.
A perverse outcome of the demise in oldfashioned politics driven by ideas and ideology in the ANC is the existence of the EFF and the launch of Numsa’s new
Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party.
It is only by dismantling the benefits that come with being close to power that the ANC will be forced to address real issues.
Under a “captured” state, centres of power shifted from the unions