INCIDENT MAY REVEAL A REVITALISED VOICE OF THE ‘WORKERIST’
WORKERS chasing President Cyril Ramaphosa from the stage at a national rally headlined the news following Workers’ Day. The president abandoned his address after mineworkers demanded he leave the podium.
The workers reportedly refused to hear him since their wage dispute with a mine and months-long strike have not yet been resolved.
In his formal reply to the incident, the president described the protests as indicative of an established tradition of militant worker action for change in the country. He also recognised the concerns of the miners.
Responses to the incident by unions and political parties varied, ranging from those distancing their organisations from the protests to others blaming government. Even if opportunistic, one political party declared its intention to establish its own worker union, a union that in its view would not compromise on worker interests. A common thread that runs through the variety of responses, including the president’s, is an underlying commentary on the relationship between worker and political movements in the deep structure of a democracy.
“As political and union leaders, we have all heard the workers and understand their frustration,” said
Ramaphosa – a comment that reveals an underlying notion that worker and political movements are and must be closely allied.
The plan of one opposition party to establish its own union reveals a similar preference for close alliance of unions and political parties, but goes further by planning to make its worker union a substructure of its internal architecture.
On the other end of the spectrum of closer or more distant association between unions and political parties, the justifications for the worker action foregrounds the need for a clear separation of labour and the state. The different perspectives reproduce a long-standing debate on how worker unions and political movements relate to achieve the shared agenda of democratisation and national transformation – the debate between the workerists and populists.
“Workerism” argues that worker unions should be the only structures in society that advance the interests of workers. Unions therefore must not form part of, or be in close alliance with, political organisations because their agenda inevitably will serve the interests of the political movement.
Struggle workerists argued against the inclusion of worker unions under the broad banner of the political liberation movement – an argument to protect workers against their interests being captured in the future by the ruling and capitalist classes.
“Populism” argues that the movement for workers’ rights and interests represents a key part of the overall agenda for transformation and therefore must be included in the broad political movement for change, alongside all other interests.
Struggle populists argued for the full alliance of unions to the broad political movement for change – an argument to strengthen a collective movement for greater impact. The latter argument took preference then and continues to lead the current debates.
These are debates and designs that establish either a society where workers’ concerns serve the interests of the ruling political class, or one where workers advance their agenda and class struggle as they see fit.
Read as an enactment of this underlying struggle, protesting workers who on May Day refuse a president may well reveal a revitalised voice of the workerist. Arguably, the incident represents an appropriate celebration of Workers’ Day – a day that remembers the historical struggle for the rights of workers and recommits a country to the struggle as a continuing one.
*Rudi Buys is the Executive Dean of the non-profit higher education institution, Cornerstone Institute and editor of the African Journal of Nonprofit Higher Education.