ONE COUNTRY, ONE FEDERATION A FANTASY
Numsa backs call for a workers summit
ON DECEMBER 1, Cosatu will be marking its 30th anniversary, but it will not be having a happy birthday.
This once powerful, militant and democratic workers’ movement of Elijah Barayi and Jay Naidoo will have nothing to celebrate.
The anniversary will be more like the funeral of a federation and its affiliates, which are in terminal decline, reeling from one crisis to the next, riven with splits, corruption scandals and political degeneration.
This is typified by Cosatu ’ s contemptuous response to the students’ demand that #FeesMustFall: “Minister Nzimande is not Father Christmas, who will deliver free education.”
Although these problems have been incubating for years, the key turning points were the expulsion of the biggest affiliate, Numsa and its 365 000 members in November 2014, and the dismissal of its general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi in March.
These have been followed by a succession of internal divisions, scandals and splinter unions.
The Hawks arrested three SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) officials at a meeting of its central executive committee (CEC) – former deputy general secretary Moses Miya, legal officer Surprise Mnisi and finance administrator Zukiswa Ntsiko.
The CEC had just passed a vote of no confidence in its new deputy general secretary, Koena Ramotlou, and suspended its general secretary Walter Theledi, who is now on the run from the police.
Yet earlier this year Samwu expelled nearly 160 of its best cadres and staff members for demanding a forensic audit into the allegations which led to the arrests.
They have now formed a new union, Demawusa, based on the principles that Samwu has wilfully abandoned. Demawusa is being swamped with applications to join from disgusted Samwu members.
Cosatu continues to recognise the Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers Union ’ s (Ceppwawu) undemocratic leaders and even launched an attack on the registrar at the Department of Labour, Johan Crouse, who had correctly intervened to place the union under administration for failing to provide audited financial statements for several years.
Now former SA Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) president, June Dube, has formed another splinter union, the Democratic Transport Workers Union (Detawu) amid further allegations of corruption – against general secretary Zenzo Mahlangu and former deputy president Robert Mashego.
Before its congress this year, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), formerly Cosatu’s biggest affiliate, had dismissed leaders, who were often also dismissed from their jobs. Hundreds of union members have found a new home in other unions.
The union of the police and prisons officers dismissed comrades before the 2012 congress; its vicepresident did not even get a hearing before being given the boot. Scores of other shop stewards and leaders were expelled without a hearing. Meanwhile Sadtu, which was most critical of Numsa for condemning the ANC, was given a kick in the teeth by the very party that it has so slavishly supported, when the recent national general council backed the Annual National Assessments which Sadtu has rightly opposed.
Serious though these affiliates’ problems are, they are symptoms of a deeper political crisis within the federation as a whole, that has in effect been stolen by the ruling class, which has installed a leadership whose first loyalty is no longer to the workers but to their allies in government and the governing party and their own financial and careerist interests.
The once-powerful federation of workers is approaching its 30th anniversary as a defender of the ruling class of capitalist exploiters.
The worst effect has been further fragmentation of the trade union movement.
The 24% organised workers who are union members are scattered among three registered labour federations and 179 registered trade unions.
The biggest challenge is that 76% of workers are unorganised, most of them in the most vulnerable sectors. The wages of 54% of workers are fixed by employers without any negotiations, and only 9% determined through centralised collective bargaining.
We are farther than ever from the goal of “One Country, One Federation ”, and indeed we are moving in the opposite direction. The welcomed formation of new breakaway unions will not in itself solve those workers’ problems and, instead, make the problem of fragmentation even worse.
The biggest challenge we face is to build a new militant, independent, democratic and united workers’ movement. To this end Numsa fully backs the call for a workers’ summit, involving the broadest possible number of independent and representative workers’ federations and unions, including Cosatu and all its affiliates.
While we mourn the demise of Cosatu, our response must be to mobilise to rebuild a federation that reaches out to the seven million unorganised workers and all existing union members.