Take Cosatu’s threats to leave the ANC with a pinch of salt, writes S’thembiso Msomi

Perhaps it really is a fact that we become more cynical with age. I spent a huge chunk of my early journalism career covering the labour movement, more particularly Cosatu and its affiliates. There was a time, I admit, when I too got excited every time union leaders threatened to dump their alliance with the ruling ANC over disagreements on such issues as the privatisation of state-owned companies, downsizing the public sector or the state’s refusal to grant above-inflation increases to civil servants.

Every threat would be followed by screaming headlines about the imminent demise of the tripartite alliance and barrels of ink would be spilt as political analysts tried to make sense of what this would mean for the health of the body politic.

With years in the game, one has grown sceptical, seeing the threats as merely an attempt to grab public attention in the hope that this would twist the ruling party’s arm and force it to yield to whatever demands trade unionists had at the time.

So I was a bit amused earlier this week when I heard one Mzwandile Makwayiba, president of the National Education, Health & Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) — Cosatu’s largest union by membership — telling delegates at the union’s North West provincial congress that it will not be campaigning for the ANC in the upcoming local government elections.

He stopped short of saying that Nehawu, the union that played such a prominent role in chasing the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) out of Cosatu after Numsa adopted an anti-ANC stance ahead of the 2014 elections, would walk away from the ruling alliance.

But Makwayiba did not mince his words as he told delegates whom to blame for the government’s refusal to increase salaries for civil servants in 2018, as per an agreement signed three years earlier.

“It’s wrong for the government of the ANC to refuse to give out salary [increases]. We cannot be told to keep quiet. Comrades, let us leave [finance minister] Tito [Mboweni]. The problem is [President] Cyril Ramaphosa. It is the president of the ANC who does not give the public service a salary [increase],” he said.

Mind you, Nehawu was not only the first Cosatu union to publicly embrace Ramaphosa’s ANC presidential campaign back in 1997, but it dug deep into its pockets to fund it.

But any assumption that Nehawu’s tantrums meant the beginning of the end for the mutually beneficial relationship between the federation and the ANC would have been quickly dispelled a few days later by the comments of Cosatu general secretary Bheki Ntshalintshali.

The federation will not abandon the ANC ahead of the local government elections, declared Ntshalintshali.

Labour unions may be angry about cuts in public spending, corruption and what they see as an assault by the state on collective bargaining — so much so that they are now planning a nationwide strike — but that anger is not enough to make them leave.

And Ntshalintshali’s justification for staying in what some of the Cosatu leaders have previously called an abusive relationship?

“Those that are in the wrong in the ANC will get an upper hand in our absence. We’re also saying when we leave the ANC, we can’t just be without a home.”

There are many other reasons a political analyst can give for why, over the decades, it made sense for Cosatu to remain in alliance with the governing party — it helped them to win the battle for worker-friendly labour legislation, et cetera — but the cynic in me says union bosses are motivated by another set of reasons to stay.

Trade unionism, for most, is not a lifelong career. At some stage one needs to give way to a new generation of leaders or risk being voted out and left in the cold.

A succession of unionists over the past three decades have seen their career progression take the route of parliament and the cabinet through the ANC. Cutting ties would mean closing this pipeline. Numsa did so a few years ago and attempted to get some of its leaders in parliament through a new political vehicle. The experiment was a spectacular failure and it will be years before another labour formation tries that strategy again.

So next time a Cosatu affiliate threatens to leave, take the threat as seriously as you would the now former Bafana coach Molefi Ntseki’s wish to win the Fifa World Cup.