The perennial alliance breakup threat now has a serious edge

The years I spent on the labour reporting beat have made me cynical about threats by trade union federation Cosatu to walk away from its alliance with the governing ANC. I even developed a theory, which many union leaders strenuously denied, that ahead of every national congress or central committee meeting federation spokespeople would peddle stories to journalists about how members were gatvol with the ANC and would not continue backing it in elections.

Big headlines would follow, predicting the imminent end of an alliance that many on the Right and the far Left considered to be a source of the country’s policy crisis.

The coming congress would generate great anticipation, with a hard-hitting secretariat report selectively leaked to suggest a walkout was likely.

But then the congress would come, accompanied by revolutionary-sounding slogans and militant songs condemning Gear (growth, employment and redistribution) and other state policies considered to be liberal.

At the end of it all, the federation would come to the same conclusion: it was unhappy with the leadership of the governing party and its policy direction, but Cosatu believed the interests of workers would be best served by staying put with the ANC.

This was at the turn of the century, when Cosatu was a 2-million strong federation and its members doubled up as volunteers when the ANC campaigned in townships and other peri-urban areas ahead of national elections.

After every election, a crop of leaders who had just graduated from the trade union movement would take up their new seats in provincial legislatures, the National Assembly and even the cabinet.

After a while, it would be difficult to tell the difference between the unionists who had “swollen the ranks” of the ANC benches in parliament and the comrades they had accused, when they were still union leaders in red T-shirts, of “selling out” to monopoly capital.

Some 20 years later, there seems to be something different about the threats now emanating from Cosatu and the majority of its affiliates.

At the conclusion of its most recent congress, it is reported that the vast majority of the delegates voted for Cosatu to break its relationship with the ANC and back the SACP in the 2024 elections.

The SACP has not, itself, decided whether it would be wise to contest elections all on its own given that its thesis remains that SA’s dominant political question remains that of race and not class and, therefore, it is strategically important to reinforce the former national liberation movement.

So it may well be that, come the elections, the party Cosatu delegates want to vote for will itself be telling its sympathisers to give their votes to the ANC again.

But that the talk of walking away from the

ANC is no longer just an empty threat, and that it represents overwhelming frustration among Cosatu affiliates, is obvious.

Younger members of most of the affiliates do not seem to have the same affinity for the ANC as those who joined their unions in the 1980s and 1990s when worker struggles were interlinked with the liberation struggle.

This is amplified by the fact that the most dominant unions in the federation now are public sector unions that relate to the ANC and the government as employers first and foremost, rather than comrades.

Hence the dispute over public sector wage increases was the main cause of Cosatu delegates’ extraordinary decision to break with tradition and prevent the ANC — through its national chair and former unionist Gwede Mantashe — from addressing the congress.

But it would be a mistake to think that these developments mean the dissolution of the alliance, or more specifically a Cosatu walkout, is a fait accompli.

It is interesting to note that even though the vote was held on whether to divorce the ANC, the final outcome was never officially communicated. The issue was further deferred for another meeting expected to be convened early next year.

It looks like the Cosatu leadership is again playing for time. It is waiting to see the outcome of the ANC leadership elections in December before it decides whether to stay or leave.

One suspects that, even though — unlike in the past — Cosatu has not said who it will back for the ANC presidency in December, if the “right leadership collective” is chosen the federation will stay.

Such a “leadership collective” would have to include current and former Cosatu leaders making it onto the national executive committee.

The current Cosatu posture, therefore, might be less a notice of divorce and more a bargaining tactic for seats at the main table.