End of an era: when workers become BEE types

Afriend likes saying the beginning of the end for Isidingo, the hugely popular SABC TV series, was when its screenwriters killed off the mineworkers’ storyline and turned Zebedee Matabane and members of his family into aspirant BEE types.

Now, I don’t remember the storyline of the soap opera, which ran from 1998 to March 2020, well enough to quibble with my friend about the detail, save to say I remember a period where the series set in a mining town tackled many issues that mirrored what organised workers were going through in “the new” South Africa of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

I remember too that years later, scenes from the underground had disappeared replaced mainly by a storyline that centred around deracialised corporate offices and middle-class suburbs.

Perhaps it was the sign of the times. When the soap opera began, trade unionism in South Africa especially in mining was at its zenith.

Hardly any major political or economic decision could be taken without even a token consultation with the labour movement. Industrial unions, led by Cosatu’s then largest affiliate the National Union of Mineworkers could shut down the country at the snap of the finger if they wanted to.

At every elective conference of the ruling ANC, analysts would carefully comb through the list of newly elected leaders to measure the influence of the labour movement within that newly elected ANC executive.

By the early 2000s, with the fallout over government’s Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) reaching a crescendo within the ANC-led alliance, organised labour sometimes played the opposition role more effectively than the parties elected to do so in parliament.

Come election time, however, Cosatu unions would throw in their resources to help the ANC score yet another decisive victory.

It used to be said, when Cosatu’s total membership was reputed to be closer to 2-million members, that each member brought with them at least two members of their family to the ruling party during elections.

Organised labour’s influence in South African politics dates back to the early 20th century. The colour bar act (Mines and Works Act) and various other pieces of legislation enacted by successive Union of South Africa administrations to “protect” white workers against competition from other racial groups were partly influenced by the power wielded by white unions of the time.

Lest we forget, the Union’s first coalition administration dubbed the Pact government came about in 1924 as a result of an alliance between Afrikaner nationalists and the then SA Labour Party against the Jan Smuts government in the aftermath of the 1921 white workers strike in the Witswatersrand region.

In the decades that were to follow, black trade union movements were to play critical roles in driving and directing the national liberation struggle.

Therefore, inasmuch as the history of modern South Africa is the history of racial conflict, the class dynamic to that history cannot be ignored or underplayed.

This perhaps explains why, for most of that history, trade unions and political organisations purporting to represent working-class interests have played such important roles.

Yet, as the country prepares for what is billed to be the most important election since 1994 on May 29, one glaring feature of the campaign season is the almost absolute absence of the working-class voice among those parties running for parliament.

Even the political outfit started by Irvin Jim and other National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) leaders in 2019 upon the union’s expulsion from Cosatu, and therefore the ANC alliance is giving this year’s polls a miss. Given how badly that party, called the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SA), did at the polls in 2019, perhaps it is not surprising that it is showing no interest in trying again this year.

But what about the others? In 1994 we had a Troskyite grouping called the Workers Organisation for Socialist Action campaigning as the Workers List Party for elections. In subsequent years, there were various others. But what about 2024?

Are we witnessing the demise of the working-class/ socialist/left political tradition in South Africa? Will it now be confined to the corridors of our university campuses, as is the case in many postcolonial societies?

Or is that tradition best represented in South Africa by “left-leaning” African nationalist organisations such as the EFF and the ANC?

Judging purely by the outcomes of the last two ANC national conferences, working-class and “leftist” influence within the ruling party has been waning with fewer and fewer trade unionists being elected to its national executive committee (NEC).

Despite key figures such as President Cyril Ramaphosa, national chairman Gwede Mantashe and NEC member Enoch Godondwana having long histories in the labour movement, the orientation of the vast majority of the party leadership is upper middle-class and the professional stratum. Are we experiencing the end of an era, the demise of organised labour as a formidable political force in South Africa?