Why South Africa needs to debate trade union federation's resolutions

Less than a week after the national congress of South Africa’s largest trade union federation, Cosatu, ended on September 24, a national radio debate was organised to discuss the resolutions of this gathering. But it was cancelled at the last moment on the grounds that the topic had been “done to death”.

However, several more politically astute trade unionists begged to differ. Having read through the 3,703-word final declaration of the congress, they felt that there was still much to be discussed; much that has been missed by the media. In particular, there was the question of the underlying philosophy — the politics — enunciated quite clearly in the document.

The passages dealing with this put forward an idea of the future political dispensation for South Africa. This, despite the fact that Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has, on more than one occasion insisted — correctly — that Cosatu is a trade union federation, not a political party. However, this is another area where Cosatu appears to wallow in contradictions related to political parties and policies.

The congress not only reiterated its support for the governing tripartite alliance, it made even clearer its prime allegiance to the SA Communist Party (SACP) as the vehicle to achieve the goal of a “socialist” South Africa. According to the medium-term vision (MTV) adopted in 2005 by the SACP, this “socialist” vision would be achieved by seizing control of all aspects of society, including parliament.

SACP members already dominate the leadership of Cosatu and of the “Big Four” unions in the federation although the claimed membership of the party — at 73,000 — is less than 4 per cent of the claimed 2 million membership of Cosatu. Although comprising just 11 per cent of the latest audited ANC membership figure of 635,000, SACP members are also very well represented in the leadership structures of the governing party.

SACP chair, Gwede Mantshe, is also the secretary-general of the ANC, while the party’s general secretary, Blade Nzimande, is now a cabinet minister, along with\his central committee members, Noluthando Mayende-Sibaya and Rob Davies. Deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin is a deputy minister.

However, as some critics have pointed out, there have been senior SACP members in previous cabinets, including the one that adopted the now much maligned Growth Employment and Redistribution (Gear) policy. SACP cabinet ministers at the time, including the then party deputy chair, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi raised no objection to the introduction of Gear which Cosatu and the SACP now refer to as the “1996 class project”.

“The institution and the position held within it, changes the individual, the individual does not change the institution,” notes a “confessed cynic” trade unionist. She points out that any dissidence simply means that the individual loses the position and lists not only Fraser-Moleketi but other former SACP ministers such as Alec ErwinAlec Erwin.

But, according to the Cosatu declaration, times have changed: the ANC conference in December 2007 at Polokwane signalled a new direction. “The installation of the new government, led by comrade Jacob ZumaJacob Zuma (now president of both the ANC and the country) provides a new opportunity to redefine and strengthen the state; and to refashion state-society relations,” the declaration states.

Cosatu pledges to “grasp this historic opportunity to maximise workers’ gains” and commits the federation to “build Marxism-Leninism as a tool of scientific inquiry”, with the object of building “a socialist movement coalescing around the SACP”.

The critics, several of whom regarded themselves as Marxists, point out that Cosatu is very short of any clear definition of what is meant by Marxism-Leninism or socialism other than that they are supposedly embodied in the SACP which also provides no clear definition in its MTV. However, the federation’s political commission has now been mandated to “develop a detailed programme for the transition to socialism”. This must include “a vision for socialism in the 21st century”.

Cosatu maintains that it is seeking “ideological clarity about where we are, what the forces ranging against the strategic interest of the working class are; who are our allies; and clarity about the international ideological warfare.” But the critics also point out that this seems superfluous since the federation has already outlined the broad tactics necessary for the eventual achievement of “working class hegemony” by decreeing that the SACP is the party of the working class.

The SACP is therefore seen as the vehicle for the transition to a socialist goal as defined by Karl MarxKarl Marx. However, critics, among them older members of the former “workerist” tradition that played a leading role in the formation of the modern trade union movement, maintain that ideas of the SACP are the antithesis of the theories propounded by Marx or even Lenin; that they owe much more to the policies of the former Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin.

These policies include the concept of “socialism in one country” and of the need to pursue “stages” of a democratic “revolution” toward a “socialist” climax. A “vanguard party” is seen as the means toward this end.

What mainly concerns many critics is that the model society promoted by the SACP remains a version of what existed in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In the words of the late Joe Slovo, when chair of the SACP, these were regions of “really existing socialism where the element of democracy was missing”. However, Marx maintained that socialism amounted the extension of democracy from which it follows that without democracy there can be no socialism.

The last SACP congress in exile, held in Havana, Cuba in 1989, also declared that, in “socialist” countries, “A new way of life is taking shape in which there are neither oppressors nor the oppressed.....in which power belongs to the people.” That was only months before the collapse of the Berlin wall and the mass uprisings that overturned “communist” rule in countries such as Romania.

Ironically, the chair of that congress and reputedly one of the main authors of that “Path to Power” document was former president Thabo MbekiThabo Mbeki, then a politburo member of the SACP. He is now reviled as the prime architect of the “1996 class project”.

Given this often confusing situation, the point the demand of the critics is valid: Cosatu and the country at large need to debate what the SACP sees as the future dispensation for this country — and how it will be achieved.