THE relationship between the ANC and its alliance partners, the SA Communist Party (SACP) and the trade union federation Cosatu, seems today to parallel the situation that existed 30 and more years ago, says Terry Bell in his latest Labour Wrap.
It brings to mind, he maintains, the comment by the French novelist Alphonse Karr, who once noted: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
In other words, for all the superficial change, at a fundamental level it is in effect back to square one. Only this time, maintains Bell, it is a messier square one.
He notes that 30 years ago the then exiled ANC and SACP, together with the self-exiled SA Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu), controlled largely by the SACP, opposed the newly emergent “workerist” unions in South Africa. They did so on the grounds that Sactu was the only true representative of the workers of South Africa.
When the exiles realised that the new unions were genuine representatives of the workers, Sactu was closed down and Cosatu was wooed, joining the alliance in 1990.
But “workerist” unionists, who had tended to oppose both the “bourgeois” ANC and the “Stalinist” SACP, saw this as a temporary, tactical move, necessary to defeat apartheid.
From the workerist perspective, once the ANC became the government - and an employer - within a capitalist system, the unions should again become independent of party political affiliation. But the Cosatu majority, encouraged by the SACP, disagreed, arguing that worker control - “socialism” - could come through ANC membership in Parliament.
Today, says Bell, the ANC-led alliance is still in place, with Cosatu claiming to be the true representative of the workers. But Numsa and the newly-former SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) have broken away and support the idea - as did the original “workerists” - of a workers’ party.
However, just as in the past, there are a number of ideological agendas in play that could disrupt apparent unity on all sides.
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