Birth pangs of a South African workers' party

With considerable pain and after a long gestation it seems that a new workers' party is being born in South Africa.

The National Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA) appears on the verge of splitting way from the African National Congress led alliance. As COSATU's largest affiliate this would be a heavy blow for the party, which will rely heavily on the unions during next year's general election.

The issue is to be debated at a NUMSA special congress, scheduled for 13 - 16 of December.

The union has made no bones about just how angry it is about the suspension of Zwelenzima Vavi or the direction the ANC has taken in recent years. In a discussion document for the special congress, entitled: "The challenges confronting the labour movement in the Alliance" NUMSA recalls several of its previous statements:

• "the reality is that the Alliance was not reconfigured - it simply evaporated. The last Alliance Summit was in 2010. It has become clear that the only function of the Alliance is to be an electoral machine".
• "We continue to confront the severe limitations placed on this [2015] strategy by an untransformed state; and an ANC, and Alliance which appears unable... to move the country forward. We therefore need to consider whether our current strategy is adequate, and what more, or different, can be done, to move the country onto a new political path".

And the document concludes: "The question is: For how long will the working class continue to lament, like a broken record, about the same things in this Alliance? Such is the fundamental question that the NUMSA Special National Congress must resolve."

A fractured alliance

The ANC is clearly deeply worried by the prospect of a split that could weaken Cosatu, deprive it of support during the 2014 election and could - ultimately - see the birth of a new workers party. The unions have been linked to the party since 1986, and form a bedrock of the ANC's relationship with the organised working class. In a remarkably frank statement the party's General Secretary, Gwede Mantashe made plain his concerns.

"Organisationally, the alliance remains the home of the progressive forces in South Africa. Both the right wing and the ultra-left are on the ascendency and attack our movement relentlessly. The re-emergence of the old debate about forming a workers' party in COSATU, led by NUMSA as it was the case in the 1980s, demonstrates the shift in the balance of forces in the federation. The congress movement is under siege in the federation more intensely than in the country in general. Those who want to collapse the alliance have nothing to lose, hence the determination we see we trying in to split COSATU."

Ominously, Mantashe went on to accuse those who contemplated these measures of acting in the interests of unnamed "interest international forces opposed to our movement."

At the heart of this complex relationship is the Tripartite Alliance, which includes the small and once influential South African Communist Party. Although the ANC leads the Alliance it is meant to consult its partners before implementing major policy changes.

This relationship has become increasingly sour. The union movement criticised the ANC at its 2012 Congress for moving to the right and accused it of only turning to its Alliance partners at moments of crisis: "The Alliance lurches between good coordination and unity, to dysfunctionality; and only sees the need to meet when there is a crisis."

The unions kept up a barrage of criticism of government policy and of the corruption that is now endemic within the ANC administration. With general elections due to take place next year, President Jacob Zuma decided to act. The general secretary of Cosatu, Zwelinzima Vavi found himself suspended from his post, despite his considerable popularity within the labour movement. Vavi had left himself vulnerable by having a dalliance with a member of Cosatu staff and for allegedly taking some dubious financial decisions. But few - including Vavi himself - believed he would have been suspended were it not for his earlier oppositional stance. Since losing his job, Vavi has continually criticised the ANC led alliance, accusing sections of the leadership of acting on behalf of "neo-liberalist South African capitalism."

If relations with the ANC have become difficult, relations between sections of the union movement and the Communist Party have become positively poisonous. NUMSA says that they once regarded the party as its teacher in Marxism-Leninism. Today the union speaks of the SACP with contempt. For the union the party's decision to become part of government was a major mistake: "...locking the general secretary of the SACP and his deputy in government simply made the SACP impotent. This denied the SACP of its independent leadership, and character, as a socialist vanguard of the working class." Worse still, NUMSA accuses the SACP of ‘class collaboration' with what it terms ‘white monopoly capitalism'. But the debate becomes really toxic when it becomes personal. The Communist Party has suggested that the personal assets of Irvin Jim, the NUMSA secretary general should be investigated through a lifestyle audit.

The union now turns the table on the Communists, calling for Blade Nzimande to be investigated, and providing a list of dubious deals that should be scrutinised.

History recalled

Behind these clashes and skirmishes lies a long history - one that reaches back to the re-formation of the non-racial union movement after the Durban strikes of 1973. This was, of course, the noon-tide of apartheid and the going was tough. But from the first there was an attempt to learn from the mistakes of the 1950's when the ANC was perceived to have used its then union partners as a battering ram in its fight with the government. The unions fell apart and after the early 1960's the ANC's union partners in SACTU existed in an office in London, but had little influence in the factories or mines of South Africa. As the unions were reconstructed the movement was determined not to make the mistakes of the past and become a mere adjunct of the ANC.

Matters came to a head in 1982, at the conference of FOSATU - the predecessor to COSATU. In a carefully phrased warning, Joe Foster, the then union leader, declared that while it was important to work with the ANC, the movement had to preserve its independence: "It is, therefore, essential that workers must strive to build their own powerful and effective organisation even whilst they are part of the wider popular struggle. This organisation is necessary to protect and further worker interests and to ensure that the popular movement is not hijacked by elements who will in the end have no option but to turn against their worker supporters."

In the 1980's, as the fight against apartheid intensified, the unions abandoned their caution, and forged closer links with the ANC. But neither the unions nor the party ever forgot these concerns; hence Gwede Mantashe's pointed reference to the 1980's quoted above.

Much now depends on what the metalworkers decide when they meet later this month. It seems likely that NUMSA will take things slowly. Forming a new party does not happen overnight, especially since the union will attempt to bring about a "coalition of the Left" including some of South Africa's vibrant civic organisations. The union may decide to remain neutral at the next election, leaving its members to decide on whom to vote for.

Future options

Certainly they will have no end of options. South Africa has some 180 registered political parties. Julius Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters are attempting to win votes on the left, in competition with the tiny Workers and Socialist Party. But neither are likely to gain much of a followings without significant union support. In another Numsa document for its December special conference, the union recalls a statement by its National Executive in May. Then it called for: "a clear campaign with the progressive youth movement to reject an ANC manifesto if it is embedded in the NDP (National Development Plan, a document denounced as ‘neo-liberal." (emphasis added) If this is translated into real support, the prospects for Malema and his party could be transformed.

A genuinely popular left wing party, led by a charismatic figure like Zwelinzima Vavi, could change the political landscape. Much more than union business is therefore at stake when Numsa meets in a few days time. As one commentator put it: "there's always an element of fear about what storms, uncertainty and chaos the uncharted territory could bring. Fasten your seatbelts, South Africa."

This is an extended version of an article that first appeared in the New Statesman.

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