The public servants strike has been presented as a class struggle, one which is concentrated primarily in the majority black community, in the same way as the 1922 Rand strike was essentially an intra-white struggle/
The headline of an article published in The Times in anticipation of the strike sums up class-based perception of the clash between predominately black civil servants and the mainly black Zuma administration. It reads: "War of SA's classes."
The classes involved in the struggle are unionised members of what Marxists term the petite-bourgeoisie and the emerging bourgeoisie and their adversaries in the cabinet from President Jacob Zuma downwards, who might be described as members of the managerial class.
The only member of the cabinet who is undoubtedly a capitalist in the orthodox sense of the word is Tokyo Sexwale, who is a powerful and immensely rich mining magnate as well as the minister of human settlement or what used to be referred to housing.
In his oratory leading up to the strike Zwelinzima Vavi, the general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) contrasted the salaries of the striker public servants - who range from office cleaners and police officers to school teachers and prison warders - with those of director generals, cabinet ministers and President Zuma.
His broad point was that the monthly salaries of lower grade public servants was measured in a few thousand rands, while those of director-generals and cabinet ministers were well over a hundred thousand and even approaching 150 000 for senior ministers.
He did not spare President Zuma, saying: "If my memory serves me right, he is earning more than R2.2-mmiiom (a year)." He might have added that Zuma is the recipient of free housing and, for the most part, is wined and dined at the expense of taxpayers and driven around by a chauffeur in luxurious comfort.
The emergence of intra-black class conflict is almost certainly prompted by the growing income inequality in the black community since the coming to power of the African National Congress in the 1994.
According to the latest edition of the Institute of Race Relations survey, inequality in the black community grew from 0.54 in 1994 to 0.61 in 2008. Put differently that means income inequality in the black community grew by 12 %, almost certainly because of the ANC's policy of black economic empowerment generated a new class of black capitalist who became overnight millionaires.
Coincidently while Cosatu was trying to squeeze an improved wage offer from the government, Duduzane Zuma, a son of the President, was reported to have become an overnight billionaire as a result of Acerlor-Mittal SA transferring 26 % of its shares to a consortium, in which Zuma Jr. has a share.
The value of the shares - which were ostensibly transferred to enable Acerlor-Mittal SA to fulfil its black empowerment obligations - is reported to be R9-billion.
Seen through the eyes of Vavi, there seems to be some substances to the class struggle exposition, the more so as the ANC elite is occasionally referred as the ANC aristocracy by political observers of all races and ethnicities.
But compared with the between 20 % and 40 % of the working age population which is unemployed, the urban-based unionised workers are relatively well off and even privileged and, for that reason, they are sometimes referred to as the labour aristocracy.
The interests of the unionised labour aristocracy and the unemployed citizens, who are largely dependent on government grants for their survival, are by no means synonymous.
Thus the rural poor may well be in favour of tentative proposals by the Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma administrations to relax the labour laws in the rural areas to encourage entrepreneurs to invest there and thereby generate employment for the local inhabitants.
The urban-based unions, however, are adamantly opposed what they term the two-tier labour system, asserting that it constitutes a threat to their hard won rights of their working class constituents.
From the perspective of trade union leaders and their unionised urban based workers, the rural poor are often seen as a potential threat, as a reserve labour force that can be called in as strike-breakers where the strike involves manual workers or, in times of civil strife, as an auxiliary force.
Richard Baloyi, the minister for public service and administration, has insisted that the government cannot afford to improve its offer of a 7 % wage increase and a R700 housing allowance, as against the demands of the unions for a 8.6 % salary increase and a R1000 housing allowance. There is no more available, he states.
If that is so and the pressure of the strike becomes overwhelming, the Zuma administration will be forced to find the money one way or another.
A worst case scenario is for the administration to have to cut back on the expanded system of grants to the poor, the rising cost of which led Trevor Manuel, the former minister of finance, to warn that they cannot continue to expand indefinitely.
If that route is taken, it will be a clear case of robbing Peter to pay Paul and thereby heighten the incipient tension between the poor and the unemployed and generally better educations and relatively privileged public servants.
The government is reported to planning to unilaterally implement its offer whether the public servants like it or not. It may divide the strikers into two hostile camps: those willing to submit to the dictated settlement terms and those wanting to fight on. It may, however, be a politically risky step for the Zuma administration to take.
There is one more factor to consider in the in the clash between the ANC and labour aristocracies: the role of the lumpen-proletariat.
As A Dictionary of Marxist Thought notes, Karl Marx defined the lumpen-proletariat as the "refuse of all classes" which includes in it ranks "ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, vagabonds, discharged soldiers and jailbirds, pickpockets, brother keepers, rag-pickers (and) beggars."
The lumpen-proletariat is said to have helped Louis Napoleon to rise to powers in France in the 19th century. Furthermore, according to some Marxist theorists, the lumpen-proletariat, played a conspicuous role in the rise to fascism in Germany in the 19th century..
It served as a rejoinder to those who have am idealised view of the poor as a forced destined by history to play a central role in the Manichean clash between good and evil. They may do so but it is by no means a historically prescribed or god-ordained role.
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