Those who enjoy the lighter side of Third World politics had a particularly pleasurable occasion to pick over this last week: the holding of a five day Presidential Council of the World Federation of Trade Unions in Johannesburg, hosted by four South African unions - Numsa, Nehawu, Ceppawu and Popcru.
A considerable amount of decoding was necessary in order to enjoy the full flavour of the event. WFTU itself, was a Soviet-financed front throughout the Cold War (even the Yugoslav and Chinese left WFTU as a protest against Soviet domination) and thus found itself in a state of collapse after 1990.
Now a mere shadow of its former self, it is less than half the size of the International Trade Union Council (ITUC) to which most of the world's real trade unions belong, including a number of Cosatu affiliates. What this means, of course, is that WFTU finds itself in the somewhat embarrassing position of calling for the overthrow of capitalism without ever quite wanting to mention that Communism has already collapsed throughout the old Soviet bloc and, effectively, in China and Vietnam too.
The second point, of course, was that Numsa and the others were hosting the event very much as a Communist high-feast with the aim of trying to get Cosatu as a whole to join WFTU and desert ITUC. It was also quite clearly part of the campaign for the leadership of Cosatu being waged by the Numsa leader, Irvin Jim.
Hardly coincidentally, the current Cosatu leader, Zwelinzima Vavi, did not feature among the dignitaries or speakers. Instead the WFTU delegation was welcomed by the Cosatu President, Sidumo Dlamini (SACP) while, of course, the SACP leader, Blade Nzimande pitched up to announce that "The WFTU provides the only hope for the rebulding of the labour movement globally." During the meeting a special ceremony was held to honour old South African struggle heroes, all of whom, by chance, turned out to have been SACP members.
The WFTU General Secretary, George Mavrikos, spoke movingly about how constrained WFTU was by lack of cash. (Nobody actually pointed out that Mr Mavrikos himself has another salary, for he is an MP in the Greek Parliament for the still Stalinist Communist Party, the KKE.)