Zwelinzima Vavi’s address to the Botswana Public Employees Union
1 December 2015
Director of Proceedings, Comrade General Secretary
President of BOPEU comrade Andrew Motsamai
Members of the National Executive Committee
His Lordship Lot Morokaf
Distinguished invited guests from BOPEU sister unions here and abroad
Representatives of the government and employers
BOPEU leaders and activists from all regions
Friends, Fellow Workers, Ladies and Gentlemen
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you on such an auspicious occasion and on such an important topic. It is good to be amongst friends and comrades again.
I shall talk mainly about South Africa, where recent developments are full of vital lessons for the workers’ movement, but must begin by looking at the global situation.
The problems faced in any one country cannot be seen in isolation from the international context, which is extremely serious. Where necessary I shall relate these experiences to our region. In my career that has spanned over three decades I have served also as a President of SATUCC and Vice President of ITUC for the Africa Region for many years. Let me begin with a quotation:
“The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.”
You might think that was written this year, but in fact it was nearly a century ago in Lenin’s definitive work, Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism.
Yet it is remarkable how little of it needs to be changed to define today’s global monopoly capitalism. The big difference is the speed which the trends Lenin identified are taking place, particularly through the use of information technology which can transfer capital around the world in seconds, and literally make or break whole national economies.
For the world’s workers the most important consequence of this intensified globalisation has been the undermining still further, and at a faster rate, the basic rights which we fought for and won in many countries and which are also clearly stated in the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The contribution that Labour has made to a better world was well summed up by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions: “These [UN and ILO] laws and international instruments were fought for by generations of workers and their trade unions, working together locally, nationally and internationally. Some would say that it was really the trade union movement, working through the International Labour Organisation, that invented the modern human rights system.
The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has warned us that: “Free market globalisation is deliberately undermining this protection. Millions of workers are seeing their hard-won rights under attack. They are experiencing a decline in their working terms and conditions. They are finding the public services that they and their communities rely on weakened through privatisation.”
Globalisation, particularly in the developing world, means that capitalists, and governments, can move vast sums of money around the world at the touch of a button, without any regard to the consequences for jobs, the environment and local communities. This gives them enormous power over Governments, and they are able to dictate terms to them. It also gives them power over workers, to enforce the type of terms and conditions that take us backwards.
Meanwhile, local employers complain that they can’t compete with foreign firms importing cheaper goods, or the threat of investment being moved to even poorer countries, and use these excuses to lower terms and conditions for workers, in the knowledge that workers are vulnerable, because there is a ‘reserve army of labour’ of unemployed workers in all of our countries in the region.
The forward march of neo-liberalism in all of our countries, with its insistence on cutting back on social spending, privatization, so-called labour flexibility and austerity has been almost unstoppable. We have to recognise the uncomfortable fact that the absence of an alternative has helped the capitalist class to ideologically dominate the debate about the future of our region and continent. The Thatcherite slogan that ‘There Is No Alternative’ to neo-liberalism has infected all of our countries, and we must bear some of the responsibility for allowing this to happen. Many of our own governments now fall back on this reactionary dictum to force the workers movement to accept poorer working conditions. Increasingly, governments and bosses speak the same language!
We know that Government leaders play golf with private sector bosses and are lobbied to embrace neoliberal approaches to development.
As BOPEU members will know, we are not just facing privatization of key government functions but also massive outsourcing which inevitably translates to an assault on our hard won gains and a move away from the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. This rush to outsource and privatize is motivated by what can only be described as a form of primitive accumulation by the ruling elites, as they seek to become a parasitic bourgeoisie in a typical predatory state. And Comrades, we must try and understand these developments. We cannot pretend that they are not happening, and that we can somehow side-step what the global capitalist class is attempting to do in all of our countries.
Public sector workers all over the world are seeing their work burdens increase as they are forced to do jobs that used to be carried out by more than two. In this big rush to "right size" and "build lean and mean bureaucracies" often following "advice" of the World Bank and the IMF, essential services to our people are cut at exactly the time when they need them most.
The dread of every worker and the working class everywhere in the world is the return to an unfettered capitalism and the unbridled free market ideology that underpins neoliberalism. I know that in many parts of our Continent, the language of class struggle, and the radical analysis provided by the great Marxists does not have the same currency as it has in my country, but we have to use all of the tools at our disposal to understand what is happening, and most importantly to develop an alternative that unites the working class, wherever they are located.
Across our Continent at this time, we elect governments; sometimes we even make it possible for them to be elected with huge majorities, but time and time again, the promises that were made to us are abandoned, and instead of policies that help to lift our people out of poverty and unemployment, we are presented with the arguments for austerity, and told that there is no alternative.
This incidentally is how democracy is chronically undermined by neo-liberalism. Ruling parties are elected on a manifesto, and are then persuaded by big business to do otherwise when elected into Government. Of course many multinational corporations go further, and don’t just ideologically hijack democratically elected governments, but corrupt them financially in the process. We must remember this when we hear neo-liberals talk about the need for good governance and sustainability. They deliberately undermine democratically elected governments, and make it dependent on their patronage. And all of this takes place behind the scenes and away from public scrutiny. This is how big business exerts its influence, and it is bad news for our democratic systems.
The big challenge however is that to fight back against this bosses’ onslaught we need more united, independent, militant and democratically worker-controlled unions, not only nationally but internationally. We also cannot hide behind a label of being a-political. Whether we like it or not, we are involved in politics. If politics is about the distribution of power and resources, we have to be part of the equation, not in terms of this or that party politics, but the governance of our societies. We represent workers, and we must therefore engage organizationally, and politically to ensure that the needs of workers are properly addressed.
The tragedy is that in every country, in particular in our SADC region, we are experiencing the very opposite of what we need – workers’ movements are becoming more fragmented, weak and bureaucratic.
Here in Botswana the last figure I have seen in the SATUCC and ITUC Africa Region State of the Unions report indicate that the membership of unions was at a mere 10% of the workforce. This is the trend everywhere in our region. Union density is on the decline and at the same time more unions and federations are being created. In South Africa only 24% of workers are union members (sharply down from the nearly 40% quoted in research documents compiled by NALEDI) and they are scattered among 4 registered labour federations and 179 registered trade unions. The reality is that 76% of workers in the formal sector are unorganised, and most of them in the most vulnerable sectors. This does not include the hundreds of thousands involved in the informal economy.
But this is also reflected globally. Botswana and SADC is by no means the worst affected by low union membership. Trade union on-line journal Equal Times reports that:
“The ITUC, with its 176 million members in 161 countries, is the largest global trade union platform and the biggest democratic force in the world. Yet it only represents 7% of all workers – and trade union membership rates are even lower than this in many countries. Moreover, this international union often superposes fragmented and divided national trade union movements (there are some 500 trade unions registered in the Democratic Republic of Congo), that are lacking in resources, capacities and training.” I was shocked to see that in France, whose workers have such a militant tradition, a mere 8% of workers are in unions.
The Equal Times statement continues: “Neoliberalism has thus been coupled with growth in precarious and informal employment, the sharp rise in unemployment and inequalities, and the fragmentation and shattering of salaried and stable work.
“This brutal change in the nature of employment is neither accidental nor accessory: it is at the heart of the neoliberal programme, which seeks to weaken, to avoid or destroy all forms of worker organisation and to reconfigure relations between them, their employers and the state, for the benefit of market forces.”
South Africa was for many years able to resist this trend. It had a union movement, which although never fully united, was powerful, militant and very often successful, mainly thanks to the formerly dominant Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
Tragically however the situation has dramatically changed for the worse over just three years. After years of paralysis as a result of internal battles COSATU has now virtually imploded and now remains impotent; it has become little more than a labour desk for the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC). This has been a real tragedy for many of us, who spent years building the federation.
The decision to derail the Federation, and turn it into a conveyor belt for Government, was not an accident, but a deliberate act, a conscious strategy to ensure that COSATU did not challenge Government’s slide into full-scale neo-liberalism.
All these developments have led to a procession of breakaway unions, as workers who have been purged or become disillusioned with their leaders have formed new unions:
I have spent some time of the organisational and procedural aspects of this story, but the most relevant lessons for this gathering today relate to the underlying political reason for the implosion of COSATU and the further fragmentation of the trade union movement in our region.
The harsh reality is that the ruling class has stolen COSATU and many of its affiliates, in a capitalist class offensive to divide and weaken the organised working class. I do not apologise for saying this, but the current COSATU leadership have been pawns in a much bigger conspiracy, though as willing accomplices they are no less guilty.
The overall aim in line with government’s neoliberal free-market policies has been to enable white monopoly capital to exploit a weaker and more divided union movement, cut wages, outsource more jobs to labour brokers, and ensure that the rich get even richer and increase their already massive profits.
What makes it even more serious is the emerging evidence that many unions leaders are not merely supporting pro-capitalist policies, but are themselves in business, using workers’ money which is invested in trusts and funds, to enrich themselves, even becoming involved in companies in which unions members are in dispute with the employers.
COSATU, once a bastion of integrity and democracy, regarded by large sections of the public for its high moral and political authority has degenerated, and has been captured and manipulated by anti-working class forces.
What are the lessons we must learn from this tragedy?
The clear lesson those of us who have parted ways with COSATU have learned is that trade unions must be democratic, worker-controlled and independent. The biggest threat to independence used to come from employers’ ‘sweet-heart’ unions, but today the biggest threat comes from the state and ruling parties.
Those union movements that enjoyed close political relationships with their respective liberation movements seem to be the main victims of efforts to divide and fragment them. COSATU and NUNW of Namibia, though from slightly different backgrounds, the Z (a) CTU of Zambia, Z(i)CTU of Zimbabwe, the OTM of Mozambique, and the UNTA of Angola. All of these have split and fragmented under pressure to be silent in the face of the onslaught of neo-liberalism. Today most of are a shadow of their former selves.
Whilst this tragedy is unfolding, workers are in a perilous economic and social crisis. Unemployment is destroying a generation of young workers. Chronic levels of poverty are decimating communities, and stunting the development of millions of children. Two of the most unequal countries in the world are found in our region - South Africa and Namibia. Incidentally, both union movements enjoyed the closest political relations with the liberation movement - the ANC and SWAPO respectively. Both countries were liberated last and they faced the same apartheid monster and master. The fundamental question is why is this so when we should assume this relationship should benefit the working class socioeconomically. This matter requires a full days debate but I have no doubt that some of the lessons from this include the following:
- That unions sign blank cheques to the liberation movements guaranteeing that they will mobilise workers to vote them into power without insisting on reciprocal actions to benefit workers.
-.Trade unions are by their nature a school to produce leadership for society. The trade union leadership only serve during the prime of their lives and then they must move on. Where do they move on to? Both capital and political parties target trained union leaders for co-option but also because they are trained through workers money. In the case of the Alliance in South Africa and in Namibia where unions are actually affiliated to the liberation movement this situation is worst. Union movements have been ‘domesticated’ and once militant and robust unions are now used as platforms to advance the careers of former trade unionists in government.
Our response to this can't be that we simply adopt a back to basics or back to the trade union barracks approach.
Any attempt to interpret trade union independence to mean that workers must divorce themselves from the politics of the country will not only be reactionary but counterproductive. Our very DNA as workers is politics. Every demand and every campaign we take up is political and ideologically inspired. No one can divorce workers from local, national and global politics. There is no room for neutrality in particular in a class divided societies Botswana included.
The question we must learn from the experiences of our region is how do we avoid external political manipulation and how do we guarantee trade union independence even when we warm up to political parties that have policies not hostile to those we seek to advance?
Decent work and conditions do not fall down from the sky like manna. Progressive and pro working class and or pro poor policies do not just happen on their own. Even ripe fruit often means someone must shake the trees for it to fall. That's what revolution is all about. Nothing ever just happens automatically. Change can only happen when there are champions for change. BOPEU must from this historic congress ask itself - who will be the champions for change in Botswana if it's not going to be yourselves working with the rest of the progressive forces?
BOPEU has a formidable reputation across the region. It is a union formation that has worked hard to provide services for its membership. It has been visionary, especially in using members’ money to enhance social provision. It is a union formation that takes great care to ensure that its resources are used wisely, and transparently so that workers know where their subscriptions are being used and for what purpose. For now it appears that BOPEU has been able to maintain its independence, and has not allowed itself to be used by politicians.
We sincerely hope this approach is maintained, but forgive for saying this, but the price of democracy is eternal vigilance! There will be those forces that at every turn will try and influence BOPEU; they will try and blunt your militancy, and they will try and undermine your independence and internal democracy. They will try and seduce your leadership, and encourage them to see that they no longer have distinct class interests to protect.
We need to ensure that we share and learn these lessons from one another. We have to be candid and frank with each other.
Never has there been a greater need for a strong, united and independent workers’ movement, but most our federations in the region have been paralysed.
We can either stay with those who kow-tow to the ruling elite and the capitalist class, or we can unite the entire working class and poor communities to rebuild a labour movement based on democratic mandates, accountability and mass campaigning.
That is why those of us now outside COSATU are working towards a Workers’ Summit, bringing together the workers from all federations, including COSATU, all unions, non-union workers and the unemployed. It is our only chance to turn the tide and revive the militancy of the original COSATU. My comradely advice to all of you, is to ensure that you revisit the principles that our movements were founded upon, and ensure that they are followed as they were years ago, to build a strong, independent, democratic and determined BOPEU.
Comrades, we need to forge a new fighting force to take on the bosses but it must be as broad-based and democratic as possible, and organised from the bottom up, with policies hammered out by the members themselves and leaders elected, accountable and subject to recall.
We need to ensure that there is no gap between union members and union leaders. They must be organically linked, so that no one, no counter force, is able to exploit the gaps that have opened up, and divert us from our historic mission. We have to be models of accountable democracy! Our unions were formed to represent workers, but also to ensure that we live in a society that reflects the values and principles that guide us. This is our mission. Let us work together to achieve it.
I wish you a successful congress
I thank you
Maatla ke arona
Amandla ngawethu
Issued by Zwelinzima Vavi, former General Secretary, COSATU, 1 December 2015
