Solidarity or Loyalty?

 Numsa, the metalworkers’ union, South Africa’s biggest union has been expelled from the main trade union federation, Cosatu.  

Numsa, which has more than 320,000 members, has complained that the alliance has betrayed its leftist roots and failed to represent the interest of the workers, describing the battle in Cosatu as one between the forces of capitalism and forces of socialism. Ahead of May elections, Numsa refused to endorse the ruling party, which it has been highly critical of, and called on Mr Zuma to step down over a scandal involving R246m of taxpayers money spent on his private Nkandla homestead.

Numsa leaders have raised the spectre of the union forming its own political party and are planning to launch a workers’ movement, the United Front, which they say is needed to act as a “weapon for uniting the working class.” They have hinted that they could contest local government elections in 2016 when the ANC’s hold on key municipalities, including Johannesburg, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth, is expected to be severely tested.

The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) has grown rapidly to become the dominant union in the important platinum sector. Amcu is locked in a bitter rivalry with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the traditionally dominant union in the industry and a key Cosatu member, and is steadily increasing its representation at gold mines. It led an unprecedented five month strike at the world’s three top platinum producers – Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum and Lonmin – this year as workers have become increasingly frustrated with their salaries and poor living conditions.

Black migrant workers from the country side provided cheap labour to the mines for decades. The profits benefited mostly white South Africans and foreigners and recently also a handful of black South Africans. Poor miners have seen little of the benefits but suffered the most. The migrant culture ripped apart their family structures and caused various issues, HIV/AIDS being not the least.  Numsa is standing up for miners, although we cannot be sure if it’s done in the best way.

Maybe this is a sign of emerging normality in South African politics. It would be a shame if the ANC went more or less unchallenged for another 20 years (look how long it took post-independence India to lose its fealty to the Congress Party).

From here 

Lost Dreams So Dream Again

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa said on Sunday that it will, in time, launch a political party.  NUMSA spokesperson Castro Ngobese said the organisation had not yet formed a political party, but would do so at the appropriate time. Contesting the 2014 elections however was off the table. NUMSA would convene provincial and national consultative meetings to share the content of its resolutions on the United Front and Movement for Socialism. During Numsa's January Marxist-Leninist Political School, meetings were held with the leaders of some of the social movements and community structures, to begin the process of mapping out how they could work together.

"We need a movement for socialism," general secretary Irvin Jim told reporters. The party, to be called the United Front and Movement for Socialism, would be aimed at uniting the working class and mobilising around issues affecting workers. He said work was underway to mobilise the working class in all its formations, for the radical implementation of the Freedom Charter, the ANC's document of goals and aspirations for the country.

Jim said the leadership of the national liberation movement as a whole had failed to lead a consistent radical democratic process to resolve national, gender, and class questions post-1994 – the year of South Africa's first democratically elected government. He said the leadership was predominantly drawn from the black and African capitalist class, which "kowtows" to the dictates of white monopoly capitalist and imperialist interests. "It is half-hearted and extremely inconsistent in the pursuit of a radical democratic programme and has completely abandoned the Freedom Charter," he said. "We need to organise ourselves as a class, which is why we need a movement that will contest the elections at the appropriate time," said Jim.

The NUMSA and its leadership have indeed identified the solution to the problems caused by capitalism - a class party for socialism.

The Freedom Charter, adopted by the African National Congress in 1955, called for “restoring national wealth to the people” (understood as nationalization of the mines, banks and “monopoly industry”), “re-dividing the land among those who work it to banish famine and land hunger,” improved pay and working conditions, free health-care, universal literacy, and decent housing for all.

How did the main reform goals of the Freedom Charter come to be abandoned? The ANC hierarchy came under relentless pressure from local and international business, the pro-business media, foreign politicians, the World Bank and IMF. It was a process more of seduction than intimidation, aimed at integrating a set of new partners into the institutional structure and social milieu of the global capitalist class. Capitalists are often willing to accept a measure of social change, provided that they can set its limits and those ensured that when the ANC did take office it would be unable to act against white business interests. A new clause of the constitution made all private property sacrosanct. Power over economic policy was ceded to an “autonomous” central bank and international financial institutions. The mobility of capital and the globalization of the capital and other markets make it impossible for countries to decide national economic policy without regard to the likely response of these markets. And the markets punished the slightest sign of deviation from the “consensus” with capital flight and speculation against the rand.  To win the markets’ confidence the ANC had to cast off its “revolutionary” and “Marxist” past.  “Just call me a Thatcherite” – quipped Mbeki as he unveiled his new “shock therapy” programme in 1996.

It is not altogether fair to say that the ANC “sold out” and are traitors to the “cause" They simply saw no escape from the web spun by global capital.  There is no escape. Socialists have long said that socialism cannot be established in a single country. Now we also know that under conditions of globalization even a meaningful programme of reform cannot be implemented in a single country. Capital is global. That is its trump card against any attempt to defy its dictates that is confined within national boundaries. The resistance to capital must also be organized on a global scale if it is to have any chance of success.

If a new government of the NUMSA’s United Front and Movement for Socialism tried to give its voters the tangible benefits they expected,  the strands of the tentacles of world capitalism will also tightened around it and they too will  discover that its powers are throttled. 

Rejected, the ANC and SACP !!

It is gratifying to Socialist Banner to witness at long last the ANC and the South African Communist Party being rejected by the workers, although it is not before time and need not have been as a result of the bloody slaughter of the miners’ union members by the ANC government.

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, which calls itself  “the biggest union in the history of the African continent,” with 338,000 members, announced after a special congress that it would seek to start a socialist party aimed at protecting the interests of the working class.

"It is clear that the working class cannot any longer see the ANC or the SACP as its class allies in any meaningful sense," said Numsa leader Irvin Jim. “”..the ANC does not have an agenda for the working class. Why must we support it? If the ANC is not willing to support the interest of the working class, what must we do? That's our challenge. That's why we are being hated. We say ANC must ban labour brokers, do away with the national development plan and stop privatising public roads. Why must we fear to say that when the ANC by its own nature is a multiclass organisation?" said Jim.

 It would now recruit openly in all the mining industry and welcome rival union National Union of Miners members who wanted to join Numsa. "We are no longer going to reject any worker who comes [from the NUM] to Numsa. If people want to take that as poaching, well, workers are not rhinos but human beings. The focus on Numsa membership must be rejected. [Cosatu] Public sector unions are recruiting among themselves. They [those opposed to the idea of Numsa recruiting in other sectors] can go to hell. We will recruit workers that come to us and want to belong to the organisation."

Hopefully, this will be the first step in the creation of one big industrial union for mining workers.

Socialist Banner, however, wonders just what is meant by the intended socialist party and sincerely hopes that it will not be yet another reformist organisation but truly revolutionary in its aspirations.