POLITICS-SOUTH AFRICA: ANC, Labour Leaders Forge Stronger Ties

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gumisai Mutume

JOHANNESBURG, Apr 7 1999 (IPS) - Ever since South Africa’s labour began deriding the ruling African National Congress’s macro- economic strategy there has been speculation that the two will fall-out, at least by election-time.

But the elections are due June 2 and within the ruling ANC’s election list are a myriad of unionists, some of whom have been most vocally opposed to the policies of the ruling party.

Sam Shilowa, the secretary-general of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), is at number 25 on the ANC parliamentary list and president John Gomomo and vice-president Connie September will also be rewarded with a top-salaried political post come the elections.

Another eight members of the union movement will also join the political arena, depleting the number of experienced worker activists but also re-affirming the tri-partite alliance that sets the ANC with labour and the communists.

The tri-partite alliance made up of the ANC, Cosatu and the South African Communist Party (SACP) was forged ahead of the 1994 elections to contest the polls on a common ticket.

The broadness of this group, which unites people across ethnic, religious, ideological, gender and age barriers has, however, often been played out as the potential cracking point in the alliance.

The ANC alliance is made up of the unions, civic associations, women’s and youth organisations a mix of businessmen, socialists and conservatives. The challenge to the ANC has always been to hold the alliance together.

But its partners have increasingly pointed at pitfalls in its strategy to redress the imbalances of apartheid and at one stage, deputy president Thabo Mbeki challenged members of the SACP to leave the alliance or put up with current ANC strategies.

Cosatu has been most vehemently opposed to government’s new macro-economic policy GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution), which aims to restructure state assets, and create jobs.

The ANC adopted the market-led GEAR in 1996 and the policy has often been compared to World Bank structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) by detractors.

“COSATU’s opposition to government’s highly restrictive macro-economic framework has not simply been abstract or ideological. We have opposed GEAR because of the very practical negative impact which it is going to have on the level of government service delivery and on jobs,” says Cosatu.

“GEAR is a model which will fail to deliver growth, employment or redistribution,” it says.

As a result of GEAR, the education budget was cut by more than 6 percent in the 1997/1998 financial year. In the 1998/1999 budget, housing was cut by 14.3 percent in real terms.

The unionists have also been complaining that the economy is not creating employment at a time when jobs are needed most.

The Reserve Bank recently announced that 108,000 jobs were lost in the formal economy in 1998. Unemployment is estimated as high as 50 percent in some sectors. Government will also have to shed between 50,000 and 100,000 civil servants who are considered excess baggage.

GEAR envisages growth rates of 6 percent by the year 2002 thereby creating 600,000 jobs annually, argues the ANC.

It, however, calls for fiscal discipline and a cut in government expenditure. This is the departure point between the ANC and its alliance partners who argue that such a move would hurt the poor, black majority who have most to gain from increased social spending in health, education, housing and welfare.

Zwelinzima Vavi, who will take over from Shilowa as acting secretary-general of Cosatu, says the appointments of Cosatu members will see unionists carry the workers’ struggle to parliament.

But opposition Pan Africanist Congress deputy president Motsoko Pheko says the nomination of the union leaders is a betrayal of the workers as it will see the furtherance of policies opposed to the empowerment of workers.

Pheko calls the opposition to GEAR by the very union leaders who will soon take political office as a true sign of their “hypocritical opposition.”

Former union leaders like Jay Naidoo, trade minister Alec Erwin and security minister Sydney Mufamadi have long been in parliament serving under the ANC but increasingly marginalised from the worker’s struggles.

“One of the challenges facing the trade union movement is how can we arrest the increasing dominance of neo-liberal economic thinking forced down the throat of governments by un- elected yet extremely powerful institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund,” says Vavi.