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NEWS & LETTERS, December 2007 - January 2008South Africa 2007: The year of fireCape town, South Africa--For many activists in our country this has been the year of fire. The public sector strike of 28 days in June was the biggest strike in the history of South Africa, surpassing that of the miners strike of 1922 and 1926 and the 1987 miners strike by Black mineworkers of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The 2007 public sector strike was a vicious strike, since the military was called in to replace striking workers and pitched battles were fought with police on picket lines. The strike was successful in that the unions were able to get the government to increase its wage offer. Close to one million public servants participated in the strike and were organized in strike committees and teacher-community forums. It inspired workers in other sectors of the economy to demand wage increases above that of the rate of inflation, which led to many strikes involving tens of thousands of workers. One estimate of workers on strike for June-July-August 2007 is that close to two million went on strike. In addition, township struggles that have raged since 2000 have escalated this year. An independent researcher claims that close to 6,000 protests occurred since 2005 over lack of service delivery. School and university students and environmental organizations are also fighting for their issues. And the "Fourth Estate"--the media--has asserted its constitutional right to freedom of speech in endless battles with the ruling ANC government. Lastly and most important, the struggle of HIV/AIDS activists continues through marches, defiance actions, class actions and international solidarity campaigns. Currently the balance of class forces in South Africa is shifting towards the working class as experienced in the 1980s and 1990s. ROLE OF COSATU This situation was not, however, reflected and discussed adequately in the input documents of the Central Committee (CC) of the November 2007 of Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). The CC is the highest decision-making structure of the federation between its national congresses every four years--hence it is an important structure to gauge the tempo of struggles of organized workers and the place where the worker leaders of the federation meet to discuss strategies and plan the way forward. So while COSATU's members were conducting some of the most militant and vicious strikes this sense of urgency was not reflected by the CC. Instead, they have held long discussions on the interpretation of the history of the ANC, the National Democratic Revolution (NDR), the role of the working class and other classes in the NDR project and why the working class has to be the motive force of the NDR. The NDR is the South African theory of the two-stage struggle for socialism. That means first fighting for a democratic order in South Africa, i.e. non-racial capitalism, and then fighting for socialism afterward. The origins of the NDR is the Black Republic Thesis that was adopted at the Comintern in Moscow in 1928, which called for "an independent native South Africa republic as a stage towards a workers' and peasants' republic with full rights for all races, black, colored and white." The Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA, forerunner of the current SACP), attended the Comintern and had a divided mandate from their delegates. The majority rejected the Black Republic Thesis and supported the perspectives of those who later formed the Left Opposition under Leon Trotsky. A minority supported the Thesis. The CPSA was instructed by the Comintern to adopt the thesis and many that opposed the Black Republic Thesis were expelled from the party. This history of the nature of South African revolution has been re-enacted many times over the years since the adoption of this fateful thesis. Many were expelled, written out of history, victimized, assaulted, ridiculed and even killed over similar differences in unions, non-governmental organizations and community organizations. My assessment of COSATU is that it has once again fallen short of showing revolutionary leadership and instead is wasting its time, resources and energy discussing what is the correct historical interpretation of the NDR in order to convince the ANC why the working class is the motive force of the alliance--while back in the townships and on the shop floor this very same motive force is waging vicious battles without effective leadership from the federation. As expected, the issue of Jacob Zuma or Thabo Mbeki as ANC president is being discussed and COSATU has taken the official position of supporting Zuma. This issue has been very difficult for the federation and various political agendas were contested on this terrain. For many this mostly speaks to the issue of internal democracy and the right to have a different view from those who sway power. WHICH ‘CENTER OF POWER'? The mistake of COSATU's strategic perspective and consequent course of action is that its location of the "center of power" is not the working class (the motive force for socialism) but rather the Alliance of the ANC-SACP-COSATU. The Alliance is excluding the part of the working class that is not part of organized labor or the federation. This effectively excludes the majority of the working class--the unemployed--and it also excludes the many social movement activists involved in thousands of struggles voicing the issues, experiences, demands, aspirations and visions of the exploited South African masses. It is thus important for COSATU to build alliances with the real (motive) forces of the "Center of Power" and to have robust discussion on how to move forward to our goal of socialism in Southern Africa. COSATU has a proud history of internal democracy and workers' control and it should reinforce this openness to looking at the lives, experiences and theories of many revolutionaries. Revolutionaries like Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Hegel, Steve Biko, Ruth First, Amilcar Cabral and Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and the many others who we have forgotten or have re-written! --Althea MacQuene, South African left trade unionist |
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