Fight for decent public service wage increases and for a mass workers party.

The following is the editorial featured in our November – December 2022 uManyano lwaBasebenzi publication

While we prepare ourselves for yet another end of year holiday with little to celebrate and even less in our  pockets, the 55th ANC National Conference in December will elect a new leadership. This leadership will reign over the new era of potential coalition governments the ANC will face in order to remain in power. They will also face the imposing threat of the SACP supported by COSATU running against the ANC in the 2024 elections.

This elective conference comes not only in the context of a rapidly escalating world economic crisis that has seen the highest inflation rate in 13 years in South Africa, but also the complete failure of Ramaphosa to deliver on promises of rooting out corruption in the ANC and rebuilding the quickly vanishing base for the party to hold on to its power. 

Apart from the failure to “self-correct”, Ramaphosa and his allies are entering the conference with a legacy of intensified loadshedding, escalating tariffs, service cutoffs, and crumbling public infrastructure, alongside ravaging unemployment, a failed COVID pandemic response, an intensifying gender based violence (GBV) epidemic, and the worst national and municipal election results to date. It is clear that Ramaphosa’s government is failing to even lure back the pro-business, disillusioned middle and upper class layers lost in the “Zuma years”. 

The radical economic transformation (RET) faction also holds no real solutions. After the Zondo commission finally concluded and rightfully exposed the deep rot of corruption in the ANC, leading RET member Lindiwe Sisulu openly questioned the constitution itself. While trying to hide behind radical rhetoric that the constitution is protecting “elites” and “white monopoly capital”, the RET strategy of more rapid “Africanisation” is kept abstract in what it means in terms of power. For them, similar to their allies in the EFF, “nationalisation” and “decolonisation” mean nothing more than solidifying their own individual power by replacing the white and foreign capitalists with themselves and their associates.

The divisions and factionalism however are not as “a result of an era of loss of moral and ethical principles within the congress movement”, as Ramaphosa lamented in January 2022 at the ANC Lekgotla. These divisions are part and parcel of the ANC’s ideological commitment to the capitalist system itself. While Ramaphosa’s faction believes that we need to bring more foreign investment to our shores – whether through green energy projects, pharmaceutical companies, and so on; and the RET faction believes instead the solution lies in solidifying a stronger local black capitalist base; both factions are trying to solve the crises inherent in the capitalist system with different capitalist solutions. Both these approaches will do nothing for the working class of South Africa, who are made to shoulder the burden of the multiple crises of capitalism such as climate change, xenophobia and GBV, unemployment and food insecurity. 

On top of the internal divisions of the ANC is the rapidly widening rift in the Tripartite Alliance – that delegates to the COSATU Congress in August refused Gwede Mantashe a platform to speak and forced a resolution on the future of the alliance are some of the escalating examples of the discontent we have seen brewing over decades. The refusal to move beyond 3% increases in public service wages – a pay cut due to inflation – demonstrates the inability of the ANC to reconcile its friendly relationship with the bosses’ class with its reliance on the working class for votes. Although certain sections of the COSATU leadership try to continue to play the role the ANC relies on them to play – keeping the workers’ discontent stifled and releasing it in a controlled manner – it is becoming more difficult than ever. 

Even though the vote on the future of the Tripartite Alliance was postponed to a special meeting in 2023, the COSATU leadership would be foolish to think that this question can be delayed in the midst of the upcoming historic strike action. As in previous major public service strikes in 2007 and 2014, as well as the Marikana massacre, the question of the alliance is forced front and centre for workers. This is the most concrete expression of the fact that workers cannot be in an alliance with their employer. But the ability of sections of the COSATU leadership to subvert this core issue and delay its inevitable conclusion is diminished compared to previous mass actions. The worsening conditions for the working class increases the urgency with which it needs to wield its power to push for change. Public sector workers have become more aware of their power, and SAFTU has the potential to be a real alternative independent of the ANC leadership for the rank and file members of public service unions. The rejection of the Tripartite Alliance was clear among COSATU members who joined the 24th August shutdown; they were disgusted by the fact that the ANC was invited to march with them when it was the same ANC they were protesting. 

The claims by SACP spokesperson, Alex Mashilo, that “[t]he SACP has never said it wants to break away from the alliance it has played a leading role to build” and doubling down that the alliance could be “reconfigured” in order to meet the needs of the people are cold comfort for the poor and working class majority. Of course the very idea that the alliance allows the so-called communists to exert influence over the current government in order to build towards a more equal society is completely debunked by the austerity regime the ANC has enforced which has led to South Africa consistently topping the list of most unequal countries in the world. In rejecting the possibility of breaking with the alliance and running against the ANC, the SACP is exposing at best its absolute lack of political clarity – living in denial that a split in the alliance is becoming a reality – and at worst again its disdain for the workers from which they claim their base. As in the struggle against apartheid, the leadership of the SACP would rather throw its lot in with the ANC and its pro-capitalist politics than open itself up to any form of accountability to the masses of exploited workers. 

The leadership has clearly lost touch with reality, but the crisis in both the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance is at a tipping point and presents the working class with an immense opportunity. The upcoming public service strike holds the potential to form a basis for a serious general strike action. The material difference compared to previous public service strikes is the existence of SAFTU, with major private sector unions who have already left the alliance such as NUMSA and FAWU. If the mood from the rank and file in COSATU to split from the alliance continues to grow rapidly, the stance of its leadership matters less and less. If the SACP and COSATU continue to fail to provide rank and file members with the political home they require to fight for better conditions under mounting pressure, they will simply leave for an alternative. 

It is important that SAFTU intervenes in a conscious political manner to help pave the way forward and provide the alternative for these disillusioned workers. The political summit that was agreed to by the Working Class Summit has suffered many delays, and with it the burning question for the movement: the building of a mass workers party with a clear socialist programme.The 24 August Shutdown breathed life into the working class movement, and showed that united action is possible between SAFTU and COSATU. However, momentum will continue to be lost if there is no guiding political strategy for the movement, which should be based on the clear understanding that the working class needs its own party with accountable leadership to democratically discuss and coordinate struggle on the ground, as well as fight for power in municipalities, provinces, and parliament. 

Rank and file members must firmly place demands on their union leadership to push SAFTU to convene the Working Class Summit without further delays. This summit should throw open its doors to the public sector workers who will be taking strike action, and put on its agenda the organisation of solidarity strikes, building towards a general strike, and towards the building of a mass workers party that can be formed through these struggles by new layers of radicalised youth and workers, on an unapologetic socialist program. We cannot afford to wait for the stifling chains of the Tripartite Alliance to rust away with time while the working class is pushed further into misery and the planet burns. Having already consciously broken those same chains, SAFTU is perfectly placed to take a lead in preparing a real political alternative for increasingly disillusioned workers in the rotten, class collaborationist Alliance.

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