Cosatu President Zingiswa Losi, President Cyril Ramaphosa and the SACP’s Solly Mapaila at Athlone Stadium, Cape Town, on National Workers Day, May 1, 2024. PIcture: Ayanda Ndamane / Independent Newspapers
By Trevor Ngwane
The South African labour movement is holding its breath awaiting the direction that will be taken by the new Government of National Unity (GNU) on matters of wages and working conditions, especially in the public sector.
Many parties that are part of the GNU are not necessarily friends of the labour movement with some arguably hostile to the trade unions. There is a fear that these parties will reinforce policies of the ANC that have been viewed as anti-labour, such as the call to reduce the public sector wage bill and the number of civil servants.
In his maiden budget vote speech, the new GNU Minister for the Public Service and Administration, Inkosi Mzamo Buthelezi, of the IFP, obliquely said: “We have and will continue to implement measures to drive cost-effective operations, prudently manage the public sector wage bill, and realise greater value for money in the delivery of public services.”
Public sector unions are likely to interpret this statement negatively thinking that their worst fears about the GNU are being confirmed.
The irony of the “bloated” Cabinet appointed by the president of the GNU, Cyril Ramaphosa, will not be lost to some observers. Leading opposition parties, such as the DA, had consistently called for the number of ministers to be reduced, but the GNU Cabinet has ballooned to a remarkable 75 people, ministers and deputy ministers.
It would, some may argue, be hypo-critical of Inkosi Buthelezi to call for a reduction of the number of workers employed in the public service. Even if he confined himself to limiting wage increases, the big salaries enjoyed by ministers and deputy ministers, let alone their expensive perks such as blue lights, would still raise eyebrows about his sincerity.
What can workers expect from the GNU? How have unions responded to the new political alignments reflected in the GNU? Even before the GNU was created, some unionists called on the ANC not to form a government with parties such as the DA, IFP and the FF+.
As Mametlwe Sebei, president of GIWUSA, speaking in his capacity as a socialist leader, said: “It should be obvious by now that we have a government made up of unrepentant convicted gangsters, racists and tribalists; the common denominator uniting all of them is basically a conspiracy to implement the most brutal neoliberal austerity that is an attack on the current and already worsening living standards of the working people, as well as attacking their hard-won rights.”
Cosatu has expressed its apprehension with its president, Zingiswa Losi, concerned about the upcoming negotiations for the 2025/26 financial year and calling on the ANC to remember the commitments it made in its election manifesto.
There appears to be a fear that not only will wages be under attack, but government social expenditure will be reduced, affecting service delivery across all three tiers of government and impeding progress in dealing with poverty, unemployment and inequality.
The new political arrangement in Parliament is a throwback to the GNU of 1994 in which class compromise underpinned the transition from apartheid to democracy. Capitalism was legitimised in the face of a growing and militant working-class movement, driven by the trade unions, that was calling for socialism and an end to all forms of oppression and exploitation.
The unions were roped in to support a corporatist arrangement involving capital, the state and labour. After 30 years of democracy, it is clear that the working class paid a price for this deal. In turn, the masses made the ANC pay by withholding their vote leading to its loss of majority seats in Parliament.
As Cosatu’s first deputy-president Mike Shingange laments: “We have always bent backwards towards business. We have always accommodated the investors’ interests.
We have always accommodated rating agencies and businesses, which have always demanded a conducive environment to do business,” but poverty, unemployment and inequality have increased. The hardship and suffering continue for the working class and the poor.
Shingange appears to have a fuzzy recollection of the past when he argues that: “This GNU is not the one of 1994. This one is the GNU of not united people but opposition parties. The one of 1994 had a single agenda of building the country.”
The question is what kind of country was built on the foundations of the first GNU and where will Cosatu and the labour movement take their opposition of the current GNU?
The SACP, which wields great influence among Cosatu leaders, has taken the position of defending the ANC and the GNU.
Will Cosatu continue as it has done in the past 30 years, supporting an ANC that consistently kicks its members in the teeth while its leaders whine and moan and do nothing to defend workers?
The ANC-SACP-Cosatu alliance was in certain respects a cosy arrangement for senior Cosatu leaders. Using the workers’ unions as escalators, mineworker leaders, Cyril Ramaphosa and Kgalema Motlanthe, made it to the highest office in the land.
Numerous unionists became top politicians and business owners. There appears to be nostalgia and a yearning for the continuation of this abuse of the workers’ organisations despite the Marikana massacre, the continuation of apartheid oppression and exploitation, and the ushering in of a GNU whose foundation is arguably the implosion of the national democratic revolution of the ANC and SACP.
The GNU is an expression of a deeper crisis, the crisis of racial capitalism in South Africa and the failure of the ANC in its role as its manager.
It is the crisis of the continuation of black cheap labour, the migrant labour system, land dispossession, gutter education, precarious livelihoods, and all the evils that were characteristic of what the ANC as leader of the national liberation movement was mandated to eradicate.
The trade unions cannot continue as before. Now is the time to do what the Marikana strikers did. They refused to be cowed, they continued with their strike after 34 workers had been massacred, they were brave – do or die, forward ever, backward never – continue with the struggle against all odds.
* Dr Trevor Ngwane is an activist scholar and senior lecturer at the University of Johannesburg
** The views expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of The African
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