2005-12-03,+Cosatus+choice,+labour+unity+or+alliance,+Bell,+Brep

= **Cosatu's choice: labour unity or ANC-led alliance** =


 * Business Report, December 2, 2005**


 * By Terry Bell**

"The political blunder of a lifetime." That was how Cosatu spokesperson Paul Notyhawa described the announcement on Wednesday of the intention to launch a new "super" trade union federation, uniting three of the country's four federations.

Given that Cosatu, in line with the labour movement internationally, has as one of its guiding principles the maximum unity of the sellers of labour, this seems a strange comment to make.

If all goes well, South Africa will have just two labour federations by July next year, instead of four. This maximises unity.

What Notyhawa implied was that unity without Cosatu is not only meaningless, it is counterproductive. This is an evident nonsense since all four federations have agreed that a single federation would be a goal worth striving for.

Earlier this year Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu's general secretary, again called for the other federations to join with Cosatu to achieve this goal.

On Wednesday, Mahlomola Skhosana, the general secretary of the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu), noted: "The goal remains the same and we are not in competition with Cosatu."

As Nactu, the Federation of Unions of SA and the Confederation of SA Workers' Unions see it, their planned amalgamation is a possible first step towards still wider unity.

There have been numerous talks over the years among the different groups about the prospects for uniting. All have failed on the single issue that separates Cosatu from the rest: political party affiliation.

This is an extremely thorny issue for Cosatu and it has dogged the country's largest federation ever since its inception 20 years ago. Then the loudest call was for a "workers' party", and an arguable majority opposed the sort of affiliation that exists today.

But as this debate has begun to rage, four words have frequently cropped up, their meanings often mangled: strategy, tactics, principle and policy. The result has been considerable confusion.

Quite simply, strategy is a long-term plan or goal, tactics the differing short-term means of achieving the goal. In the process, different policies will be employed which will determine the tactics to be used by an organisation, which usually has, as a reason for its existence, a set of principles.

A principle is, of course, a fundamental belief or idea that governs what the strategic goals may be and what tactics may be employed in getting there. In other words, principles should guide both reasoning - the drawing up of plans or policies - and action.

So when commentators describe Cosatu's membership of the ANC-led tripartite alliance as a principle, they are wrong. By making such a comment, they elevate a tactic to the level of principle.

However, it is not wrong to speak, as Vavi often does, of the "principled alliance" of Cosatu with the ANC. This implies that Cosatu has not forgone its independence and become a mere conveyor belt for the governing political party; that it could, in future, choose a separate path.

In fact, by congress decision, Cosatu has already resolved that its choice as a "workers' party" is fellow alliance member the SA Communist Party (SACP) and not the ANC. This is an indication of independence, as is the fact that both the SACP and Cosatu have fundamentally different policies to those of the government.

Yet both remain allies of the ANC, which, in government, carries out policies in the name of the alliance that are often diametrically opposed to those of its partners.

This has led, over the years, to considerable tensions within the alliance and to minority mutterings about an eventual split. Such mutterings are likely to become louder now that the issue has been so prominently raised again.

The whole question of principles, strategic goals, tactics and policies should also be more closely addressed because of the stir caused by the amalgamation announcement. So should the question of what constitutes a trade union and what roles unions and federations should play in a rapidly globalising world.

This, given the pressures, global and national, that trade unions now face, will be no bad thing. But, for all the differences that may arise in terms of tactics, the core goal should remain the protection and improvement of the wages and conditions of workers.

And the best, perhaps the only, means of achieving this goal is maximum unity; the principle of of an injury to one being an injury to all put into practice.

However, building unity will not be easy. But at least a start has been made and this may improve the chances for workers to achieve their fundamental strategy of a better life for themselves and their families.

From: http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=553&fArticleId=3019341