Schisms+in+tripartite+alliance,+according+to+Terry+Bell,+Business+Report

Business Report, October 13, 2006
=Rising tide of protest reveals the schisms in the tripartite alliance=


 * By Terry Bell**

There is a rising tide of community and shopfloor anger around the country. It is manifest in the hundreds of "unrest incidents" reported by the police, in the rising number of strikes and is obvious in the resolutions put forward at the recent triennial Cosatu national congress.

It is this that has brought to the fore the ideological schisms and heightened personal animosities that have long lain beneath the surface of the governing tripartite alliance. The bickering within the leaderships of the ANC, Cosatu and the SA Communist Party (SACP) has now burst into the open.

And it has become obvious that, despite the public acrimony between President Thabo Mbeki and SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande, Cosatu is the primary battleground. This is to be expected since Cosatu, let alone the combined trade union movement, comprises the largest organised group of voters in the country, larger than all the political parties combined.

Any political party that has the support of, or controls, a union federation, can use that numerical and organisational power to great effect, both in a campaigning and voting sense. Trade unionists are aware of this and Cosatu has often complained that it is only listened to and used during times of elections.

But with skirmishes being fought in all sections of the governing alliance, there is now a growing realisation within the labour movement that the ANC and SACP may part company and that this could cause a major rift in Cosatu, which is bound by congress resolutions to regard the SACP as "the workers' party".

However, according to the latest survey, only 14 percent of Cosatu-affiliated union members are SACP members, most of whom also belong to the 35 percent who are formally affiliated to the ANC. At the same time, a majority of Cosatu members admit to being ANC voters.

This can make for considerable confusion. And confusing reports are usually blamed by alliance leaders on the media. It is true that information that does emerge is often garbled and contradictory. Sometimes this is the fault of the reporting process; more often than not, it is because there is no clear information coming from leaders.

Part of the reason is a legacy of our repressive recent past, when anti-apartheid political and trade union activists and organisers risked prison, torture and death as they went about their business. As a result, survival depended on a degree of secrecy; matters of policy and practice were kept "in the family". This applied in particular to the SACP, a clandestine organisation from the time it was re-established underground in 1953.

The only factor that united different factions and various strands of opinion under the umbrella of the ANC was opposition to apartheid. With that system consigned to the proverbial dustbin of history, the ideological cement that held together nationalists, capitalists, and socialists no longer exists. However, many of the habits of the past persist.

So the leadership of Cosatu, for all the slogans about democracy and the unity of workers, frequently acts like an exclusive sect, more akin to freemasonry than to the leadership of a broad front of working people.

The SACP, the only member of the alliance that has never been anything other than a political party, also continues to operate in many ways as it has since its re-emergence, striving to influence the direction of, and recruit members from, the broad church of a liberation movement, the ANC, and from Cosatu.

However, in the changed conditions of today, and with the overlap of membership - most SACP members are also ANC members - rifts within the SACP that have existed for years are now more openly evident.

Senior SACP members, concerned about the tactics and orientation of the party, have often left without any fanfare or public notice. The former deputy chair of the SACP, public services minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, is an example. President Thabo Mbeki, a former member of both the powerful politburo and the SACP central committee, left the party in 1990.

Such actions are seen by some SACP members as desertion and akin to treachery. So a high degree of personal animosity has added fuel to the ideological battles.

The time and resources these battles absorb have caused widespread anger throughout Cosatu-affiliated trade unions. Members of various unions point to the long-running strikes by cleaners and workers at Shoprite and at other strikes, which, they claim, have been pushed into the background by power plays and political bickering.

A series of meetings over coming weeks will attempt to mend the schisms within the unions and the alliance as the country's major labour federation starts to grope towards redefining its role in an uncertain future.


 * From: http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3484020&fSectionId=559&fSetId=662**

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