The+man+in+the+middle+of+the+storm,+Vukani+Mde,+Maverick

Maverick magazine, Johannesburg, 5 October 2006
=The man in the middle of the storm=


 * Vukani Mde**

The Freedom Charter, Adopted by the African National Congress in 1955, states that the long-term goal of the liberation movement is nationalisation of "commanding heights of the economy" — the banks, the mining houses, monopoly industry.

Though the ANC has not pursued a strategy of nationalisation since taking power, the post-1994 political ruling class includes men and women who describe themselves proudly as "revolutionaries", not reformists.


 * Leftwing revolutionary**

At the centre of this political elite is Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of Cosatu and one of South Africa’s most uncompromising leftwing revolutionaries. Ask Vavi if business has anything to fear from him and the radical movement he leads, and the stark answer is: "I’m not in the business of reassuring capital."

But — perhaps not wishing to be cast personally as a bogeyman — he quickly adds that capital has "absolutely nothing" to fear from him or Cosatu. What should be feared by all is the status quo, the wholly unsustainable situation where South Africa consistently tops the table of the most unequal societies on earth.

"If someone says we need to live in peace with the reality of inequality, I say no. Reconciliation is not living with a situation where capital continues to accumulate power at the expense of the masses."

The "fundamental mistake" made by labour over the last decade was to "tone down" worker militancy, he believes. This sent a signal to beneficiaries of apartheid that the "cosy economic arrangement of the past" would not be tampered with. Cosatu, in particular, has tended to look like a workers' movement that has "bought in" to the legitimacy of the system. In part this was because the democratic breakthrough of 1994 delivered a "friendly" state, and it was assumed that all subsequent workers' victories would be delivered by the government that Cosatu helped create.

For a time it looked like that assumption was in fact reasonable. After all, labour counts the Labour Relations Act, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and the Employment Equity Act among some of the tangible benefits government has delivered for workers — albeit with the usual three-way wrangling between government, business and labour.


 * The party is over**

So, 12 years on, is all of this about to change? Is the party over, with business's cosy arrangement about to be "tampered with"? "Absolutely," says the nation's most stubborn revolutionary. But what does this mean? A pointer might be Cosatu's recently concluded congress.

The union federation's highest decision-making body passed a number of resolutions calling for nationalisation of key companies, if not sectors of the economy. Cosatu is demanding the re-nationalisation of oil conglomerate Sasol and a halt to the commercialisation of Telkom. Predictably, conservative commentators have rounded on the federation for this stance.

"The ANC indulges Cosatu and its socialist fantasies in much the same way we would indulge a senile relative or a mischievous toddler, and that's how it should be," wrote a journalist in The Weekender. That view seemed astoundingly ignorant of the influence Cosatu exercises on the ANC's — if not necessarily government's — policy positions.


 * Cosatu's ideas on the economy**

So what would happen if Cosatu's ideas on the economy were to prevail? Massive disinvestment? Capital flight? Cosatu has traditionally not been impressed by either possibility. Domestic capital is in any case currently conducting what the federation calls an "investment strike", characterised by investment levels in the economy that are the lowest since the 1960s and the exodus of South African corporates to offshore primary listings.

As for the effects of nationalisation on foreign direct investment, Vavi looks to South America for examples. He points out that foreign capital has fled neither Bolivia nor Venezuela, two countries that have pursued radical nationalisation of key industries in a short space of time. To Vavi and Cosatu this shows that investors will not abandon economies with which they need to deal, and are readier to live with local conditions than is often assumed.

In any event, Cosatu's idea of nationalisation has never corresponded to the intemperate grab-fest one would expect from a Hugo Chavez or Robert Mugabe. In the Cosatu scheme, nationalisation would still retain the skills and services of a powerful and professional managerial class to keep Sasol, Telkom and other state entities competitive. However, profits must be ploughed back into reinvestment in the businesses or directed towards defined national goals, instead of massive dividends and astronomical executive bonuses.


 * And land reform?**

An example of this approach is Cosatu's stance to Zimbabwe's land reform efforts. "Obviously we support land redistribution. But ordering gangs to suddenly occupy farmland and destroy its productive capacity smacks of populist demagoguery. It entrenches lawlessness," says Vavi.

In any case, South Africa's 1996 constitution protects private property rights — a sore point with Cosatu.

"I'd rather we didn't have the property clause. That's the only gripe I have with the constitution. But we respect and abide by the constitution."

"When we talk about socialism, we are not dreaming of some distant day to come and doing nothing to ensure its arrival. The reality is that we live in a capitalist society, which exists in a capitalist global context. And trade unionism thrives under capitalism. What we aim to do is plant the seeds of socialism in the womb of the present system," Vavi says when asked about South Africa's prospects for achieving socialism, Cosatu's stated goal.

Some of these "seeds" include widening the social security network, increased and stricter regulation of capital, but also expanding the role of the state beyond just "refereeing" between the competing interests of business and labour. Pushing the state towards the adoption of a coherent industrial strategy is also part of this long-term strategy. Cosatu's congress adopted an industrial strategy policy position, which the federation will take into a series of industrial strategy roundtable discussions slated for next year.

But how does the adoption of an industrial strategy push South Africa's economy in the direction of socialist nirvana? Surely such moves only encourage the consolidation of capitalist production. Well, yes. That contradiction is acknowledged by the more pragmatic revolutionaries.

Some of the things the left does might appear to have nothing tangible to do with socialism. A state-driven industrial strategy, for instance, is aimed at improving the efficiency of South African production and is one way of promoting export-led growth. In another example, Vavi complains that the Competition Commission and Tribunal have done nothing to break the power of monopolies over the country's economy. To the casual observer, Cosatu's frustration with ineffectual competition authorities suggests a desire to make capital more efficient through increased competition.


 * Market economy or socialism?**

So what, exactly, is the long-term goal — a more efficient market economy or socialism?

It seems that one is a means and the other an end. Drawing from the stuff of classical Marxism, Vavi suggests Cosatu should be interested in the efficiency of the market economy (with proper regulation, of course) as this is the surest way to move towards socialism in an advanced market economy like South Africa's.

In an interview with a business publication a few years ago, the Cosatu general secretary noted that democratic politics was the struggle for the middle ground. It is proving less and less likely to move mature or maturing democracies radically left or right. But the way in which the society defines "the middle" will determine its ideological outlook and economic path.

"We don’t mind a government that is centrist," wrote South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande. "But in South Africa the centre must be left."

But in recent years that political centre, under the direction of President Thabo Mbeki, has shifted markedly rightwards. Hence the growing militancy in the labour movement.

At the congress, the only ANC leader warmly received by the 3000 delegates was the ruling party’s deputy president Jacob Zuma. Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi was heckled off stage after attempting to deliver a lecture on why the ANC had to shift rightwards after 1994. Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, there to deliver a conciliatory message about HIV/Aids, received the coolest of responses. This was followed by resolutions which virtually called on government to reverse the path of the last ten years on economic policy.

Outside of the congress, labour disputes, especially concerning wages, have been particularly bitter and more protracted in recent months. Why the renewed radicalism?

The answer lies in part in Cosatu's changing relationship with the ruling party. "Our strategies for engaging the ANC and the state have to change. The real beneficiaries of change over the first 12 years of democracy have been capital. Profits are up. Productivity is up. Wages are stagnant. Deregulation has given the large South African companies the chance to list in London and New York, ostensibly to access bigger sources of capital.

"But public and private domestic investment in the economy is down, which is one of the major causes of dire unemployment," says Vavi. With Cosatu in a formal alliance with the ANC, why has the federation and the SACP been outflanked for influence by forces that have traditionally been inimical to the ANC?

Vavi believes that while Cosatu and the SACP have invested heavily in their relationship with the ANC, organised business's strategy of dealing directly with government, especially senior state functionaries, won concessions that the ANC would not otherwise be comfortable granting.

But, as yet, Cosatu has no intention of abandoning its alliance with the ruling party. If anything, the plan is to strengthen that alliance and give it a greater policy-formulation role.


 * Zuma and Cosatu**

This is where the federation’s relationship with Zuma is due to come in most handy. "There is no such thing as a free lunch," Vavi has noted in relation to Cosatu’s relationship to Zuma. And, indeed, Zuma has dined out extravagantly at the federation’s expense.

Following his sacking from cabinet last year, most political pundits put their money on Zuma’s political career — and thus his presidential ambitions — being over. It has been due mainly to Cosatu’s intervention that this has not come to pass. Ask Vavi about Zuma’s debt to the federation, and he does not mince his words: "Were it not for us, Zuma would be counting his herds in Nkandla."

So what is the payback? When the left articulates it, the goal is one most would support: a better deal for the poor. But such a goal cannot be achieved by Zuma single-handedly. And Vavi concedes the point. "We are not foolish. Even as president, Zuma would not individually control the ANC or make and implement policy for it. We would never put all our eggs into one individual's basket." Vavi recounts the initial interactions between a then-exiled ANC and representatives of white business in the late 1980s.

"The many trips to Lusaka paid off. They found that Oliver Tambo was willing to listen to them. There’s no reason why trips to Nkandla (Zuma’s KwaZulu-Natal home) will not prove equally as fruitful. We would never, ever, trust an individual with the future of the working class. That’s a naïve strategy."

So the real prize is the heart and soul of the ANC — to shift the middle ground in that powerful organisation ever leftwards. If that can be achieved, Zuma no longer has the central place he often appears to occupy in the left’s strategic calculations. He is only incidental, if not downright surplus to requirements.

"We can achieve victory over capital only if Cosatu itself is strengthened. Mass power is our only weapon, not Zuma."

With Cosatu’s congress now concluded, the next stop is the SACP’s national congress in July 2007. That will immediately be followed by the ruling party’s policy conference, a curtain-raiser for the all-important 52nd national conference. Only there will South Africa be able to tell if Cosatu’s strategic calculations have been on the money.


 * **Vukani Mde reports on politics for Business Day and The Weekender. His personal economic ideology includes a radical redistribution of wealth in his favour.**


 * **[|This article appears courtesy of Maverick magazine.]**


 * From: http://www.iafrica.com/pls/procs/SEARCH.ARCHIVE?p_content_id=334469&p_site_id=2**

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