12.09.2001

SACP fronts privatisation attacks

Last month, when the South African government launched its harsh attack on plans by Cosatu, the main trade union centre, to go ahead with protest strikes against privatisation, the faces at the top table highlighted the fundamental political contradictions in this latest row.

There to defend the government?s laissez-faire attitude to macro-economics were Dullah Omar, Essop Pahad, Jeff Radebe and Alec Erwin. Their press conference was well attended and their comments were widely quoted. Which is as it should be when four cabinet ministers speak out, especially with such vehemence against two of the partners in the governing tripartite alliance.

But the very presence of those four ministers on a platform to defend privatisation and trickle-down economics summed up, in many ways, the confusing contradictions in this long-running row. For three of the four - Pahad, Radebe and Erwin - are members of the South African Communist Party, while Omar came into the ANC via the Trotskyist-influenced Unity Movement. Erwin was a relative latecomer to the SACP, having cut his political teeth in the ?workerist? - and decidedly anti-SACP - tradition in the turbulent years of the 80s.

The SACP is supporting wholeheartedly the Cosatu position in opposing the privatisation of essential services. Yet both Pahad and Radebe are members of the SACP central committee. This does not, however, seem to indicate any imminent purge. The ministers will not be forced to recant and resign from government on pain of expulsion from the SACP, despite opposing the democratically adopted anti-privatisation policy of their party.

This confusing scenario is likely to continue even as the posturing and rhetoric become more openly hostile. Using phrases echoing the ?blood on the floors? threats by Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi during the last anti-privatisation spat, Cosatu has outlined further strike action.

But, despite some speculation to the contrary, this does not seem to signal the beginning of the end for the alliance. Rather, we appear to be seeing - yet again - another bout of domestic drama in the alliance household, only this time certainly closer to the brink of separation. That divorce may not be on the cards, however, is because many members of Cosatu, from shop floor to full-time officials, still believe that government policy can be changed by their pleas and pressure; that the government remains a ?terrain of struggle?.

According to a 1993 Cosatu resolution, this ?terrain? requires both ?complimentary and contradictory? responses. In other words, the big stick in cases of disagreement or contradiction and the complimentary carrot of unity where common cause can be made. This ?terrain of struggle? argument has begun to look extremely threadbare, but it is still clung to. According to this view, government is seen as a neutral source of power in the state which can be steered by whichever contending ?social forces? can gain the upper hand.

In broad terms, the two contenders are big business on the one hand and ?organisations of the working class? such as Cosatu, the SACP, the national civics organisation, Sanco, and various tiny socialist groupings on the other. Big business evidently has the upper hand and has, according to this argument, wooed, cajoled and otherwise manipulated a malleable national administration, making the rich richer and the poor poorer. There have been corporate tax cuts and the creation of an ?investor-friendly environment? - at the cost of hundreds of thousands of jobs and misery for millions.

So the big stick of mass action again emerged. That it did so at the time of the World Conference Against Racism in Durban was no coincidence: this was timing for maximum impact. Cosatu officials such as president Willie Madisha reportedly rejected pleas from government to postpone or even advance the date of the two-day strike. As a result, Cosatu and its anti-privatisation allies gathered at Durban?s Curries Fountain on August 30 to march on the city hall.

At the same time, a carrot of complimentary action was being advertised for two days later: another rally and march, again starting from Curries Fountain. The September 1 action was against racism and was sponsored by Cosatu, the SACP, Sanco - and the ANC.

On September 6 Madisha and the Cosatu executive came together at a special executive committee meeting to ?look into the strike action and decide how to take it forward?. Although a summit of the tripartite alliance is scheduled for later this month, few of the Cosatu leadership think it will take place. ?We have just had one excuse after another from the ANC,? complained a senior public sector union official.

Instead, Cosatu is now determined to call a ?people?s summit? to discuss alternatives to the government?s macro-economic programme. Cosatu itself - together with the two smaller union groupings, the National Council of Unions and the Federation of Unions - remains committed to the orientation outlined in the 1996 Social Equity and Job Creation document.

This document proposed a strategy of economic growth and wealth creation through redistribution. The government?s ?Growth, employment and redistribution? (Gear) policy is based on the concept that economic growth will ensure redistribution. ?But Gear just means making the rich richer in the hope that we will have more crumbs and it simply has not worked,? said Madisha.

Senior government officials were winning a few hearts and minds with promises that future privatisation exercises would not mean any more job losses. Such promises are also wearing thin but, for the time being at least, this political marriage still seems intact.

How long it will last and how acrimonious will be a possibly inevitable break-up, only time will tell.

Terry Bell
(?Inside Labour?)