Today's Topics:
1. Britain, Class War - MAYDAY AGAINST MONARCHY
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. Southern Africa, zabalaza.net: South African ‘Workerism'
in the 1980s: Learning from FOSATU's Radical Unionism
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Southern Africa, zabalaza.net: The Old Man and the Coup
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Southern Africa, zabalaza.net: Lessons from the 1984-85 Vaal
Uprising for Rebuilding a United Front of Communities and Workers
Today (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
CLASS WAR ANNOUNCE THAT THE MAYDAY MARCH FROM CLERKENWELL GREEN TO TRAFALGAR SQUARE WILL
CONTINUE TO BUCKINHAM PALACE IN 2018.
we expect it to be the biggest anti-monarchy march ever and will come just a week or
before the Windsor wedding.
WHAT A FUCKING CONTRAST
BUCKINGHAM PALACE MAY 1st 2018
MAKE MONARCHY HISTORY
CLASS WAR
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Message: 2
Before there was the Congress of South African Trade Unions, today's COSATU, there was
FOSATU. FOSATU was set up in 1979. There had been strikes and struggles in the 1970s,
starting with a big strike wave in Namibia from 1971-1972, which was then a South African
colony, then a big strike wave starting in Durban 1973, which spread around the country.
Although we remember 1976 for the bravery of the youth and students, we must remember that
the 1976 uprising also involved general strikes by the black working class, mass
stay-aways. ---- And as the working class started to flex its muscles, and to organise
new, independent unions, the need for unity was felt. In 1979, at Hammanskraal, FOSATU was
set up. The flag of FOSATU was red, black and gold, with a hammer, a spanner and a spade.
FOSATU grew quickly, despite repression by the apartheid state. Leaders and activists in
FOSATU were banned, jailed; some, like Andries Raditsela, were murdered by police. There
was continual intimidation, and employers would fire workers for going on strike or
"agitating" at work. Unemployment is not just about money: unemployment is a weapon of the
bosses, and this weapon was used many times against FOSATU.
South African ‘Workerism' in the 1980s: Learning from FOSATU's Radical Unionism
By Lucien van der Walt, with Sian Byrne and Nicole Ulrich *
This is a lightly edited transcript of a presentation at a workshop hosted by the
International Labour Research & Information Group (ILRIG) and the Orange Farm Human Rights
Advice Centre in Drieziek extension 1, Orange Farm township, south of Soweto, South
Africa, on 24 June 2017. It was attended by a hall full of community and worker activists,
including veterans of the big rebellions of the 1980s.
Thank you comrades for having me here. The Federation of South African Trade Unions is the
focus of my talk. I want to look at what FOSATU stood for and what we can learn from
FOSATU. When people remember it, they often label it as marked by "workerism," and they
take that as a bad thing. But I want to show the so-called "workerism" of FOSATU was very
radical, that this radical South African "workerism" is very important to understand, and
build upon, today.
I want to stress, at the start, that what I speak about here rests very heavily, not just
on my research, but the work of other comrades, notably Sian Byrne and Nicole Ulrich...
Although they are not here in person, they are here as a key influence and inspiration
and, in a sense, are my co-presenters in spirit.
Before there was the Congress of South African Trade Unions, today's COSATU, there was
FOSATU. FOSATU was set up in 1979. There had been strikes and struggles in the 1970s,
starting with a big strike wave in Namibia from 1971-1972, which was then a South African
colony, then a big strike wave starting in Durban 1973, which spread around the country.
Although we remember 1976 for the bravery of the youth and students, we must remember that
the 1976 uprising also involved general strikes by the black working class, mass stay-aways.
And as the working class started to flex its muscles, and to organise new, independent
unions, the need for unity was felt. In 1979, at Hammanskraal, FOSATU was set up. The flag
of FOSATU was red, black and gold, with a hammer, a spanner and a spade. FOSATU grew
quickly, despite repression by the apartheid state. Leaders and activists in FOSATU were
banned, jailed; some, like Andries Raditsela, were murdered by police. There was continual
intimidation, and employers would fire workers for going on strike or "agitating" at work.
Unemployment is not just about money: unemployment is a weapon of the bosses, and this
weapon was used many times against FOSATU.
But, despite the pain, repression and suffering of the comrades in FOSATU, it got bigger
and bigger, and stronger and stronger, and by 1985 it was the single biggest black working
class organisation in the country. And not just the biggest, but in many ways, the
strongest. It didn't just exist in a moment of protest, or as a crowd that gathers around
a grievance or in a crisis; it existed continuously, as a democratic, bottom-up machine
that ran smoothly even when struggles died down. And it had 150,000 members, it had large
education programs, it had a newspaper, it had choirs, it had successful strikes and
campaigns, it had affiliates across the economy.
FOSATU'S "Workerism"
"Workerism" was a label that was painted onto FOSATU by those who did not like what FOSATU
was doing. The people who gave it the label were not the racist National Party government,
were not the police's brutal Security Branch, but the South African Communist Party and
the African National Congress. They denounced FOSATU repeatedly.
There was a simple reason: FOSATU refused to bow down to a political party, it did not
trust the ANC and it did not like the SACP's top-down politics. FOSATU said that control
in FOSATU needed to be in the hands of the workers, and that change in the country had to
be radical and benefit the working class, and that parties could not be trusted to do this.
So, the first thing about "workerism" - the main current in FOSATU, and its core politics
-was its emphasis on building autonomous workers' unions. What that meant was that trade
unions needed to be free of outside control. They needed to be controlled by their members
- the ordinary workers - and not controlled inside the union by a few leaders, and not
controlled outside the union by political parties, by the bosses or by the government.
We must remember that in those days there were large so-called registered trade unions
like the Trade Union Council of South Africa. In fact TUCSA was bigger than FOSATU at one
stage. But unions like TUCSA were sweet-heart unions, moderate, entangled into the state,
run from above, and weak; they were racially segregated, largely excluding black Africans,
and also treating their Coloured and Indian members badly.
FOSATU didn't want to be anything like TUCSA. It wanted autonomy for the working class and
poor, who were part of the working class. FOSATU wanted a union movement embracing all
workers and under workers' control. In reality, it was mainly black African in composition
but it was strong in places where there was a large Coloured working class, for example
Port Elizabeth and East London, and where there was a large Indian working class, for
example Durban. In its search for the unity of the working class across race, FOSATU also
tried to recruit white workers in the factories in Port Elizabeth, East Rand, the Vaal,
but with little success.
Bottom-Up Industrial Unions
The second key part of FOSATU's "workerism" was its stress on systematically building
mass-based, bottom-up, profoundly democratic and fighting industrial unions. The idea was
to organise industry by industry. So FOSATU would organise one union for the metal
industry, one for textiles, one for chemicals and so on.
But rather than rely on laws or leaders, like TUCSA, FOSATU's approach was to organise
carefully, patiently. I call it the brick-by-brick approach that creates a mighty
fortress. A good example was FOSATU's Metal and Allied Workers Union, which was active in
the ISCOR steel factories of the government, in the private sector car factories owned by
multinationals, like Ford and Volkswagen, and in the metal and auto industry generally,
much of it owned by local white capitalists.
FOSATU's approach, illustrated by MAWU, was quite careful. It would set up a very clear
program of action, targeting first a big factory, with, say, 4,000 workers: it's easier to
organise a big factory than a small factory. It would capture this base by forming a
fighting union that raised demands and won them plus won "recognition agreements" (i.e.
negotiating rights) with the bosses. From there, it sent out units to organise other
factories nearby, including the smaller ones. Where needed, it would try and combine
negotiations across factories, so that the smaller factories and union branches could be
helped by the larger ones.
The idea is that you didn't just declare a campaign and make a demand, without an
organised base, and without working class power to back it. You wage careful, sometimes
slow, social war, factory by factory, workplace by workplace. Each that you win over is
another fortress, another centre of working class power from which you can expand
outwards. You don't make demands that you can't win and you don't drop a demand that you
raise. So MAWU might demand, for example, equal wages across races, fight for it, even for
two or three years, get a deal, also raise an issue around layoffs, fight, get a deal and
so on. These were things that bosses did not want to give, they did not want to concede,
but they had to be fought for, and they could be won.
Each struggle and each victory developed confidence, numbers and layers of militants, and
made real gains for the working class. If you take the workers out into a battle that you
can't win, you lose the larger war; you lose the workers because they are tired and
weakened; you break their hearts and wills. And struggle is based fundamentally on the
fire and strength of the heart and mind, the will, that power within yourself to keep
going. So that is a precious resource and FOSATU understood that you needed to manage it
carefully.
By 1982, FOSATU had built MAWU into a mass-based metal union, as well as other strong
unions. It was confident that it could confront the employers in key sectors and firms as
well as the state where needed, act regionally and nationally and not just at individual
workplaces, consolidate the power of the union base, and carry out struggles based on
directions from the shop floor.
FOSATU did not, let me stress, reject participation in the formal Industrial Council
negotiating system of the state. Rather, it insisted that all agreements be directed by
and checked by, the base, to prevent the hijacking and misuse of their demands.
Assemblies and Committees
That brings me to the third key part of FOSATU's "workerist" approach. What FOSATU
stressed was that a union was not a head office or a service centre, but was based on the
shop floor. So they organised based on regular mass meetings, or assemblies, that elected
shop stewards, and gave them clear instructions, and made sure they reported back and
acted against them if they did not. The idea was you wouldn't have unions based on
officials from outside the workplace; as much as possible the workers would be the
organisers, and officialdom would be kept in check. This would be carried out within each
union, and also across the federation.
So, the leadership at all levels were to be delegates, kept on a tight leash, always
accountable to regular meetings. The idea here was to build a union that was based on
many, many layers of cadreship, militants - and a leadership generated and regenerated
from below. Remember, in the apartheid days, horrors like the 2012 massacre at Marikana,
which shocked us, were a regular occurrence; death, torture, mass imprisonment were the
daily business of the old regime.
The advantage was that, if one layer got taken out, sent to jail, banned, killed, the
union survived. It was not secure because the different parts were separate and
independent from each other, like independent cells with sporadic links - but rather,
because it was deeply rooted in the workers at the workplaces, with the workers unified
through effective, democratic structures and procedures that renewed themselves, in tight
unions and a tight federation. The idea was that of a mandated, multi-layer worker-leadership.
Some people now praise assemblies and workers' committees as an alternative to unions, but
for FOSATU, the union and the federation centred on assemblies and workers' committees.
People who were hired by the FOSATU unions or federation for specialist jobs, like media
work or full-time organising, but who were not elected, could not vote in the union
structures. Anyone hired was to earn an ordinary worker's wage.
ANC and SACP enemies of FOSATU often claimed that "white intellectuals" were running it.
And certainly FOSATU activists included people like Alec Erwin, a former university
lecturer. But people like Erwin were a tiny minority in the union leadership; they served
either in elected positions, and so were accountable, or in unelected non-voting
positions, and so were contained. And most "intellectuals" in the union were black African
or Coloured worker-intellectuals, like MAWU's Moses Mayekiso and FOSATU's Joe Foster.
Education, Identity, History
Fourth, FOSATU's "workerism" placed a heavy emphasis on building working class education,
working class identity, working class culture and working class history.
To understand that the working class and its struggles come from and to learn from earlier
struggles, and to remember and value them, FOSATU outlined the history of the working
class. That the working class in South Africa comes from the older classes of slaves and
servants, sailors and soldiers. That the working class in South Africa is part of the
working class of the whole world, with a common interest and struggle. That, in building a
working class movement, we must understand where we come from, who are, to understand our
struggles and recover our historical memory as a class, our pain and our victories.
In FOSATU Worker News, FOSATU outlined South African history from the perspective of the
oppressed classes over three hundred years. It took a class line, attacking European
colonialism and racism, but linking these to capitalism; and it drew attention to the role
of African kings and chiefs in upholding oppression, including through slave-trading.
Before FOSATU, there was the SA Congress of Trade Unions; before SACTU there was the
Industrial and Commercial Workers Union; outside the unions there were movements like the
slave revolts of the old Cape, unemployed movements, the anti-pass protests of the 1950s
and 1910s, the squatter movements of the 1940s; and many more.
And FOSATU helped popularize and publicize this history - to celebrate it, but also to
learn from past failures, such as how the ICU was destroyed by sloppy organising,
unaccountable leaders and ineffective strategy. FOSATU also worked with the radical
History Workshop of academics at the University of the Witwatersrand, participating in
their conferences. In 1984, thousands of workers attended the conference, going to and
presenting in seminars, learning, talking, making and enriching a history from below.
For FOSATU, we South Africans were part of the world's working class: a South African
worker, a Russian worker, a worker in Brazil were of the same class, with the same
enemies. You can have Coca-Cola, you have a Sprite, a Pepsi, but they are all fizzy soft
drinks. You are exploited in South Korea, you are exploited in Brazil, and you are
exploited in Poland: different flavours but the same stuff. FOSATU stressed that the
problems that we faced in the 1980s were not only South African problems, they are global,
and part of a global struggle. So FOSATU highlighted struggles in Zimbabwe, Poland and
Britain, and it located the South African class struggle in a global history of struggle.
FOSATU made interventions in a range of areas. It ran worker choirs, culture days, and
promoted images and slogans that stressed its messages. Similarly FOSATU developed
materials for the youth, around women's issues, and engaged in a range of political and
social areas.
Beyond Wages, Beyond Workplaces
That brings me to the fifth element: contrary to what its enemies said, FOSATU "workerism"
was never about ignoring politics or ignoring the world beyond the workplace.
At the workplace, FOSATU did not just raise issues around wages and conditions but other
issues too. They recognized that women workers, especially black women workers, faced
specific forms of oppression. They raised the need for crèches and childcare at work, and
noted how women's jobs and incomes and promotion and role in the unions was affected by
the double burden: after the factory, the home. They campaigned for changes and equality.
They spent time catching bosses who were sexually harassing women, setting up traps and
catching them, and getting them fired or disciplined.
FOSATU positioned itself as the voice of black, Coloured and Indian workers in a racist,
capitalist society. It fought the apartheid wage gap, within the same jobs and between
different jobs; and racist pension and labour relations and on-site facilities systems;
and tackled the authoritarian and racist workplace management system. It fought to make
the workplace more democratic, more non-racial.
So FOSATU's "workerism" wasn't just about money, wasn't just about bus fares, wasn't just
about pensions, it was about the working class's struggle for dignity in the workplace,
against racism in the factories - and also beyond the workplace. Because FOSATU did not
stop at the workplace. It campaigned against oppression in the townships and the larger
society, the oppression of the black and Coloured and Indian working class community.
It fought around the specific issues that some workers faced that others did not, from the
perspective of solidarity and unity: besides the oppression of women, they spoke to the
youth, to the unemployed, they put a lot of stress on the plight of migrant workers in the
towns, and of the workers in the homelands or Bantustans. While unions like FOSATU were
able to operate fairly openly in so-called "white" South Africa, homeland leaders like
Lucas Mangope and Gatsha Buthelezi did not allow independent unions at all. FOSATU fought
this, opposed the homeland system, and tried to break into them and organise unions.
So FOSATU wanted to become involved in township and other struggles, and extend the
influence of the unions and organised workers into these spheres. Where possible, FOSATU
entered into alliances or common work, especially through its shop-steward councils, which
spanned the different FOSATU unions.
These brought together FOSATU workers from different FOSATU affiliates, who lived or
worked in the same area. These councils could then engage directly with local community
organisations, both as members and leaders in these, and through them bring the power of
the unions to bear in their support. This could range from forcing employers to put
pressure on bus companies, to infusing these structures with democratic practices drawn
from the FOSATU tradition, and radical ideas drawn from that tradition.
FOSATU's politics also suggested that workers' control meant that workers, as the majority
in the township communities, also had to have a large level of influence in those communities.
Alliances, Errors, Hesitancy
FOSATU was criticized, sometimes correctly, for being a bit too cautious in these
engagements, and for not giving a greater lead. Sometimes it worked in parallel with other
structures, rather than with them; sometimes it stayed away from campaigns; generally it
avoided long-term alliances.
Part of this hesitation was because FOSATU was afraid of being swallowed by other groups.
It believed, correctly, that many community-based anti-apartheid groups lacked stable
democratic structures; that they were often run by the petty bourgeoisie, much of which
was aligned to the ANC, SACP and other nationalists; and some engaged in political
thuggery, including against FOSATU. FOSATU did not trust forces from outside the working
class, and did not trust nationalism, which downplayed class differences by stressing
common racial and national experiences.
In hindsight, it can be argued that they would have been much stronger and more
influential by building long-term links and alliances - tragically, FOSATU stayed out of
the United Democratic Front, formed in 1983, and lost the chance to build links with
large, like-minded youth and community currents in the UDF. They did work with UDF at
times, or support it, but in staying out, they also surrendered it to the nationalists and
middle class.
But it is not correct to present FOSATU's "workerist" politics as narrow or bureaucratic.
What FOSATU was doing was, in fact, carrying out its agenda, outlined at its 1982 congress
in a position paper delivered by Joe Foster. This was that workers needed to be part of
the "popular struggle" but to have their "own, powerful and effective organisation,"
"worker leadership" in the neighbourhoods, and forge a "working class movement" that went
beyond the unions. FOSATU understood that unions were not enough, that the project and
power that was developing at workplaces also needed to extend the larger working class,
and that unions should be only one part of the FOSATU project.
Expansive "Workers' Control"
And this meant the need to strengthen the identity of the working class, to know where we
fit into the capitalist system, to understand our power as the working class, and to
understand that it is the working class alone who has the power to change society in a way
that is fundamentally progressive.
So the notion that the FOSATU "workerist" politics was about being small and contained was
completely wrong. There were contradictions and errors and hesitancy in FOSATU's work, but
it was never a moderate, narrow movement.
That brings me to the sixth element: FOSATU "workerism" involved dealing with issues
beyond wages in the workplace, and also, it involved building beyond the workplace, but
what was the aim?
It pointed to an expansion of worker control over the society and the economy as a whole,
a new South Africa, in which the working class, the masses, were not just responding to
what capital and the state were doing, but exercising real control. "Workers' control," at
one level, meant workers control of the unions; but at another, it was a more radical
vision of steady transformation.
This could build on steps like pushing back the frontier of control at work, for example,
by having a growing input on decisions, but it would not end its steps there. A new South
Africa had to be one in which capitalism and the profit system that exploited and
oppressed the working class would be progressively removed.
Some of the workerists, like Mayekiso, argued clearly against the ANC slogan that "The
People Must Govern," asking: who are "the people"? Did they include capitalists? Homeland
rulers?
"The people," here, was rooted in the ANC's nationalist politics, which downplayed class
issues and aimed at a multi-class alliance of all democrats, rather than a class struggle
of all working class people. The cost of that alliance, what made it possible, was
retaining capitalism. But retaining capitalism meant retaining the exploitation of the
majority.
In place of the ANC/SACP "Freedom Charter," Mayekiso called for a Workers Charter, which
would provide a basis for the workers to "take over and direct the whole" economy.
Elsewhere in Africa, independence brought positive reforms, but soon ended up captured by
a nationalist elite that turned on the working class. FOSATU studied the case of
neighbouring Zimbabwe very closely, noting that nationalists led by Robert Mugabe smashed
up strikes and unions, and defended capitalism, soon after taking office.
Why would ANC be different? If there are workers at the bottom, whatever the colour of the
president, who are suffering then there is no deep change. So Mayekiso insisted that the
Freedom Charter was a "capitalist document," rather than a program for "a change of the
whole society."
So what you can see here is a radical anti-capitalist class struggle politics. But at the
same time, FOSATU distanced itself from the SACP, and through its support for workers'
struggles in Poland by the Solidarnosc union movement, also rejected the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics and its client states, because in these workers had no power.
Workers Power, National Liberation
This meant that the struggle against apartheid had to be linked to the struggle against
apartheid. The ANC and SACP wanted to remove apartheid but follow it with a reformed
capitalism, a first "stage" called the "national democratic revolution" or NDR. According
to the SACP, this would later (somehow) be followed by a second "stage" of socialism.
FOSATU's "workerism" did not just disagree with the SACP's vision of what the second
"stage" would be (a USSR-style dictatorship), but rejected splitting the anti-apartheid
and the anti-capitalist struggles. Mayekiso insisted that "apartheid is an appendage and a
branch of the whole thing - the tree of oppression of capitalism." So it was not enough to
defeat the son, apartheid, you had to defeat the father. Capitalism, Foster said, hid
"behind the curtains of apartheid and racism," but "capital and its lackeys were
undoubtedly the major beneficiaries of apartheid."
FOSATU argued against the NDR two-stage theory, which was being pushed in the UDF and in
unions outside FOSATU and by ANC and SACP cells inside FOSATU. In Mayekiso's words, there
should not be "two stages" but "one stage continuous; this thing of two stages is a waste
of time and a waste of blood." So it was crucial that the unions and the working class did
not get captured or confused by existing white capital or emerging black capital.
Working Class Nation
FOSATU wanted one nation - but centred on the working class. It believed in a united South
Africa: remember in those days, there was the Bantustan policy, the apartheid segregation
in everything from jobs to toilets to schools, around 14 different parliaments for
different races and homelands, different TV stations, different everything.
For FOSATU, these divisions had to be removed, as unjust, and as part of the working class
struggle: the working class has many races, languages and cultures, but it had to be
united around a common identity and aim.
A new South African nation needed to overcome the old divisions, including race, but be
forged in struggle and based on justice and equality. Race was not the basis of inclusion
or exclusion, but racial equality through radical changes in the cities, in the economy,
in the society was essential. Here, majority rule meant working class power, and, of
course, the majority of the class was black African, Coloured and Indian.
So the new nation would be non-racial, but it would be one in which the working class
predominated. It would be driving the car, not fixing the car. It would be one in which
the working class put its imprint on the nation. The culture of the nation would be that
of the working class. The governance and power of the nation would be vested as much as
possible in the working class.
It is sometimes argued that the choice is between national liberation (from apartheid) and
workers' liberation (from capitalism), but FOSATU never set up such an empty choice:
rather, real national liberation for the working class required workers power and
anti-capitalism.
In Closing: Strengths & Weaknesses
I want to make three general points in closing. One, in many ways FOSATU was right. If we
look at South Africa today, the poverty, powerlessness, injustice, if we look at how
people like Cyril Ramaphosa - in his time, a hero of the working class, a union man, today
a capitalist and a traitor - if we look at the ANC today, we have exactly the anti-worker
outcome that FOSATU warned against.
FOSATU was right: when you get tied into the political parties, they take your best and
brightest and corrupt them, they seek to capture the unions and smother them. FOSATU was
right: the working class needs its own independent program, it needs to be
anti-capitalist, its power needs to rest in working class mass organisations, not just in
unions but communities and it cannot rest until capitalism is defeated by workers control.
But, in other ways, FOSATU was also wrong. FOSATU had a good criticism, a good daily
practice and a vision of a good future. But at the level of a strategy linking what it
did, in organising, educating and mobilising, and what it wanted in the end - that new
South Africa it sought - there was no clear link. You can pack your bags for a trip to
Cape Town, but unless you have got a plan to get there you are probably not going to get
there.
In terms of a strategy linking the vision, linking workers' control today to a working
class-centred new nation, linking present-day winnable demands to a massive shift in power
and wealth, linking criticism of the nationalists to defeating the nationalists - FOSATU
fell down.
Some parts of FOSATU were spending their time on court cases as part of a strategy to
reshape the state; some parts were aiming at taking power: these are not the same thing.
Some parts were working with the ANC quietly, some parts were saying to hell with the ANC.
Some parts thought of the new South Africa as socialist, others as social democratic. All
were vague on details. "Workerism" was not anarcho-syndicalism but a mixture of different
ideas.
The "workerist" thinking in FOSATU wasn't developed enough. This was partly because of
daily pressures and a stress on getting things done. But it was also because the
"workerists" hadn't organised themselves into a specific group that could develop theory
and strategy. They were a network, based in the unions, rather than a coherent group.
This also meant that, when the ANC and SACP began to build cells and secret cabals in the
FOSATU unions, the workerists were not able to respond effectively. They needed to
organise as a group in the unions, and outside the unions, including in the UDF, to plan
and evaluate and strategise and intervene. Not just to clarify the problems in strategy,
but to deal with other threats too.
People like Jacob Zuma, then the head of ANC secret intelligence, were directing ANC/SACP
plans to capture the unions: they were skilled and they did not care about democracy. And
they ended up winning.
When FOSATU joined with other unions in 1985 to form COSATU, it was the biggest and
best-organised bloc, and the first COSATU resolutions had a deep "workerist" imprint,
including independence from parties. Within two years, they were gone as a serious force.
Even MAWU, which became the heart of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa in
1987, ended up adopting the Freedom Charter and NDR, even if they gave this a radical
interpretation. Jay Naidoo, a great activist but an ANC cadre, was one who worked inside
FOSATU, and he helped forge the defeat of "workerism" in COSATU.
Tomorrow, Today
Third, in closing, let us remember something key from FOSATU: the idea that tomorrow is
built today, that, as MAWU said, learn from the past, act in the present, to build the
future. What we do now shapes what we get tomorrow - you cannot take a tree that is
growing, cut it down, take off the bark, take off the leaves and use as a kierie, or club,
and then put it back in the ground and think that it is going to be a tree. You cannot
build an undemocratic organisation and think it will become democratic. You cannot raise
your dog to bite people and then be surprised when it bites people.
If we want a democratic, worker-controlled society, FOSATU understood, you need democratic
unions and a democratic working class movement. If you want a society beyond capitalism
you need clear ideas of how to get there and you need to practice what you preach. The ANC
in exile was a top-down structure, it was run from the top by men like Zuma and Thabo
Mbeki, top-down. When the ANC was unbanned, the exiled ANC took over and systematically
undermined the best of the democratic traditions of the UDF, which it soon disbanded, and
of COSATU, which it has systematically penetrated. It did not have democratic traditions
or tolerate opponents then, and there should be no surprise that it is undemocratic and
intolerant now.
* Lucien van der Walt delivered the talk, but it is based on joint work with Sian Byrne
and Nicole Ulrich. See Sian Byrne, Nicole Ulrich and Lucien van der Walt, 2017, "Red,
Black and Gold: FOSATU, South African ‘Workerism,' ‘Syndicalism' and the Nation," in
Edward Webster and Karin Pampillas (eds.), The Unresolved National Question in South
Africa: Left Thinking Under Apartheid. Wits University Press.
https://zabalaza.net/2017/12/01/south-african-workerism-in-the-1980s-learning-from-fosatus-radical-unionism/
------------------------------
Message: 3
This article looks at the recent events around the removal of Robert Mugabe from power in
Zimbabwe. It argues that this will not bring liberation for the people of Zimbabwe, as it
does not address the problems Zimbabwe faces - a ruthless ruling class, its state,
capitalism and imperialism. ---- Robert Mugabe, the longstanding authoritarian ruler that
has waged a war against Zimbabwe's poor, is gone. He was forced to resign in the wake of a
coup - although the main actors in the coup comically denied it was one. ---- When it was
announced that Mugabe was exiting power, tens of thousands of people took to the streets
of Harare to celebrate. Many are hoping that his exit will bring change for the better for
Zimbabwe. This hope, unfortunately, may be wishful thinking. The reason for this is that
Mugabe was a symptom of far deeper problems, and without addressing those problems,
Zimbabwe cannot be free; nor can there be genuine equality. Similarly, those that removed
Mugabe are cut from the same cloth, and come from the same ruthless ruling class.
The Old Man and the Coup by Shawn Hattingh
Robert Mugabe, the longstanding authoritarian ruler that has waged a war against
Zimbabwe's poor, is gone. He was forced to resign in the wake of a coup - although the
main actors in the coup comically denied it was one.
When it was announced that Mugabe was exiting power, tens of thousands of people took to
the streets of Harare to celebrate. Many are hoping that his exit will bring change for
the better for Zimbabwe. This hope, unfortunately, may be wishful thinking. The reason for
this is that Mugabe was a symptom of far deeper problems, and without addressing those
problems, Zimbabwe cannot be free; nor can there be genuine equality. Similarly, those
that removed Mugabe are cut from the same cloth, and come from the same ruthless ruling class.
Seeing the coup in context
The context of the coup can't be separated from the fact that Zimbabwe has been living
through massive economic crisis, that it has been governed by a ruling class that has
clung to power by any means (of which Mugabe is only one member), and that this ruling
class has used its control over the state to plunder.
In fact, Zimbabwe's ruling class has historically needed positions or connections to the
state to accumulate wealth. This relates to the fact that colonialism stunted the
development of black capitalists in the country.
From the beginning of independence, therefore, the state has been critical in building a
ruling class around ZANU - it is the only source they have to become rich. As a matter
fact, Zimbabwe demonstrates how through entering into top positions in the state,
ex-liberation leaders can and do enter into the ruling class; how they can and do become
governors over people; and how they can and do use their positions to amass wealth on the
backs of people.
Competition for state positions has always been intense
Due to this, the reality is that since independence competition to enter into top
positions in the state has been fierce. This is partly why top leaders in ZANU - around
Mugabe, Mnangagwa and the military generals - used force to undermine the power of their
rivals in ZAPU in the first years after independence, which culminated in the Matabeleland
massacres in 1983 in which 20 000 people were killed by the state. It is also why they
used terror, including mass rape to intimidate opponents, to undermine the possibility of
being removed from top positions in the state through elections in 2008 and in 2013.
As the economic crisis in Zimbabwe has worsened since the 2000s, competition for positions
in the state has become fiercer, leading to factures in the ruling class and within ZANU
itself. In the fight for state positions to accumulate wealth, two factions emerged in
ZANU - the G40 and the Lacoste factions. This is where the roots of the coup lie - in an
intra-ruling class brawl to control the state to loot.
In recent years, Mugabe has aligned with the G40 faction - which is a faction comprising
of a younger generation of aspirant black capitalists, such as Jonathan Moyo and Grace
Mugabe. It is this faction that benefitted from the state's ‘indigenisation' and land
reform policies, gaining 51% interests in numerous corporations in the agricultural,
retail and mining sectors. It is also this move by Mugabe to promote the interests of the
G40 that has led to the coup against him.
Indeed, the G40s use of the state to amass wealth set it on a collision course with the
faction in ZANU - the Lacoste faction -around Mnangagwa and the generals. In the grab by
the G40 through the state of shares in companies, the Lacoste faction had their interests
trampled on. The generals were angry at Mugabe for his promotion of a younger venal layer
in the form of the G40 at their expense.
The Chinese connection
The Lacoste faction is extremely close to the Chinese state and capital. In fact,
Mnangagwa established a joint company with Chinese capital, called Sino Zimbabwe, to mine
parts of the Marange diamond field - perhaps making him the richest person in Zimbabwe in
the mid-2000s. To ensure that the mining could go ahead, Mnangagwa and the generals
unleashed the army to drive people off the land in 2008; and in the process several
hundred people were murdered.
More recently too, the G40 faction and Mugabe have been side-lining and taking shares in
Chinese companies, through the policy of ‘indigenisation'. The Chinese state and capital
are the largest investors in Zimbabwe and they were angered by the G40 and Mugabe moving
in on their interests. When Mugabe further moved against the Lacoste faction by firing
Mnangagwa - who is backed by the Chinese ruling class - the fuse for the coup was lit: and
the old man's time was up.
Plans moved fast
On being fired Mnangagwa went straight to China. He was soon followed by leading generals
who met with the Chinese military in the aftermath. While we may never be certain what was
discussed, it can't be an accident that a coup followed within less than a week of these
visits. Signs are Mnangagwa, his generals and the Chinese state worked together to develop
plans for the coup to remove Mugabe.
Indeed, as soon as the coup happened, the generals announced foreign investment would be
welcomed, it was alluded to that the ‘indigenisation' policy would be reversed and
investments ‘protected'. This was a clear message to the Chinese state that their
interests that had been handed by Mugabe to the G40 faction would be handed back.
Not yet Uhuru
The problem though is that Mnangagwa and the generals are no better than Mugabe; and the
Chinese too are not better imperialists than Britain - all are as equally vile as one
another. In fact, Mnangagwa, the generals and the Chinese have been involved oppressing
and exploiting Zimbabwe's working class (workers and the unemployed) for years. Their
ascension to power will not bring a better Zimbabwe - the faces heading the state have
changed slightly, but the practices are unlikely to change.
Even if the opposition is welcomed into a new transitional government along with Mnangagwa
and his faction in ZANU, those that head the state will continue to exploit the people of
Zimbabwe and democracy may stay limited.
This means if Zimbabwe is to be free, it will have to be freed by the workers and the poor
themselves - the hard and slow task of building a new movement to do this can't be avoided
or abandoned because of the coup. A struggle needs to still be waged against the
Zimbabwean ruling class, its state, capitalism and imperialism if there is to be Uhuru.
https://zabalaza.net/2017/12/01/the-old-man-and-the-coup/
------------------------------
Message: 4
When we talk about people's power we are not thinking about putting our leaders into the
very same structures. We do not want Nelson Mandela to be the state President in the same
kind of parliament as Botha. We do not want Walter Sisulu to be Chairperson of a
Capitalist Anglo-American corporation. ---- So said a United Democratic Front pamphlet
called "Building People's Power" that was produced in the 1980s. It continued, "We are
struggling for a different system where power is no longer in the hands of the rich and
powerful. We are struggling for a government that we will all vote for." The UDF, formed
in 1983, was a coalition of anti-apartheid community, church, worker, youth, sports and
other groups. Along with forces like the "workerist" Federation of South African Trade
Unions it played a key role in resistance.
What the UDF wanted sounds like almost the exact opposite of what actually happened: more
than 20 years later, it is not Sisulu who is chairperson of Anglo-American Corporation,
but the ANC's Cyril Ramaphosa, the Butcher of Marikana, who is a shareholder on the
capitalist Lonmin Corporation. Even though people have the right to vote now, fewer and
fewer people are actually voting because they don't get what they vote for; and power and
wealth are still in the hands of the rich and powerful.
What went wrong, and what lessons we can draw? What are some of the similarities between
the 1980s and today? What is the way forward?
Lessons from the 1984-85 Vaal Uprising for Rebuilding a United Front of Communities and
Workers Today
By Jonathan Payn
This is a lightly edited transcript of a presentation at a workshop hosted by the
International Labour Research & Information Group (ILRIG) and the Orange Farm Human Rights
Advice Centre in Drieziek extension 1, Orange Farm township, south of Soweto, South
Africa, on 24 June 2017. It was attended by a hall full of community and worker activists,
including veterans of the big rebellions of the 1980s.
Comrades, the talk I am giving is based on a paper that I have written. The paper is a
work in progress. I am hoping that, through the discussions we will have, you will give me
some direction. I can see some of the dots that can be connected, but I am missing some.
The written paper is called "Asinamali! Rebuilding a united front of communities and
workers: #GraveFeesMustFall, neoliberalism and the 1984-1985 Vaal Uprising." It's a big
title but we'll unpack it.
When we talk about people's power we are not thinking about putting our leaders into the
very same structures. We do not want Nelson Mandela to be the state President in the same
kind of parliament as Botha. We do not want Walter Sisulu to be Chairperson of a
Capitalist Anglo-American corporation.
So said a United Democratic Front pamphlet called "Building People's Power" that was
produced in the 1980s. It continued, "We are struggling for a different system where power
is no longer in the hands of the rich and powerful. We are struggling for a government
that we will all vote for." The UDF, formed in 1983, was a coalition of anti-apartheid
community, church, worker, youth, sports and other groups. Along with forces like the
"workerist" Federation of South African Trade Unions it played a key role in resistance.
What the UDF wanted sounds like almost the exact opposite of what actually happened: more
than 20 years later, it is not Sisulu who is chairperson of Anglo-American Corporation,
but the ANC's Cyril Ramaphosa, the Butcher of Marikana, who is a shareholder on the
capitalist Lonmin Corporation. Even though people have the right to vote now, fewer and
fewer people are actually voting because they don't get what they vote for; and power and
wealth are still in the hands of the rich and powerful.
What went wrong, and what lessons we can draw? What are some of the similarities between
the 1980s and today? What is the way forward?
The Vaal Uprising, 1984
Conditions in the townships for the black working class in the 1980s were very similar to
the conditions today. Starting in the late 1970s and into the '80s, the economy was in a
recession. If we look at the Vaal, there had been a slump in the steel industry, so there
had been mass retrenchments at ISCOR, the old state steel company, which had a large plant
in the Vaal. This has since been privatised and is now Arcelor-Mittal. The conditions in
the townships, which were already bad, because of the racist policies of separate
development between the black townships and white suburbs, were getting worse and worse.
There was a deepening education crisis that had been exposed in 1976, and black youth were
not happy with the quality of education that they were receiving, with racism in the
schools and so on. There was a severe housing crisis as well. The government was not
building nearly enough of the houses that were required in the urban townships.
And, to top it off, starting in the late 1970s, the local government dealing with black
African townships - the Black Local Authorities and the Bantu Administration Board -
started increasing rents and charges for services like electricity and water included in
the rent. In July 1984, the Lekota town council announced that there would be a rent
increase in the Vaal. The Vaal Civic Association, which was affiliated to the UDF, started
organising an anti-rent campaign throughout August, and, on the 2nd of September 1984, the
different representatives from different committees that were part of the VCA met at the
Roman Catholic Church to plan for a stay-away, or community-based general strike, the next
day, Monday 3rd September.
That fateful day workers responded to the VCA call for a stay-away. Students responded,
there were protest marches and so on and, as some of you comrades will recall, the police
opened fire on marchers, and the situation exploded. People started to fight back and what
started here, in the Vaal, on the 3rd of September, had within a matter of months spread
across the country, beginning the 1984-85 township uprising.
People organised themselves, as they had already been organising for some time, and they
made the townships ungovernable: the BLAs began to crumble, they didn't have any authority
in the townships, and neither did the larger apartheid state. Some areas were made no-go
zones for the state, and people started to take control of the townships and to take back
control of their lives.
#GraveFeesMustFall
That was part of the beginning of the end for the apartheid system. What started on the
3rd September contributed directly to the collapse of apartheid. But more than 30 years
after the Vaal Uprising began, here in the very same region in the Vaal, people have found
it essential to start organising against another rates increase, this time imposed by the
post-apartheid government: grave fee increases.
Starting last year, people have organised against increases in the cost of municipal plots
to bury their relatives. I am sure comrades have heard - it has been talked about on
community radio, and you have heard about the #GraveFeesMustFall campaign, or been
involved - the cost of a plot went from between R400 to R600, to over R1,000. And that is
only if you get buried in your municipality of residence. If you get buried outside your
municipality, it is even more expensive. Because municipal cemeteries are getting full,
sometimes you either have to resort to "reopening," where they bury someone on top of an
old grave, or you have to get buried at another municipality. But if you get buried
elsewhere, costs are huge. So, say for example, that you lived here in Orange Farm, in the
City of Johannesburg municipality, but the local cemeteries are full, then you have to go
to another municipality to be buried, and your family gets charged up to R4,000.
When we ask why the grave fees have become so expensive, there are two main reasons.
First, it seems that the ruling party, the African National Congress, and the state, are
selling land to private individuals to profit by opening private cemeteries. Second, local
government is using every opportunity to squeeze more money out of working class and poor
residents.
If the cemeteries are getting full, then surely the government needs to make more land
available for graves instead of privatising them. What we need are cheap affordable grave
sites, and yet these are getting privatised or commercialised to make a profit. This shows
where the government's priorities lie.
Urban Neo-Liberalism
The problem is linked to the capitalist system of neo-liberalism, which is affecting us,
in every part of our lives. Privatising, commercialising and raising service charges,
which is what the #GraveFeesMustFall campaign is fighting, brings us up against the
problem of neo-liberalism, and how this links to the legacy of apartheid.
It is important to understand what neo-liberalism involves. It is about privatisation,
commercialisation, outsourcing, rising service charges, more cut-offs, flexible jobs - and
removing all barriers to profit-making at the expense of the working class and poor.
Starting in the 1970s, the economy internationally, and also in South Africa went into
crisis. The bosses were not making enough money, they were losing profitability, and one
of the ways that the government tried to get profitability back for the capitalists and
bosses from the 1970s, was to use neo-liberalism.
Neo-liberalism is enforced by states, allied with big companies. It is embraced by the ANC
today, but did not start with it. It started with the racist National Party government,
which moved in the 1970s in the neo-liberal direction. It cut its social spending on
things like education, healthcare, service delivery and so on, and started making local
governments raise more of their own money within the municipal area. So instead of the
national treasury giving enough money to municipalities, local government needed to find
ways to raise money itself to be able to function. This meant charging more and spending
less, and ensuring cost-recovery, meaning recovering money spent on things.
The NP and the Townships
Obviously this approach hits the black working class hardest, whether under the ANC or the
NP. So, in the 1970s, when the apartheid state introduced the BLAs, and allowed black
Africans to vote for local councillors in the BLAs, it also made the BLAs have to raise
their own money for development in those townships, from those same voters.
One of the main ways that municipalities raise money is by charging businesses,
corporations and property owners taxes, based on the value of their property. Another key
way is to charge them for electricity, water and so on. So, when the apartheid state
introduced the BLAs, they insisted the BLAs raise most of their own money.
As you can still see in the townships, there weren't a lot of businesses, there were no
big corporations or workplaces, and property was not worth a lot. The townships exist,
mainly, as reservoirs of cheap labour, neglected by the state. So the BLAs could not get a
lot of money through taxing properties in the townships, unlike, for example, in rich
areas like Sandton, where there are a lot of big corporations, as well as the hub of the
economy, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The apartheid white municipality for Sandton
could cope with falling money from central government quite easily, by raising property
taxes and service charges, on the companies and the JSE and on wealthy residents. This
caused some complaints, but no crisis.
But the BLAs, based in poor and under-developed areas, with a mainly working class and
poor population, did not have these options. So they raised rents. This caused massive
unrest, and sparked the Vaal Uprising, which sparked the township insurrections of the
mid-1980s.
The end of the NP and the apartheid regime, brought some important changes, including the
end of the BLAs and the merger of black African, Coloured, Indian and white local
government into unified municipalities. The formal segregation was ended.
The ANC and Townships
But the new ANC government did not end neo-liberalism. Instead, its reforms are all framed
by neo-liberalism. So, the ANC soon started doing the same thing as the NP when dealing
with the townships. Local government had to raise a large part of its own money; the
amount of money from the national treasury that goes to local government has actually been
cut drastically in the last 20 years.
The result is that local governments, like the City of Johannesburg, raise money and cut
costs by privatising or commercialising services like electricity and water, by
casualising and retrenching workers, by raising charges and cutting people off if they do
not pay. Raising grave fees in the Vaal is just another way for the municipalities to try
raise more revenue, and another way to try create space for business to make profits.
But there is not enough money raised, even with these methods, so the townships remain
poor and under-developed. This continues the legacy of apartheid's separate development,
with its divide between the suburbs and the townships, which can be seen in everything
from streetlights to roads to housing.
This is one of the main injustices that people were fighting against in the townships in
the 1970s and 1980s. The old apartheid urban policies don't exist on paper anymore, but
current neo-liberal policies have the same effect.
Because what happens is that the City of Johannesburg, for example, generates a lot of
revenue in Sandton, in Rosebank, in the wealthier old white suburbs, and that money gets
invested back into the same areas to develop them, to maintain them, to keep them clean
and things like that. But Orange Farm, for example, which is also part of the City of
Johannesburg municipality, is a township and a squatter camp, and the municipality can't
raise a lot of money here and so, it does not spend a lot of money here.
So the legacy of separate development continues. The money raised by the municipality in
the historically (and still mainly) white suburbs stays there, while not enough money is
raised in the historically (and still mainly working class and poor) townships to develop
these areas, and reverse the legacy of separate development.
The Past in the Present
Other objective conditions are very similar today, to what they were in the 1970s and
1980s. Starting in 2008, the global economy started going into crisis again. The thing
about capitalism is that it is full of crises, and the system doesn't really work
smoothly, it is not stable. Every couple of years it goes into crisis, whereby the bosses
are not making enough money and the governments lose out on tax, and so they need to find
ways to increase profitability.
What they do is that they cut wages, they retrench people and they try to make the working
class and the poor pay for the crisis, by shifting the cost of the crisis onto the backs
of the working class. They are trying to make the workers and the poor, in South Africa
the black African and Coloured working class especially, pay for the capitalist crisis in
order to increase the incomes of the bosses and politicians and the ruling class.
Since the 1970s this has involved neo-liberalism. From the 1970s, urban neo-liberalism by
the BLAs worked by increasing the rent. From the 1990s, urban neo-liberalism works by
increasing specific charges, how much you pay for electricity and water - and now, for graves.
Other conditions are also very similar between then and now. We know that there is still a
big crisis in the education system, as we have seen with the Fees Must Fall and Rhodes
Must Fall campaigns: black students are not happy with the content and quality of
education, and with the fact that it is not affordable. Government funding cuts to
universities have led to massive increases in fees, which exclude black working class
students, as well as to outsourcing, which attacks the workers.
We still have a massive housing crisis in this country, despite government building
low-cost "RDP" housing. At the beginning of May 2017, there were big protests in black
African and Coloured townships in the south of Johannesburg like Freedom Park, Ennerdale
and in the Vaal, around housing, because the government is simply not building enough
houses to end the apartheid backlog or deal with the ongoing growth of the towns.
On top of that, there are massive evictions going on in places like the Vaal. What made
rent so key to the BLAs was the fact that a very large section of township houses were
actually state-owned. As far as possible, the apartheid state wanted to prevent blacks
having urban property, rather keeping them on leases. So the BLAs could squeeze people for
rent, and evict non-payers.
Many of these municipal houses have since been quietly privatised, and many have ended up
in the hands of banks, with many people are now paying off bonds to banks. With all the
other costs going up, with the rising unemployment and low and stagnating wages, all
associated with the cheap black labour system inherited from apartheid, and deepened by
neo-liberalism, many can't afford to pay their bonds anymore. With people defaulting on
their bonds, they are facing evictions.
So, the problem of the townships is not solved, but continues.
The Subjective Factor
The objective conditions of the 1970s and 1980s, just before the Vaal Uprising, and those
of today are very similar, but we are not seeing a massive rebellion today. Rent increases
in 1984 were the last straw, they pushed people over the edge - to say, "We can't take it
anymore! We can't afford to pay more for rent, we are starving and we can't afford it" -
and to a social explosion.
But today, despite massive suffering, and sporadic and wide-spread protests, developments
like #GraveFeesMustFall, conditions have not pushed people over the edge, or led to big
campaigns, higher and sustained levels of struggle, or a unification of the different
protests countrywide.
Why not? The reason lies in what we call the "subjective conditions": the level of
organisation and consciousness of the black working class in the townships (and in the
workplaces) are not as developed now, as they were in the 1970s and 1980s. So although the
urban working class and even the unions, are bigger than ever before, they are not as
powerful and active as before.
One reason is that for at least 30 years the black working class has been under attack,
firstly by neo-liberalism, which has tried to make the working class pay for the economic
crisis, and which has gutted movements and unions and deepened divisions, and secondly, by
nationalism.
The working class has been ideologically and organisationally attacked by nationalism.
What do I mean by "nationalism"? Nationalism is the idea that all people in a nation -
regardless of class - need to unite to win state power, through a formation, a nationalist
party. This thinking is at the heart of the ANC, as well as the rival nationalist parties.
Nationalism defines the political task as building a party that can capture the state. The
state can then, supposedly, liberate the oppressed nation. Meanwhile, divisions in the
nation, such as between rich and poor, need to be hushed up.
For the ANC in the 1970s and 1980s, this meant that all movements, including the UDF and
FOSATU, were seen simply as ways to build the ANC, which would carry out a so-called stage
of National Democratic Revolution. The NDR would be capitalism under black majority rule.
Later (some hoped) this would be followed by a second "stage," a transition to socialism.
The core social base of ANC nationalism lay in the black middle class and educated black
intelligentsia.
"People's Power" and the UDF
But the nationalist project involved undermining what people on the ground were actually
doing. From the 1970s, people started organising themselves on a massive scale. They knew,
as the UDF stated, that "the Apartheid state doesn't represent us and have our interests
at heart," and they rejected the BLAs and other cosmetic reforms; they organised to have
more control over their lives.
They did it in workplaces where they started organising democratic trade unions, based on
the factory floor, democratic worker-controlled unions workers built in struggles, which
led to FOSATU. This was a way for workers to try and get more control over their lives,
including in the workplace, and a means to fight exploitation and oppression. The aim was
seen as "workers' control."
FOSATU became the hub of this approach.
And in the townships, people did the same thing, through structures like street
committees, civics, clinics, crèches, student groups, women's groups. Like the new unions,
these engaged with a range of issues, and were usually built by focusing on immediate
issues that affected working class and poor people. So these were involved in fighting
evictions and putting people back in their houses, in campaigning against rent increases
and the cost of busses, and things like that. This is what the VCA was all about. By
focusing on these immediate issues, and by winning small victories, and by linking the
immediate problems people faced to the bigger situation in the country, of racist rule and
capitalist exploitation, they were able to build strong democratic organisations and
conscientise people.
So, when the Vaal Uprising happened, there was already a relatively high level of
organisation amongst the working class, with people organising to try and reclaim power
and some control over their lives. The UDF became the hub of this approach.
When the Vaal Uprising happened, people took this self-organisation to another level: the
BLAs collapsed in many areas, and many townships were made into no-go areas for the
apartheid state. People started to move from this situation of "ungovernability," to what
was called "people's power," where ordinary people started to administer the
neighbourhoods through "organs of people's power."
This could involve street committees, or removing sewerage, or taking control of
sanitation, or trying to restructure education, or building "people's parks," or "people's
education," or anti-crime patrols, which were taking over the function of the police from
the state and making sure that people were not engaging in anti-social behaviour,
drastically reducing rape and murder and violence. In some cases, this involved "people's
courts," to deal with people that infringed on other people's rights, and committed
anti-social acts.
As the UDF noted, the risings starting in 1984 were met with massive repression, including
successive States of Emergency, and this meant you couldn't have the big mass rallies,
community meetings and things like that. This pushed people to organise on a more local
level, and this often meant that the organisations became more democratic, because people
were organising street by street by street, organising street committees and block
committees and so on, because they couldn't have mass community meetings anymore.
So the practice of "people's power" was shaped by the increased repression, and, as the
UDF said, the proliferation and growing role of organs of people's power could be seen as
a "positive growth out of a defensive measure." The UDF noted, for example, "the
development of people's clinics in several townships": "in setting up people's clinics,
and in training comrades in basic first aid skills we are also beginning to plant the
seeds of a new society."
They went on, "We must be clear that we do not aspire at this stage to erect a completely
alternative health structure. The medical facilities, the big hospitals, and the clinics
that do exist in our country should belong to all." So, do not just build people's clinics
on the margins, but also build the power to take control of the major clinics and
hospitals and so on that already existed.
This raised a complex strategic issue:
Should our people's organisations take responsibility for running crèches in our
townships? Or should we put pressure on the government to supply crèches? When local
administration collapses, should our organisations take responsibility for refuse removal?
Or should we demand that the state resumes the service? When people's organisations run
soup kitchens ... are they forgetting the struggle and becoming charity organisations?
The UDF answered: "the removal of rubbish, or the supply of soup kitchens or crèches is
neither reformist or progressive in itself. It depends on the concrete situation and the
way in which these actions are combined with other activities. The supplying of crèches or
of soup must never become an end in itself."
Subordinating "People's Power"
So, people began to build organised power outside and against the apartheid state. The
idea of workers' control was central to FOSATU, and people's power, to the mass base of
the UDF, and in both cases, there were moves to expand these to take more power, as "the
seeds of a new society." In fact, the central UDF structures, which were dominated by the
black middle class, were left behind. It was the ordinary people who started doing this
first, and the UDF's national secretary, Popo Molefe, admitted that the UDF was caught
"trailing behind the masses."
The UDF leadership then started to theorize "people's power." But the leadership was
responding after the fact, since the practice was already developing. Because the UDF
leadership was often aligned to the ANC, it theorised "people's power" in a way that
fitted it into the ANC's nationalist project. So, while they were trying to understand
what was happening on the ground, they also sought to bring the UDF base back under the
control of the UDF leadership, and also tried to link "people's power" to the ANC's NDR
project.
For example, the UDF leadership insisted: "we do not want to tie organisations down in the
endless supply of services if it means they forget the main task of the political
struggle." But then they defined the "main task of the political struggle" as the capture
of state power, by the ANC. This wasn't necessarily the "main task" as defined by the
people on the ground, when they set up "people's power" in the first place. And the UDF
leadership completely ignored the basic contradiction between a project of building
"workers' control" and "people's power" from below, with the daily participation of the
masses, and of mass movements and local structures; and the project of state power, which
is power from above, in the hands of a few, and of parties, which excludes the masses.
The "NUMSA Moment"?
By the end of the 1980s, the ANC had come to play a central role in the struggle, and this
included it taking over the struggle from unions and community movements. And with this,
the projects of workers' control and "people's power" were deeply undermined. When the ANC
was unbanned in 1990, it quickly closed down the UDF, and strengthened its grip on the
unions. After it was installed in government in 1994, it then carried on with the
neo-liberal project and did its best to prevent protests.
Since then, there have been many efforts to rebuild a mass working class protest movement
- one that could tackle the ANC government - but mostly without success. The most recent
is the United Front, started by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, which
broke its ties with the ANC in 2013. So far, all of these efforts have foundered. Why? And
what can we learn from the 1980s about what is needed to rebuild a mass movement?
One of the problems has been the tendency to forget what the 1970s and 1980s showed: you
do not start a movement with grand declarations, but with people's daily struggles, like
around wages or rents or corrupt municipal officials, and then you move from there to the
bigger issues. It is clear from the 1980s that a lot of ordinary working class people
didn't get involved in movements that seemed to operate outside their experiences, where
they didn't feel comfortable with the language and the tone, or felt that the movement was
being led and dictated from outside.
NUMSA sees its United Front as a revival of the UDF process, with the United Front meant
to link workplace and township struggles. But NUMSA has not yet done enough of the hard,
patient work needed to build its credibility through participation in daily township
struggles, reintegrating into these struggles.
Instead it has put its energies into calling for a new workers' party, while presenting
itself as the vanguard of the whole working class. But what FOSATU and the UDF base showed
was that you need to start small, in daily life, to build the basis for a countrywide
movement.
NUMSA is skipping these vital steps, like other post-apartheid initiatives, and does not
see, for example, the importance of issues like #GraveFeesMustFall; and it has also
retained much of the old ANC framework of the NDR, with its focus on capturing the state.
Unfortunately NUMSA has not gone back to its roots in the "workerist" FOSATU, which had
kept the ANC at arm's length, and which rejected the NDR idea on the grounds that the
struggle against apartheid had to be combined with the struggle against capitalism - and
the grounds that nationalist movements betrayed the working class.
Whereas the ANC/Congress tradition said that the main political task was the transfer of
state power from the whites to the majority, FOSATU went further to say you could only
tackle racism if you tackled capitalism as well. This meant that the struggle against
apartheid must at the same time be a struggle against capitalism, and that you needed
strong, independent working class organisations - including worker-controlled unions - to
do this.
In these ways, NUMSA has not really addressed the problem of the subjective conditions.
Instead, it has actually been "trailing behind the masses," as many people in communities
realized that the ANC was capitalist and neo-liberal 20 years ago: NUMSA, which thinks
that it is the vanguard of the working class, has taken a long time to arrive at the same
conclusion.
The Big Lesson
The focus on state power, championed by the ANC and its allies in the UDF leadership - and
in sections of the unions, including the NUMSA leadership today - has led us to where we
are now. But the state is an instrument of minority rule. Whether it is headed by a P.W.
Botha in 1984, or Nelson Mandela in 1994, the state is part of the capitalist system. It
must, in the current period, implement neo-liberalism; it must, in all periods, promote
the interests of the rich and powerful over the interests of the working class and poor.
It ensures that the capitalist class can continue exploiting and oppressing the workers.
Its top-down approach is completely at odds with real workers' control or "people's
power." To get out of this mess, we have to build a powerful working class movement. If we
are going to be able to build such a movement, then we need to go back to basics, back to
what people were doing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and rebuild democratic,
independent unions and working class organisations in the townships, rebuild workers'
control and people's power by grappling with daily struggles.
That means engaging in and building movements that are able to actually win gains, that
improve the conditions in the workplaces and the townships, and that can accumulate
capacity to the point that they can start - as in the 1980s - to replace the existing
system with control from below. A movement that fights to liberate the black working class
- not with the intention of giving that power on a platter to someone else, but to use
organs of workers' control and people's power to take back control of our lives and
society, and to put the economy and the administration of the country under the control of
the working class.
https://zabalaza.net/2017/12/01/lessons-from-the-1984-85-vaal-uprising-for-rebuilding-a-united-front-of-communities-and-workers-today/
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