Cosatu's Founding Congress - Marxist Workers Party

Durban, 30 November – 1 December 1985

Originally appeared in Inqaba Ya Basebenzi No. 18-19 (February 1986)

“U-Cosatu-Sonyuka naya ’masingena enkululukweni…” (Cosatu – we’ll rise with you as we advance towards freedom…)

These words, sung at the mass rally after the congress, tell more clearly than any description what the founding of Cosatu has meant to millions of workers and black people.

Never has such a powerful working class organisation been seen in South Africa. 34 unions, with a paid-up membership of 449,679 were represented at the start. The target is a membership of one million by the end of 1986, consolidated into ten massive industrial unions.

The capitalists have soberly calculated the danger to themselves:

The country’s new super-federation of unions has taken up the cudgels in declaring it will play an intensive shop-floor and political role in the country. Leaders at the launch said members were demanding greater political involvement by unions as a result of mounting social and political pressures.
(Business Day, 3 December)

Indeed, the resolutions adopted at the congress add-up to the most advanced programme in the history of the workers’ movement in South Africa (and will no doubt be developed further in the struggle). The opening words of the constitution link industrial and political struggle together:

We the trade union representatives here present firmly commit ourselves to a united democratic South Africa, free of oppression and economic exploitation. We believe that this can only be achieved under the leadership of a united working class.

These ideas are a challenge to the regime and to its collaborators. Almost immediately after the congress Cosatu faced a determined counter-attack. Buthelezi declared war on the federation, and in Bophuthatswana the Gencor mining corporation sacked 27,000 workers.

The leadership and activists of Cosatu will be urgently discussing the ways of defending the unity now achieved and how to advance.

The resolutions on a number of key questions clearly explain the class policies that are necessary to go forward. We publish and comment on some of the resolutions in more detail below.

Millions are now looking with new hope to Cosatu to carry forward the struggle for workers power and the socialist goals spell out by Comrade Barayi at the launching rally.

He received thunderous applause when he delivered a militant ultimatum to Botha “to get rid of the passes” in six months, and “to withdraw the troops from the townships before the country burns”. The tremors of this statement are still reverberating throughout the country.

Opposition to capitalism, because of the horrendous life it imposes on the overwhelming majority, was forcefully repeated by the Cosatu CEC at their meeting in February.

As a trade union organisation, Cosatu cannot carry the whole weight of the political struggle on its own shoulders. But it has an enormous potential political power in its own right and beyond this, can serve as a fortress from which can arise a mass ANC on a socialist programme with the strength to overthrow the apartheid regime.

The question now before activists is how Cosatu’s programme will be carried into practice to build the trade unions and the workers’ strength. A programme can remain a piece of paper, or it can be a real guideline for the life and activity of the organisation – giving voice to workers’ real aims and showing how these can be achieved.

What tasks does Cosatu’s programme place before the movement?

A National Minimum Wage

My children are dying too
Look at them
how dull their eyes
how slow their walk and the turning
of their heads
Nothing for them to eat
Can you hear?
They are crying.
Fosatu Worker News, November 1985

These lines by Nise Malange of TGWU, reflect the horrors of the cheap-labour system.

“Cheap labour” sums-up the central purpose of apartheid. It is the key to the capitalists’ profitability. The struggle to end cheap labour – to enforce a living wage – attacks the roots of the whole system.

The resolution on a National minimum living wage shows very clearly how to take up this struggle.

Workers are looking to the CEC of Cosatu to set the specific minimum wage demand as soon as possible. Action around this demand can attract hundreds-of-thousands of unorganised workers into the Cosatu unions – just as the ranks of Sactu swelled in the 1950s around the struggle for ‘£1 a day’.

There is one point in the resolution which, we think, is not formulated correctly and could lead to misunderstanding. Paragraph 2 talks of employers in SA making “unrealistic profits when compared with employers in other capitalist countries”.

Presumably by this the resolution means that the capitalists are making higher profits in SA, and therefore could be paying higher wages without becoming unprofitable.

It is true that the capitalists in South Africa have the advantage of cheap labour, and the ruthless apartheid dictatorship to maintain it. It is true that in the past this enabled them to get a higher rate of profit than capitalists in most other countries.

But for a number of reasons the capitalists have not been investing fast enough in SA for the advantages of cheap labour to keep them ahead. In fact new manufacturing investment has fallen in real terms by 50% since 1981.

Today the profit system is in crisis – in South Africa and in every capitalist country. Factories are closing and little investment is taking place. South Africa is no longer considered a specially profitable place for capitalists to invest. Many are moving their money out of SA to more profitable areas.

But the workers’ demand for a living wage cannot be allowed to depend on the profits made by the capitalists.

It is true, however, that it is easier to get wage increases when the capitalists’ profits are increasing – and much more difficult when profits are going down.

Let us look at the experience of the militant car workers of Port Elizabeth. They were able to make huge gains through strike action in 1979-80 when the economy was making an upturn.

But now during the downturn which has affected the motor industry so badly, many workers have been made redundant and face starvation. The battle of workers for a living wage, rising in accordance with the cost of living, is inevitably a battle against the capitalist class and their system – and needs to be consciously organised on this basis.

Co-ordinate

It is the task of Cosatu to co-ordinate the member unions’ campaigns and to ensure that the employers’ excuses for not paying a living wage are rejected by the workers.

The resolution, by calling for the companies’ books to be opened, and pointing to the need for workers’ control and management to replace bankrupt capitalism, shows the way to a society in which a living wage for every worker can be sustained.

Despite the strength of the unions today, the capitalists continue to slash jobs on every side in order to cut costs, particularly when their profit system is in crisis.

These redundancies spread worsening misery among workers and their families. In the PE-Uitenhage area alone, an estimated 80,000 black workers have lost their jobs during the recession of the last two years. The bosses have used the downturn to inflict defeats on the organised workers.

At Cosatu’s congress, the Sarmcol workers who served as stewards were a living reminder of the bosses’ threat to jobs – and the need to fight back. At Sarmcol the bosses cut-back the workforce from 4,500 in the early 1970s to 1,300 last year – before dismissing the whole black work force when they fought for recognition of Mawu.

The resolution on Unemployment sets out an excellent approach to the struggle to save jobs.

If active campaigns are fought against retrenchments and closures; if whole communities are mobilised together with the workers – it could make it very difficult for employers to throw workers onto the scrapheap.

When retrenchments are forced on the workers, the unions should consider allowing retrenched workers to keep their membership for a period, so that workers in the factories remain alive to the battles which have to be fought.

Organise Unemployed

The formation of a national unemployed workers’ union is a key to the campaign – organising the hundreds-of-thousands of youth who have never had a job, arid bringing them, together with workers made redundant. Such a union will have a particular role during strikes to explain to unemployed workers as a whole the need not to scab.

In the course of such campaigns, the policy and strategy for breaking the bosses’ stranglehold and ending the menace of unemployment could be discussed among thousands of working people.

A magnificent example of how to struggle with local general strikes and community support has been set by the Sarmcol workers in the Pietermaritzburg area. By linking together nationally the different local struggles over victimisations and redundancies, Cosatu could enormously increase the pressure on the bosses to reinstate workers.

Perhaps the most important objective of the congress was spelt out by Cyril Ramaphosa when he said that the politics or the working class has to become the politics of all the oppressed people.

The congress spelt-out some of the fundamental policies that workers are fighting for to liberate themselves – and by doing so, to liberate all the oppressed.

It recognised the central role of the migrant labour system in the oppression of the black working class, and set out the workers’ uncompromising demand for an end to all restrictions on movement.

But even more crucially, the resolution on Migrant Labour commits Cosatu to fight to scrap the pass laws and influx control – massively popular demands.

Comrade Elijah Barayi’s speech at the rally put the question concretely by calling for the passes to be burned if they were not abolished in six months. The ultimatum drew big applause from the assembled workers, showing that the activists are ready to move.

That there could be massive backing internationally for such a campaign was shown when a motion of support was put forward in the British parliament by the Marxist Labour MP, Dave Nellist, and was immediately endorsed by more than 50 other Labour MPs.

Botha has now promised to scrap the dompas by 1 July and end the “pass system” – but workers are sceptical whether he will actually carry out this reform. Statements at the February CEC, and the resolution at the NUM conference, reflect that the mood of the activists and rank-and-file is still for Cosatu to take the initiative in an action campaign to force Botha’s hand and burn the passes if the 1 July deadline is not met.

The congress thus declared war on the oldest instruments of apartheid domination; it equally rejected the new-style schemes for national oppression and division masquerading under the title of Federalism. Instead, Cosatu has taken its stand on the revolutionary-democratic demand for one-person-one-vote in an undivided South Africa.

The resolution on Federalism expresses the rejection by the organised workers of the schemes of every section of the capitalist class – including its so-called “progressive” wing, who know very well that their system would be mortally threatened by majority rule.

Fighting for one-person-one-vote in an undivided South Africa will place Cosatu (like the rest of the mass Congress movement) on a collision course, not only with the apartheid regime but with the whole ruling class. The Cosatu leadership now has a special duty to explain, throughout the working class, the class realities which underlie the struggle for majority rule.

The congress showed, how widespread is the understanding that the working class has to lead all the oppressed to break capitalist power and build a new society, democratically ruled by the working masses.

The issues which the Cosatu leadership now have to take up are those posed by Cyril Ramaphosa – the basis on which Cosatu unions can join forces with political, community and youth organisations around the democratic and socialist programme of the working class.

As he explained the “workers’ political strength depends upon building strong and militant organisation in the workplace”. To be able to carry through bold political campaigns, it is necessary to have the appropriate industrial muscle.

Build a Mighty Movement!

Despite the big gains made by the democratic unions which were reflected by the buoyant mood of the congress, still bigger tasks face the movement. The campaigns on the national minimum wage, for jobs, and the struggle against the pass laws, will attract many unorganised workers to Cosatu.

But the workers will also expect that progress should be made on the crucial question of merging the 34 different unions into ten strong industrial unions as early as possible this year. This is an organisational task which has to be pursued forcefully by the Cosatu leadership with full backing from the members.

Strong unified industrial unions will not only increase the effectiveness of industrial struggles, but also the mobilisation of workers for political actions.

Many hundreds-of-thousands of workers, organised and unorganised, support the UDF. But most of the trade union leadership hesitated to take their forces into the UDF and establish there a clear working class programme and leadership.

As a result, the working class youth emerging as a socialist vanguard within the UDF have not received the backing they hoped for from the workers’ organisations. That must now be remedied.

The decision by the February CEC to initiate discussions with the UDF opens the way to this, and can be taken up by Cosatu organs at all levels.

A firm proposal by Cosatu for a united front on a specific action programme – e.g. for a national minimum wage, defence of jobs, against the passes, for the release of political prisoners, for unbanning the ANC, etc. – would help to focus the energies of the youth and draw the widest sections of the working class into these struggles.

On this basis a call could also be made to Cusa and other unions remaining outside Cosatu to join the campaign. Either these leaders would have to join with us in a common struggle or expose before their members an unwillingness to fight for their interests.

International Links

Through Cosatu the working class has “never before been so powerful and so poised to make a mark in society”, as one of its leaders said.

This has also been recognised by the ruling class. They do not want to allow any breathing space for Cosatu’s challenge to be consolidated. Already, since the congress, the blood of trade unionists has been spilt in cowardly attacks by Buthelezi’s thugs and lumpen police gangs.

This makes all the more urgent the discussion of strategy – and also of Cosatu’s links with the working class internationally.

Understandably there has been unhappiness over the prospect of affiliation to any of the international trade union bureaucracies which claim to represent the workers. The alternatives presented seem to be between the pro-capitalist ‘free’ trade union officials or the Stalinist bureaucracies which were shown in Poland to represent nobody except themselves.

The only way in which genuine international solidarity can be built is on the same foundations as in South Africa – through links at all levels, on a firm policy of workers’ democracy and upon the common aspiration of workers everywhere to end oppression and exploitation through the transformation of society.

Resolutions

NATIONAL MINIMUM LIVING-WAGE

Seeing that:

The majority of workers in SA are earning starvation wages because of the present economic system, constantly rising prices (inflation) is making what little money workers have worth less and less every day.
Employers in SA continue to make massive and completely unrealistic profits when compared with employers in other capitalist countries.
Many millions of workers do not have any minimum-wage protection whatsoever.
The issue of a living-wage is one of the strongest points for organising the unorganised.

We hereby resolve:

That the Central Executive Committee establish as soon as possible what workers regard as a minimum living-wage.
To initiate and conduct – in alliance with other progressive organisations and trade unions in the country – an ongoing national campaign for a legally enforced national minimum living-wage for all workers in SA, by amongst other things fighting in every industry through worker-action and negotiation for that minimum living-wage to be paid by all employers.
To fight for this minimum living-wage to be automatically linked to the rate of inflation.
To struggle for the abolition of GST on all essential items and worker-control over all deductions and UIF, which are being financed by workers but used against workers by the racist and anti-worker government.
To fight to open the books of every organised company to that workers can see exactly how the wealth they have produced is being wasted and misused by the employers’ profit-system, and on that basis can demand their full share of the wealth they have produced. Should the wealth not be there, then it will only prove the inefficiency of employer-management and strengthen the case for worker-control and management of production.

Proposed by CCAWUSA.

UNEMPLOYMENT

Noting:

That under capitalist conditions of exploitation, unemployment is a reality facing every worker at all times.
That these unemployed workers are used as a reserve pool of labour by the bosses to keep wages low and to provide a source of scab labour in the event of strikes.
That the interests of all workers, whether employed or unemployed, are the same – the right to a job at a decent living-wage.
That the unity of employed and unemployed workers is essential in the struggle against scabbing and to advance the struggle for the right to work at a living wage.

…

And further noting:

That in SA there are millions of unemployed – a number that is increasing daily through retrenchments.
That the introduction of new technology for profiteering purposes is making the whole unemployment situation even worse. This is farther aggravated by pressure from employers for higher productivity.
That many are abandoning all hope of finding suitable employment in the immediate future.
That for thousands of school leavers there is virtually no prospect of getting employment and therefore no possibility of drawing UIF benefits.
That unemployed workers are not organised in SA.

Congress therefore resolves to:

Fight as one united force to defend all jobs threatened by retrenchments; fight the closing of the factories; and fight for participation in and control over – right from the planning stage – the implementation of any new technology. And fight all attempts by employers to make workers work harder and attempts to rationalise production, because in the present system this always leads to unemployment.
Campaign for a 40 hour week at full-pay and a ban on overtime.
Fight for free and increased unemployment benefits and that these benefits be paid in SA.
Fight for a subsistence fund, in addition to unemployed benefits, supported by rent, transport and medical concessions for all unemployed workers.
Demand that the state initiate a national programme of public works to provide jobs for the unemployed end to improve services and facilities in working class communities.
Fight for work-sharing on full-pay whenever workers face retrenchments.
Establish & national unemployed workers’ union as a full-affiliate of the new federation to struggle for the realisation of the right to work and security.
Struggle for a fair, democratic and rational political and economic system which can guarantee full-employment for people in Southern Africa at a living wage.
To give full support to efforts by retrenched and dismissed workers to establish co-operatives based on the principles of Cosatu.

Composite resolution.

MIGRANT LABOUR

This federation noting:

That pass laws were legislated by the apartheid regime to control and dehumanise the lives of the working class in SA.
That pass laws and influx control served to strengthen the hand of capital to exploit and oppress the working class in its endeavour to generate super-profits.
That the economic and social hardships of the migrant labour system includes the break-up of family life and relationships.
That the migrant labour system seeks to further divide the oppressed and exploited workers into permanent residents and migrants.
That if the apartheid regime persists threatening to repatriate migrant workers to the homelands and neighbouring countries

Resolves to:

Fight for the scrapping of the migrant labour system including pass laws and influx control.
Fight for the right of workers to seek work wherever they wish and to reside with their families wherever they wish and that proper housing will be provided for them.
Call for a national strike should the apartheid regime carry-out its threat to repatriate any migrant workers.

Proposed by NUM.

FEDERALISM

This Congress noting that:

South Africa’s bitter history of industrialisation and exploitation has forged one nation.
That attempts by the apartheid regime to create and reconstruct separate states and nations which will be combined into some federal system are fraudulent and undemocratic.
That the intention of the proposed federal system is to maintain power and control in the hands of the present minority and perpetuate an oppressive and exploitative system.
That the diamond of all progressive and democratic forces in South Africa is for a unitary state based on one-person-one-vote.

Resolves to:

To reject as a total fraud the new proposed federal solution.
Re-affirms our belief in a unitary state based on one-person-one-vote.
Work towards the destruction of all barriers and divisions so that we are united irrespective of language, race or creed.

And further believes that:

Only with the total unification of all people into South Africa will we be able to rebuild our rich land and make a real contribution to breaking the chains of poverty and economic exploitation that bind Africa.

Proposed by SFAWU.

WOMEN

This federation noting:

That women workers experience both exploitation as workers and oppression as women and that black women are further discriminated against on the basis of race;
The women are employed in a limited range of occupations, doing boring and repetitive work with low and often unequal pay;
That due to overtime and night-work woman workers are subjected to many dangers while commuting;
That women workers often suffer sexual harassment in recruitment and employment;
That most women workers in South Africa lose their jobs when they become pregnant;
That pregnant women often have to work under conditions harmful to themselves and their unborn child.

Resolves to fight:

Against ell unequal and discriminatory treatment of women at work, in society and in the federation;
For the equal right of women and men to paid work as an important part of the broader aim to achieve full and freely chosen employment;
For equal pay for work of equal value – the value of work must be determined by organised woman and men workers themselves;
For the restructuring of employment so as to allow women and men the opportunity of qualifying for jobs of equal value;
For childcare and family facilities to meet workers’ needs and make It easier for workers to combine work and family responsibilities;
For full maternity rights, including paid maternity and paternity leave and job security;
For the protection of women and men from all types of work proved to be harmful to them, including work which interferes with their ability to have children;
Against sexual harassment in whatever form it occurs;
For adequate and safe transport for workers doing overtime and night work.

Now commit itself:

To actively campaign in support of these resolutions;
To negotiate agreements with companies wherever possible as part of this campaign;
To actively promote within its education programme, a greater understanding of the specific discriminations suffered by women workers and ways in which these can be overcome;
To establish a worker-controlled sub-committee within its educate programme to monitor progress made in implementing this resolution and to make representations to the education committee;
To budget for the workings of such a sub-committee;
To actively promote the necessary confidence and experience amongst women workers so that they can participate fully at all levels of the federation.

Proposed by CCAWUSA.