Originally published in Inqaba ya Basebenzi No. 20/21 (September 1986).
26 September 1986
Cosatu has renewed the hopes of millions of workers throughout Southern Africa on account of its potential to realise the as yet unfilled aspirations of the workers… Today as another State of Emergency engulfs the country, Cosatu through its affiliates has shown that no matter how many people are detained, no matter how harsh the repression, we will not be silenced. For ours is the voice of a new society free from political, social and economic bondage.
– from discussion paper issued by the Cosatu Executive, August 1986, entitled “The Way Forward – establishing tasks and priorities”.
These words accurately describe the impact of Cosatu’s creation, and the enormous potential it has to grow into a force of millions, to overturn completely the present relationship of power in society.
To the black working class it represents more than simply trade union unity and greater bargaining weight against the bosses – it is a vehicle for building their political power also, turning the strength of mine, factory and shop organisation to the creation of a mighty working class Congress movement which can defeat apartheid and capitalism.
Cosatu leaders face a big challenge indeed to turn this potential into reality. The Executive’s discussion document takes up this challenge in a very positive way, and lists many of the detailed tasks which must be carried out to build Cosatu.
The foundation of the workers’ strength is organisation in the workplace. This the document emphasises. It follows that the Cosatu locals must link together the organised workplaces, through elected representatives, in the most direct way possible. That means locals based in the first instance on particular industrial localities. From here the links can be made with local youth organisations, as well as other community bodies, to develop working class leadership in all the day-to-day struggles.
Workers become active in organisation according to practical need. Various overlapping structures have proved necessary: for example a national shop stewards’ council within an industrial union (as in Mawu); at the same time participation of the same shop stewards in inter-union forums of Cosatu at different levels; at the same time links with local youth organisations through joint shop stewards’ local committees or other similar bodies; at the same time street and area committees in the townships; civics; UDF locals, and so on.
This diversity is necessary because of state repression – but it also shows how thorough and many-sided is the mobilisation now of the working class, beginning to take its fate fully into its own hands.
Cosatu has to build from the industrial plane. The further it reaches beyond this, the more it reaches directly into the realm of politics within the communities, the more its relationship to the UDF and ultimately the ANC will have to be clarified in practice.
The clarification of Cosatu’s political direction through organisation and discussion round the workplaces, drawing in the local working class youth, is the necessary foundation for that.
Cosatu can build its strength and realise the hopes placed in it only if the maximum organising initiative is encouraged among the rank-and-file workers: “Every Cosatu member a union organiser! Organise the unorganised!”, the Executive’s document declares. The target of a million workers organised can still be met in 1986.
The document correctly explains that vigorous national action campaigns by Cosatu – for a living wage, for the right to work, to organise the unemployed, for democratic rights and an end to apartheid – will be the key in mobilising thousands of workers (and youth) to recruit hundreds of thousands and later millions more.
To make these campaigns a success, it will be necessary to have not only attractive slogans, but a clear and convincing explanation showing how the workers’ demands can be achieved.
In this respect, the Executive’s discussion document is weakest. While expressing Cosatu’s stand for a society free from oppression and exploitation – which means in reality a socialist society of workers’ democratic rule – the document avoids referring to socialism at all, and fails to set out a clear socialist policy on the campaigning issues.
This is strange, since the debate concerning redistribution of wealth in a future South Africa at the Cosatu Congress showed the delegates were united in the view that capitalism should go. Cosatu President Elijah Barayi was reported worldwide as calling for a socialist South Africa where the monopolies would be nationalised under a workers’ government.
Recently Mawu’s conference, held under the State of Emergency crackdown, endorsed the goal of a “democratic socialist society”. This is obviously what most workers want.
However, the Executive’s generally excellent document calls only for “a democratic alternative to ‘free enterprise’.” It says that the cause of plant closures is “apartheid mismanagement of the economy” whereas it should explain that capitalism itself is the cause of the economic crisis. Yes, the recession is partly caused by black labour being cheap under apartheid, which further limits the market. But SA capitalism has no alternative to cheap labour; capitalism depends on the protection of the apartheid state to maintain cheap labour.
It is not merely a question of a struggle “for the redistribution of profits”, but to end the system of private profit – and so to allow the resources of the country and the labour of its people to be put fully to use for the common wealth of all.
While we struggle for every additional rand in the wage packet, for every hour off the working week, and for every job that can be saved or created – we must explain that a living wage, the right to work, and all the other essential reforms needed by the mass of our people can be won and secured only by defeating apartheid and capitalism and building in their place a socialist system.
With that aim boldly declared and explained in detail, the rank-and-file workers, youth and all Cosatu activists will grow immeasurably in confidence and determination, and fight with all the more conviction for the immediate goals which Cosatu sets.
© Transcribed from the original by the Marxist Workers Party (2021).
