By Norm Dixon
SOWETO — As preparations for South Africa's first non-racial election gather pace, 1600 delegates attended a special Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) congress on September 10-12. Discussion focused on COSATU's role in the transition to democracy and its relationship with the future African National Congress majority government.
The militant trade union federation, which represents 1.3 million members, played a decisive role in the mass struggles of the late '80s that forced the National Party to buckle and unban the ANC in 1990 and begin talks with the liberation movement to end apartheid. The enthusiasm and determination with which the participants threw themselves into the debates made it plain that COSATU will not allow itself and the interests of the millions of workers and poor the organisation represents to be sidelined by any future government.
For Australian unionists raised on the carefully choreographed "debates" and the mind-deadening official speeches of ACTU congresses, a COSATU congress is an eye-opener. The spirit of resistance to injustice, racism and capitalist oppression was evident throughout. The walls were decked with a dozen or so huge union banners demanding an end to apartheid, housing and jobs for all, and socialism.
Delegates sported bright red caps and T-shirts emblazoned with the emblems of COSATU, the South African Communist Party and the ANC. One of the most politically inspiring sights I have ever witnessed was to see the entire Soweto Vista University stadium erupt into defiant yet joyous choruses of freedom songs, the participants bobbing and weaving as they danced the ubiquitous toyi-toyi.
The spirit of democracy too was pervasive. Delegates spoke their minds. They thought nothing of calling on their leaders to explain their actions or justify their arguments. If they didn't like something, they got up and said so. While the delegates clearly respect the COSATU leadership, they do not hold it in awe and are prepared to challenge it if they feel it necessary.
Opening the congress, ANC president Nelson Mandela told participants that COSATU was the "voice of the deprived and the destitute". The ANC-COSATU-SACP alliance realised that the political defeat of apartheid had to be broadened "into a process of empowerment and the reconstruction of the socioeconomic life of the people". The content and form of the changes that take place must ensure that the South African people increasingly become part of the process of change.
"The April 27 election must therefore open the road for a continuous transformation of society. This cannot happen unless it is underpinned by a reconstruction and development program which unleashes a dynamic process of change in the condition of life for all our people ... Without such a program, the democratic transformation ushered in by the April 27 election will only bring the formal aspects of democracy", he said.
Mandela promised that an ANC government would give the highest priority to entrenching the rights of workers in a bill of rights that will be part of the new constitution.
He also pledged that the "organs of civil society" — trade unions, "civics" (community organisations), women's groups, youth groups — would be involved in the process of decision-making and implementation. "Our vision of democracy as a dynamic and continuously empowering process places great reliance on the development and independence of organs of civil society. These have a special capacity to breathe life into our vision of participatory democracy."
Acknowledging that there were growing fears that the ANC may "sell out" once in power, Mandela put aside his prepared speech and advised the delegates that the defence of workers' rights and aspirations lay in their hands. He reminded them that in many parts of Africa, liberation movements had betrayed the working class at the moment of victory. If COSATU relaxed its vigilance, the movement's sacrifices might be in vain: "If an ANC government does not deliver the goods, you must do what you did to the apartheid regime", he urged the delegates. These remarks were met by a huge burst of applause.
He then directed some advice to the ANC's communist allies. He said that even though the ANC had fought and suffered together with the SACP to end apartheid, and he did not think it was possible for the ANC to betray the workers and the poor, "it would be foolhardy for the SACP to become complacent".
SACP general secretary Charles Nqakula, addressing congress on September 11, described Mandela's remarks as a lesson "not so much for COSATU but for the ANC leadership itself".
"When the ANC speaks to workers, then the ANC finds its own feet, its own vocation. It stops being the ANC just of the World Trade Centre, the ANC of the carefully worded diplomatic statement, the ANC balancing on an awkward policy matter in front of TV cameras ...
"An ANC that remembers its working-class origins becomes again the ANC of the Defiance Campaign ... the ANC that ordinary working-class people have built in struggle over many decades. It becomes the ANC that will win the forthcoming elections. It becomes the ANC that we will need in the years to come ... To forget the workers is to forget what the ANC itself is all about."
"The formal outline for political democracy is beginning to emerge in our country", Nqakula told the delegates. "But when it comes to the content of that democracy, everything remains at stake. The neo-liberals tell us that we must not overburden democracy with too many popular expectations.
"They tell us that democracy is simply elections every four or five years ... We say to the neo-liberals, democracy is much more than periodic, one-person one-vote elections. Democracy is about the empowerment of the people. It is about jobs, houses, electricity, running water, decent health care, free education, the emancipation of women."
Nqakula reminded delegates that to "deepen, consolidate and defend democracy in our country means advancing to socialism".
The special congress debated the controversial draft Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) which some on the South African left have condemned as a social contract like those which nobbled the trade union movement in Britain and Australia.
COSATU leaders argued this was not the case. The RDP represents a fighting platform around which democracy would be deepened and consolidated and around which the mass organisations of South Africa's oppressed would be mobilised in real struggle for their needs and aspirations. It would guide South Africa from apartheid to freedom, COSATU's leaders promised. The RDP would bind the ANC, once elected, to deliver real change for the poor.
The RDP's main emphasis is on job creation through a public works program, housing for all, provision of running water and electricity for all, expansion of public education, mass health care and land redistribution. It demands the restructuring and democratisation of the state. In macro-economic terms, it says economic growth must be generated through the massive redistribution of wealth from the wealthy minority to the impoverished majority.
The draft RDP is only a "framework" at the moment, congress was told. A series of consultations and conferences with civics and other sectors of the mass democratic movement must take place to flesh out the specific demands of the document. "When completed, [the RDP] will set out a series of actions and targets for delivery within a specific time frame", the COSATU resolution on the RDP said.
Despite the RDP's endorsement by congress, it was not all plain sailing. Congress delegates assailed a clause of the RDP which stated: "Macro-economic stability is vital to the success of our programme".
It has been reported that this section of the draft RDP, which is a joint document of the ANC-COSATU-SACP alliance, was inserted at the insistence of the ANC's Department of Economic Planning. A delegate from the metalworkers union, NUMSA, summed up the fears of the delegates: "If we accept section 8, there will ne no RDP. When the workers want this, the Government will say, 'Remember macro-economic balance'. When we want that, the Government will say, 'Remember macro-economic balance'." The congress resolution on the RDP demanded that "references to macro-economic stability should be substantially reworked".
In another far-reaching decision, the congress agreed to release at least 20 of its most experienced and tested leaders to stand as ANC candidates for the April 27 election. COSATU president John Gomomo said this would ensure that workers' rights are not in any way compromised in the constituent assembly or by the interim government.
All 20 COSATU leaders are virtually guaranteed election. The federation has indicated it wants its former leaders to be given the ministerial posts of labour, trade and industry, minerals and energy, and control over key state enterprises. Among those selected to enter parliament are: COSATU general secretary Jay Naidoo; COSATU first vice-president and SACP member Chris Dlamini; and NUMSA general secretary, national leader of the civic movement, and SACP leader Moses Mayekiso.
The special congress elected the federation's serving assistant general secretary, Sam Shilowa, to the post of general secretary. Shilowa is also a central committee member of the SACP and serves on the SACP's team at the multiparty constitutional negotiations. The congress elected the Clothing and Textile Union's Connie September as COSATU's second vice president, the first woman to represented on the federation's top leadership.
Shilowa and the five new office-bearers elected by the congress have all risen from the shop floor. Soon after his election, Shilowa told the Johannesburg Saturday Star that COSATU is "practising our policy of saying that we need worker leadership to be able to take charge and run the organisation. It also means those people out there can see that when we are talking of skills and experience we don't mean academics. When we talk of intelligence we don't mean in terms of being a university graduate."
Other decisions included:
- launching a voter education campaign spearheaded by COSATU to ensure a massive election victory for the ANC;
- ;a campaign to increase COSATU membership;
- the convening of a Workers Summit to focus on worker rights in a new constitution before the April 1994 elections and a broad conference of the left, convened with the SACP, before the end of 1994;
- opposition to unilateral restructuring of the economy by the de Klerk regime prior to the April elections.