South African workers refuse to back down

Submitted by Anon on 28 June, 2007 - 12:38

BY Mike Rowley

On 1 June, public sector unions in South Africa called a general strike of over a million public sector workers in response to a derisory pay offer from the government (originally 5.3%, creeping up to 6%, then 6.5%) that would be completely cancelled out by inflation. Public sector workers in South Africa are very poorly paid and have not had a pay rise in real terms for ten years.

Nevertheless, COSATU, the main South African union federation, with 1.7 million members, which played a crucial role in the defeat of apartheid, has for all that time been in an alliance with the ruling African National Congress and the South African “Communist” Party, which holds many leading positions in COSATU and its affiliated unions.

This major challenge to the ANC government is unprecedented and arises out of massive discontent among workers, especially public sector workers, with the lack of progress made in improving living conditions and addressing economic inequality since the downfall of the apartheid dictatorship.

The unions originally demanded a 12% pay rise across the public sector.

They have pointed out that MPs are getting 37% this year and Thabo Mbeki, the ANC President of South Africa, is giving himself 57%, while saying the government cannot afford an above-inflation pay rise for workers! The government also offered a 9% pay rise for “top level” employees and 15.7% for “level one” employees (basically managers).

The government has responded to the strike by sacking more than six hundred “essential-service” workers (mainly nurses but also including some teachers) and threatening to dock the pay of many others. Some workers were not paid by 16 June (public service workers are usually paid on the fifteenth of the month). They also ordered in paramilitary police who have committed acts of violence against picket lines (see the report in the last issue of Solidarity).

Civil servants came out and municipal and transport workers joined the strike in solidarity, bringing the province of KwaZulu-Natal to a standstill (even the taxi drivers there joined the strike). There have been large demonstrations of strikers and their supporters all over the country, despite attempts at police repression: hundreds of thousands of workers participated in 43 union-organised marches.

Over a million workers are on strike and there has been widepread public support, with school students demonstrating in support of striking teachers.

COSATU leaders have spoken about bringing out police officers in the police and prison officers’ union Popcru and even soldiers. More than 60,000 police officers are Popcru members. However, the government has taken legal action against the union, and the union has been banned from supporting strikers until a hearing on Wednesday 5 July in which — entirely against the usual principles of South African law — the onus will be on the union to “show why the order [banning strikes] should not be made final”. The government also took municipal workers’ union Samwu to court, but failed on the ground that solidarity strikes are allowed in South Africa if they affect “the business of the primary employer”. However, the same judge later ruled against the police union.

Despite the massive mobilisation of workers, there remains a danger that union leaders will accept some form of compromise. As part of ongoing negotiations, in the second week of the strike the government brought in “independent mediators”, clearly actually acting for the government, who raised the government’s pay offer from 6.5% to 7.25%. The leaders of all 17 public-service unions rejected this, but in response they dropped their own demand from 12% to 10%. It would seem that there is a hope, at least among the more moderate layers of the union bureaucracy, that they and the government can “meet in the middle” and preserve their political alliance. Union leaders are using moderate language while keeping up the level of action - according to COSATU spokesperson Patrick Craven, “We obviously hope that it won’t be necessary but we are committed to solidarity action”.

It emerged that the government has made another concession in the form of 400 million rand to implement “revised salary structures” which would be occupation-specific, would not benefit all workers and would be subject to staggered implementation from July to January - an attempt to undermine the unions’ demand for an across-the board pay rise. The government undertook not to dock strikers’ pay “except where the no-work, no-pay rule applies” (it applies to teachers); however, as reported above, some strikers have not been paid for this month.

Nonetheless, union leaders have backed down from their earlier unanimous refusal to comtemplate 7.25% and agreed to ballot their members on this proposal. COSATU President Willie Madisha said, “We may agree with some of those areas put on the table by the employer. We may disagree. But it is the membership who will say that. But on the point of 7.25%, we are very clear we want to emphasise that our membership has demanded 10%.” Actually, comrade Madisha, they demanded 12%... union bureaucrats sometimes have short memories!

On 22 June, the government made a “final offer” to the unions of a 7.5% salary rise and a 10% increase in housing allowance up to R500, threatening to withdraw all the concessions it had made if the workers did not give in to this offer. COSATU, now reducing its demand to a 9% rise, was ready as of 27 June to enter another round of negotiations with the government.

COSATU’s backtracking to demand a mere 9% rise was not the only blow against the unity of the strike. On 26 June two affiliated unions representing teachers and service workers, NAPTOSA and HOSPERSA, called their 160,000 members to go back to work, condemning the COSATU leadership as “greedy and opportunist” in their demands, whilst “playing political games” by undermining ANC unity. Meanwhile, the Western Cape section of COSATU briefly declared that it was ending the strike.

However, the union left continues to resist government pressure. Thulas Nxesi, General Secretary of the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, referring to the sacking of 600 strikers, said to a rally of striking teachers in Johannesburg that “The negotiation has become a sham...An injury to one is an injury to all. Dismiss one, dismiss all”. “We are not going to be told by mediators what our demands are”, he added. The teachers and nurses must not be allowed to become isolated by bureaucratic manoeuvrings at the level of COSATU-government negotiation: the solidarity action must be continued, broadened and strengthened!

There is still great potential for broadening the strike. Industrial chemical and petroleum workers in the Solidarity union are also threatening to strike over the failure of their own, separate wage negotiations. They are demanding a 13.5% pay rise (originally 15%) against a slightly increased employer offer of 7% in the industrial chemicals sector, and 12% (against 6.5%) in the petroleum sector. So far only Solidarity has declared an official dispute, but a strike could bring in the other three unions in the sectors, which are involved in the same wage negotiations. Negotiations will resume on Monday and if agreement is not reached a strike could start within 48 hours, according to Solidarity. Glassworkers in Solidarity, who are also involved in unsatisfactory negotiations, could join the strike.

The union’s demands in the glass sector include free training for the unemployed, which the employers have refused to consider although government organisations have agreed to pay for it!

Meanwhile, workers striking in the coal mines in conjunction with the public sector stoppages have rejected a 6% offer and are still holding out for a 15% deal.

This great strike wave has occurred because of the huge and growing frustration of workers with the ANC/SACP/COSATU alliance. Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa in 1994, yet most of the economic inequalities of apartheid remain. Workers rightly accuse the government of promoting only the interests of Black capitalists and ignoring those of the vast majority of Black workers, and even of retaining the repressive apparatus of the apartheid regime to enforce compliance. COSATU membership has halved since 1994 and independent unions have emerged.

It was the struggles of workers that made the apartheid regime untenable as a vehicle for the interests of South African capitalism. The AWL believes that if COSATU and other workers’ organisations had formed a workers’ party, they could have won power in their own right. Instead, most subordinated themselves to Mandela’s African National Congress and the Stalinist South African “Communist” Party.

The role of the “Communist” Party in the popular front government has been brought sharply into focus by the behaviour of its cabinet members, most markedly Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, Minister of Public Services, who has repeatedly called upon the strikers to desist, insisting that “sufficient progress” had been made in wage talks. Other “Communist” Ministers with portfolios such as Security and Intelligence have been complicit in the government counter-offensive. This has galvanised the youth wing of the party, a current hostile to participation in the ANC government and which wants the SACP to stand independently in elections. They reject the party dogma that all that matters is defending the “national democratic revolution” of 1994.

The only real solution to the problems of South Africa lies in a workers’ government, which requires a workers’ party to fight for it. South Africa experienced an incomplete revolution in the overthrow of apartheid. However, as Leon Trotsky put it, “the Revolution, having begun as a bourgeois revolution as regards its first tasks, will soon call forth powerful class conflicts and will gain final victory only by transferring power to the only class capable of standing at the head of the oppressed masses, namely, to the proletariat. Once in power, the proletariat not only will not want, but will not be able to limit itself to a bourgeois-democratic programme.” (Results and Prospects, 1919 preface).

The AWL supported the workers’ movement against apartheid, making direct links between workers in Britain and their comrades in South Africa. This solidarity is just as necessary today. We also advocated an independent workers’ party, backing the socialist Neville Alexander who stood against Nelson Mandela in the 1994 elections.

What’s happened since has vindicated our approach. Workers are still savagely exploited and oppressed 13 years after the fall of apartheid. But they remain the only force that can complete their liberation. There were strikes of two million workers in 2001 and again in 2005. The risen working class is the only force that can complete South Africa’s unfinished revolution. They need our support!

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