A paradox of victory: COSATU and the democratic transformation in South Africa, by Sakhela Buhlungu, Durban, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2010, 210 pp., £33.95 (paperback), ISBN 978186914187
Where is South Africa heading? ‘Black Economic Empowerment’, corruption in high quarters, world-market adjustment, and neo-liberal economic policies have reduced the international appeal of the African National Congress (ANC-)led regime in the post-apartheid period. Some of those who have remained committed to the South African experience have pointed to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the trade union allies of the ANC, as a redeeming feature. Did they not play an historical role, for instance, in offering leadership to the anti-Mbeki forces at Polokwane, the ANC national conference in 2006? (See, for instance, Southall and Webster 2010.) Does not COSATU's presence suggest that the direction of South Africa's politics continues to be contested?
By focusing on the erosion of the democratic traditions within the unions after apartheid the author of this important book raises serious questions about such a reading of the South African experience. It is a major contribution. While concluding that COSATU remains ‘extremely powerful and influential’ (p. 177) it points to the significant organisational weaknesses that afflict the federation and its affiliates, and in particular, the lack of workers' control. Parts of the critique have been voiced by others, for instance, by scholars associated with the Centre for Civil Society in Durban (See Ballard et al. 2006). Buhlungu's book, however, carries special authority because it speaks not only from a massive amount of research, primarily within SWOP, the Sociology of Works Programme at Witwatersrand University, but also from a history of trade union activism, including with the Paper Printing Wood and Allied Workers Union (PPWAWU), a COSATU affiliate.
The study underscores the decisive contribution of COSATU and the unions in general to liberation, elaborating for instance the non-hierarchical egalitarianism that characterised the fight against apartheid. The problem begins in the 1990s with the coming to power of the ANC. At one level COSATU continues to be spectacularly successful, ensuring the introduction of advanced labour legislation and social policies that seek to rectify the extreme racial injustices of the apartheid era. It establishes institutions which are supposed to ensure trade union influence on the exercise of government power, including NEDLAC, the National Development and Labour Council. Above all, COSATU is assured high-level influence through the ‘Tripartite Alliance’ with the ANC and the SACP, the South African Communist Party, and an active part in ANC election campaigns, for instance, the 2011 local government elections.
Yet, while gaining in political influence COSATU is simultaneously losing ‘organisational power’. This is the ‘paradox’ which is highlighted in the title of the book. Why is this so? During the struggle against apartheid, the author suggests that ‘activism was driven by notions of solidarity, altruism and sacrifice’ while in the post-apartheid period ‘activism is shaped by individualism and a quest for upward social mobility’ (p. 18). In particular, and paradoxically, COSATU's phenomenal increase in size is partly explaining the decay. Unlike unions elsewhere, not least in the USA and Europe which have suffered a sharp decline, COSATU grew rapidly in the 1990s. Pre-existing restrictions were removed on general organising and more specifically on the unionisation of public sector workers. The peak seems to have been reached in the early 2000s (see Table 8.1, p. 172). The expansion, however, meant the collapse of the careful union education and training that, according to the author, had characterised unions in an earlier period. A decline in workers' control went hand in hand with the rapid centralisation of power in a few powerful leaders who were ‘increasingly alienated from the rank and file’ (p. 168). Earlier attempts to organise those who were unemployed or engaged as domestic and agricultural workers were abandoned. A new focus on workplace-specific demands replaced a broader orientation. The new leaders had access to power and privileges with opportunities not just for specific benefits in their capacity as leading unionists but for upward mobility in both business and politics. An earlier ‘alignment’ that had existed, according to Buhlungu, between ‘rhetoric and practice’ was eroded; radicalism was replaced by demobilisation and cynicism (p. 170).
My problem with this otherwise excellent and well-documented book is its failure to discuss the responses, demands and divisions within the union movement and within the ANC leadership over the direction of development in the post-apartheid period. My own experience is mostly with the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU). The author correctly sees the loss of organisational power as closely related to South Africa's entry into the global economy and its effects on the restructuring of the local labour market, including job insecurity, labour force segmentation, and the failure of unions to reach out to the growing population with precarious forms of employment in the ‘informal economy’. Increasingly, COSATU is reduced to an organisation of those with permanent jobs, and is ‘patently inadequate’ in meeting the crisis of the old, ‘industrial union model’ (p. 173). He also argues that South Africa's adjustment to globalisation goes hand in hand with the rapid diffusion of new managerial ideologies. This may all be true. But how did the unions react? There is no account of COSATU's efforts to influence the choice of policy and the dramatic differences between affiliates. In the introduction the author says that he wants to explain why unions maintain ‘a keen interest in politics, specifically the politics of liberation and development’ (p. 1). Do we really get an answer? There is no discussion of divisions over policy, beyond the questions of rhetoric or careerism.
Workers' capacity to exercise power democratically has to be related to the substantive issues that are being contested, both within the unions and within the Tripartite Alliance. The author shows convincingly how the balance of forces, globally, has tilted in favour of capital, favouring the ‘deregulation’ of labour markets, informalisation and flexibility. But he takes little interest in the divisions over policy that this shift generated in the ANC camp, including in COSATU and its affiliates. Does he take the shift as given? Does he see no alternative?