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INTERNATIONAL

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The crisis in Zimbabwe and Lessons for workers

As we go to press, it has been announced that Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party has narrowly won the Zimbabwe Parliamentary elections. This article was written earlier and gives a background to the elections and the political and the underlying economic crisis.

By (Dr) Dale T McKinley, Johannesburg Central branch of the SACP

The last several months have seen a worsening of Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis, a crisis that is now beginning to have effects beyond the borders of our northern neighbour.

The working class, however, need to go beyond the sensationalist media headlines to understand fully the roots of the present Zimbabwean crisis. We need to take a much closer look at the politics of the ruling Zanu-PF and its leader, Robert Mugabe, and at class relations in the country since independence in 1980.

The Zimbabwean crisis offers key lessons for South African organised workers, who are themselves battling against massive job losses, neo-liberal economic policies and the effects of decades of apartheid-capitalism.

A brief survey of Zimbabwe today shows clearly that Zanu-PF and Mugabe have lost touch with the realities of the people on whose behalf they are supposed to be governing:

The human costs of increased poverty are beginning to overwhelm the historic resilience of the Zimbabwe people.

In addition to the horrendous economic and social conditions now prevailing, the political situation is not much better. Faced with parliamentary elections and a new mass-based opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Mugabe has instituted a reign of intimidation and terror on all those - whites, blacks, rural and urban workers and farmers - who would dare oppose Zanu-PF's hold on power.

The constitution has been changed many times, in order to meet the political whims of Mugabe and his corrupt bureaucratic elite. The important issue of land redistribution is now being used as a desperate last-ditch political weapon to fend off growing discontent and anger from workers and the poor- as well as the black middle class and sectors of the white population - at the government's political authoritarianism and economic incompetence.

Socialists and organised workers, who are rightfully concerned with this growing crisis, should not adopt simplistic and sensationalist perspectives that seem to have dominated recent commentaries. The key question for us is: why did a once popular and generally progressive party like Zanu-PF end up as an organisation of a bureaucratic elite removed from the masses?

Historical evidence gathered about activities in (then) Zanu's guerrilla base camps in Mozambique during the late 1970s, would strongly suggest that Mugabe and his lieutenants were responsible for the liquidation of much of the ‘socialist left' within Zanu at base camps in Mozambique.

Such actions heralded what was to become a hallmark of Mugabe's reign - using whatever means necessary to ensure that his own position and that of trusted lieutenants would not be challenged from the left, intellectually or organizationally, either within Zanu or from any opposition.

A few years later Mugabe unleashed a war of vengeance against any and all 'opposition' from within the minority Ndebele people who had fought with Zapu in the liberation war. His 5th Brigade killed close to 20,000 rural people in Matabeleland to enforce subjugation to Zanu and usher in a period of unchallenged political and economic hegemony for himself and his clique of comprador capitalists. (The Report of the Catholic Bishops’ Peace and Justice Commission documents this).

By the late 1980s all pretence to progressive (not to mention socialist) policies had been thrown out of the window. Mugabe and his cronies accepted the IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programmes that were dangled in front of them as another means to consolidate their class rule.

All the while since independence, Mugabe showed little interest in land redistribution for the rural poor, although there were ample opportunities to make use of fallow land already owned by the state. Nor did he back the nascent land invasions by peasants and genuine war veterans that regularly took place and make proper use of land acquired through the use of available funds.

Instead, most of the 'redistributed' land went to Mugabe's cronies, which included selected 'war veterans'. These people set about reinforcing rural class oppression through their championing of 'indigenous capitalism' - the creation and sustenance of a new, black bourgeoisie, wholly symbiotic with the interests of international capital.

Throughout the 1990s Zimbabweans experienced the seriously negative effects of the mutually reinforcing structural adjustment programmes, about which Mugabe and Zanu-PF had said not a negative word for years. They suffered too from the increasing class oppression by Mugabe and his bureaucratic/indigenous bourgeoisie, who took all the goodies for themselves. These people intimidated and harassed any and all political opponents, particularly socialists and other progressive forces in civil society.

Mugabe and his cronies ran the economy into the ground through their own voracious accumulation, in conjunction with international finance and mining capital. They enjoyed the benefits of a capitalism that saw every social service rendered almost inoperable, while vast amounts of public money were spent on luxury consumption, paying off corrupt politicians and capitalists.

In one case up to Z$5 billion of public money was 'lost' on one Roger Boka, a close Mugabe confidant who was a champion of 'indigenous capitalism' and a virulent reactionary who vilified all - black and white - who stood in his way.

For most of the 1980s and 1990s, Mugabe and his clique acted as the willing agents of imperialism. Yet all the while they were masquerading as progressive 'nationalists', trying to ward off the imperialist onslaught. They cynically manipulated popular discontent when deemed necessary for their own class preservation but always showing their true colours by striking deals when beneficial for their own class interests (not those of the Zimbabwean people).

Zanu-PF's misrule has led to the formation of the first substantive political opposition party since independence in 1980 - the MDC. Born out of the numerically small, but economically powerful, Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), the MDC has taken centre-stage alongside the ruling party in what has become a high-stakes political power struggle.

Elections for the 150-member national parliament are to take place on 24 and 25 June. Increasing numbers of Zimbabweans are pinning their hopes for change on the MDC winning these, giving them a platform to then challenge for the Presidential elections scheduled to take place in 2002.

Presenting itself as a 'social democratic' organisation of civil society and social movements, the MDC has promised that it will:

This raises another fundamental question that many South African comrades have been asking as well. How does the MDC leadership, headed by former ZCTU general secretary Morgan Tsvangirai, plan to fulfil these promises while pursuing a contradictory macro-strategy that seeks to reconcile the priorities of capitalism with the priorities of the mass of workers and poor?

Echoing similar statements by past and present ANC leaders, Tsvangirai has been quoted as saying that the MDC "can't be pure ideologically because of our broad orientation". But surely the cry of the Zimbabwean masses is not for ideological purity but for concrete, feasible policies that are rooted in addressing, fundamentally, their own material and social conditions.

In the late 1990s, people of Zimbabwe, particularly the organised working class, began to organise against their own class oppression, from both the Mugabe capitalists and international imperialism and from the horrendous decline in the standard of living.

Mugabe then turned to the oldest trick in the book to ward off any substantive challenge to his personal hold on political power and the class interests of the 'new' bureaucratic/indigenous bourgeoisie who had benefited most from almost two decades of his 'nationalist', pro-people charade.

He has used the land issue, knowing full well its emotive economic and historical significance, to deflect the rising political challenge to his personal and class rule. In doing so, he has paid millions of Z$ to so-called 'war veterans' to form gangs of thugs who act as if they are the vanguard of a renewed popular offensive to reclaim land taken by colonialists and still 'owned' by a small group of predominantly white farmers.

It is instructive to note that the workers, in both urban and rural areas, have been the first to see this latest Mugabe opportunism for what it is. They have thus rallied around a political opposition whose emergence is the main reason behind the staged land invasions.

They have been the ones calling for radical land redistribution for years. They understand that this cannot be either sustainable nor empowering for the landless as long as it is being used as a politically obtrusive and opportunist class instrument to ensure continued capitalist relations of production and distribution, whether in urban or rural areas.

In other words they understand the need for fundamental political change in Zimbabwe, if there is going to be any 'people's' land redistribution and a shift in the economic priorities of a developing country with the means to achieve economic self-sufficiency and political independence from the imperialists. This is true even if the MDC opposition leaders are themselves are caught up in the vortex of considerations of political power and class politics

To call Mugabe a 'friend of the poor' and as part of the 'oppressed', as some in South Africa have been doing, is not only objective nonsense. It is akin to saying that the poor and oppressed of Zimbabwe are both ignorant and misdirected in their consistent and sustained opposition to capitalist oppression, in whatever form it presents itself.

Those presently invading farms and beating up opposition supporters are not representative of the interests of the majority of the poor and oppressed, any more than Mugabe and his clique is representative of the interests of most Zimbabweans. It is quite clear that they are there solely to carry out the political machinations of a man who cannot imagine losing power, whatever the cost to the 'people' he has used for so long.

Organised South African workers should avoid entertaining the argument that the South African liberation movement and progressive internationalists must defend Mugabe and his cronies.

Most often such an argument is made on the pretext that the imperialist agenda of name-calling and intervention must be opposed and that therefore support must be given to Mugabe and Zanu-PF.

Workers have to ask themselves: since when has this not been the imperialists' agenda with all the petty-bourgeois bureaucrats in the developing world once they have outlived their usefulness?

To support Mugabe now is to abandon the anti-capitalist struggle being waged by the Zimbabwean masses and, even worse, to make the fundamental mistake of confusing a reactionary, comprador bourgeois nationalism with genuine people's power and anti-imperialism.

The upcoming parliamentary elections - assuming that they are conducted without massive rigging and intimidation - will partly answer the question as to whether or not the MDC can launch a serious electoral challenge to the Mugabe regime.

But the longer-term challenge, a challenge applicable beyond the borders of Zimbabwe, remains the degree to which popular forces are willing and able to organise and mobilise, to contest fundamentally the capitalist system and its perpetrators.

That is the fundamental lesson for all workers (whether Zimbabwean or South African).

International worker (and poor) solidarity and intensified class struggle are the best means to both transcend the Zimbabwean crisis as well as to avoid the same at home.

17th ICFTU World Congress a resounding success

By Simon Boshielo, COSATU International Officer

1200 delegates from all corners of the globe gathered at Durban's International Convention Centre from 3-7 April to mark another milestone in the history of trade unionism - the Congress of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). Its theme was "Globalising Social Justice: Trade Unionism into the 21st Century".

The COSATU delegation included President Willy Madisha, General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, other office bearers and delegates from the affiliates.

The Congress was historic for several reasons:

All these reasons show that the international trade union movement recognises South Africa for its transformation from apartheid to democracy and for the organisational maturity and political artillery that COSATU can provide to a world organisation of ICFTU’s magnitude.

The 1997 COSATU Congress resolved that participation was not only about being members of a world body and therefore feeling good. Instead our affiliation should go alongside building partnerships and alliances in order to give ICFTU a progressive outlook.

This meant that those like-minded organisations, such as the CUT of Brazil and KCTU of Korea amongst others, should broaden their networking with other progressive trade unions to shape a programme and build a progressive and radical content into ICFTU.

What did the congress achieve?

The success of the Congress cannot be measured by the logistical and administrative organisation. The cornerstones of a successful Congress are the nature of resolutions and political discussions. To a reasonable extent it succeeded. It adopted progressive resolutions aimed at curtailing the global capitalist assault on the working class.

The following were key resolutions that we need to locate in a South African context:

At the helm of this debate, is the need to mobilise young workers, primarily because 62% of the world population is young and predominantly women. Trade unionism’s future lies with young people who are mainly outside the unions at the moment. Unionisation of young people constitutes the backbone of any trade union intending to live beyond the 20th century.

This is a challenge for COSATU, given that many of these young workers are in the informal sector. With our Congress coming in September, it is urgent to develop a concrete platform for mobilising young workers and women.

Consolidating bilaterals and multilateral relations

COSATU organised a pre-congress conference, with Nigeria’s NLC, Netherlands' FNV and Canada’s CLC, to outline key policy interventions for us in the Congress.

In addition we held bilaterals with many of our historical allies, who helped the federation, and the broader democratic forces, in the period of apartheid colonial oppression. In all the bilaterals, it emerged that in this period of trade union legality, we still needed each other, as challenges are daunting and problems immense.

Critical amongst others, is building a vanguard trade union federation. Lastly we reaffirmed the leading role of international solidarity in changing the conditions of the people in Cuba, Western Sahara, Swaziland, Angola, Burma etc.

International solidarity is the backbone of any successful revolution against unjust order. In a similar manner that our freedom struggle was complemented by international solidarity; COSATU members, and the South African people in general, owe it to the people of the world to reciprocate solidarity to all other oppressed nations of the world.

Concluding the ICFTU congress

At the end of the Congress, delegates accepted that in the 50 years since the ICFTU’s formation, Africa has never held any leadership role. To this end everyone accepted that it was Africa’s turn to carry the workers' bulwark into the 21st century - the century for Africa. Comrade Fackson Shamenda, a renowned trade unionist from the Zambia Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) was elected ICFTU President, while COSATU’s Zwelinzima Vavi was elected into the steering committee, as a substitute to the Executive Board and to the Economic and Social Committee.

Having started in the 17th Congress to mobilise the ICFTU into a fighting machine of the working class, there is no doubt that the challenges are mammoth. The internal contradictions are not going to be easy to traverse. However, this is what struggle is all about. Knowledge of the world conditions is not what we are about. Our task is to change the conditions and realise a society free of exploitation.

International education videos available from CDC

At the recent 17th world congress of the ICFTU held in Durban from 2-7 April, the Centre for Democratic Communications (CDC) filmed interviews with delegates from Palestine, Ethiopia, Brazil, the International Metalworkers’ Federation, the Global March Against Child Labour, Burma, the Philippines, South Korea, the United States, the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, and Nigeria.

The interviews cover a range of issues of interest to the labour movement and its international work - international solidarity, child labour, women in the union movement, reform of the ICFTU, South-South worker links - as well as the situation of workers in these countries in the era of globalisation.

Most of the interviews are approximately 20 minutes long, and are available on VHS cassette.

Copies can be obtained from the CDC at R45.00 each, including packaging and postage. Contact Marcus Toerien at the CDC : Tel 011 403 2750 (082 454 6711), fax 011 403 1510, e-mail marcus@cdc.org.za or mtoerien@mweb.co.za
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Dictatorship breeds greed

By Simon Boshielo, Cosatu International Officer

12 April 2000 marked a turning point in the history of political developments on the African continent. It was historic in that trade unions throughout Africa responded to the clarion call from the Organisation for African Trade Union Unity (OATUU) to put an end to dictatorship in Africa.

International experience has shown that there is a very thin line between dictatorship and corruption, dictatorship and poverty, dictatorship and repression. By and large, dictatorship is a recipe for get-rich-quick schemes for the ruling elite.

The campaign to end undemocratic forms of government added impetus to the resolution of the OAU summit in Algiers (Algeria) to the effect that all military governments and undemocratic rule should hand over government reigns to civilian and democratic rule by June 2000.

To this end Cosatu launched a campaign and organised action, targetted broadly against all military and undemocratic governments in Africa, and Cote d’Ivoire in particular. We sent a memorandum to demand the return to civilian rule in Cote d’Ivoire. As a result, we saw the military junta of General Robert Guei tabling a timetable, which aims to bring about democratic elections by 31 October 2000.

While 31 October is outside the bounds set by the OAU, we draw solace from the fact that the military junta has conceded defeat. In essence this is a victory for the people of Cote d’Ivoire and indeed working people throughout the world.

Our campaign against undemocratic governments focused on Cote d’Ivoire, but it was also a warning shot to all such similar governments to play by the rules of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 21. This states: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections…"

Today Africa is a leading continent so far as dictators are concerned. At least 17 countries are under military rule or in a state of misrule. In many of these states, authority has collapsed and lawlessness is the order of the day. In some democratic governments govern in concert with undemocratic rulers unwillingly.

The states in disarray include Sudan, Gambia, Comores, Rwanda, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Niger, Burundi, Ethiopia, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Togo, Eritrea, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), Democratic Republic of Congo, Swaziland and Cote d’Ivoire itself.

The implication of this gloomy scenario is that the majority of African people are living in conditions of abject poverty and lack freedom of expression and all other related freedoms. For workers it means their trade unions are forbidden.

Internationalism is therefore very relevant to this state of affairs in Africa. Mounting international solidarity, as well as strengthening civil society and trade unions in Africa, become the immediate entry points. This would be the appropriate way to give concrete expression to the African renaissance, far from academic gymnastics. Renaissance can never mean anything to the working people as long as the army, in cahoots with multi-national corporations, oppress workers all over Africa.

There is a close connection between military juntas and capitalism. Essentially, dictatorship is an extension of the exploitation of workers. In many examples multi-national capital has used military dictatorship as a tool to further workers' exploitation.

The military government in Nigeria gave Shell mining rights. This therefore implies that Shell benefited from the abortion of democracy. In Angola, transnational corporations benefit from cheaper diamonds that are acquired at the expense of forced child labour by Jonas Savimbi. Blaise Compaore plotted the assassination of President Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso so that the country could be heaven for capitalist exploitation.

These are but a few examples and the reason why workers should fight against military rule and its concomitant tendencies. Capital benefits from a state of lawlessness and therefore would go out of its way to finance civil wars and military seizure of power. Capitalism loves no peace because it thrives from agony of the poor.

Forward with borderless solidarity!
Forward with internationalism!

World's workers mobilise to defend Fiji Labour Government

By Andrew Casey and Sherrill Nixon, LabourStart, Australia

Fiji's trade unions called a general strike to protest against the coup d'etat which has overthrown the country's democratically elected (and union-backed) government. Australian and other workers have imposed a boycott of all trade with Fiji.

The coup participants stormed Fiji's Parliament House and fired shots, after a march through the capital, Suva, by 5000 demonstrators. The union-aligned Labour Prime Minister of Fiji, Mahendra Chaudry, and members of his Cabinet were held hostage in Parliament House by armed men with AK-47s.

Fijian President, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, decided to abrogate the Constitution and sack the democratically elected government. It has been replaced by a military government, which has imposed martial law.

Fiji's trade union movement has played an important part in the struggle for democracy. Now they are playing a central role in the struggle to restore democracy and are taking enormous risks.

Apart from Chaudry, a third of the Fiji Labour Cabinet are former union officials. Many Labour Party backbenchers held senior union posts at the same time as being MPs.

Chaudry was the leader of the Fijian TUC (FTUC) and, before that, the Secretary of the largest union in the country, the Fiji Public Service Association. He had been threatened by right-wing racist elements talking 'coup' for the previous six weeks.

The Labour Government has been in power for just one year. The only previous one was tossed out in 1987, also by a coup. In each case, the main rallying call of the coup leaders was to claim that Indians dominated the Labour government.

The Indian community, brought to Fiji by British colonialists mainly as indentured labourers for sugar plantations, now form nearly half the population. At present sugar cane workers are refusing to harvest the cane and the military government is threatening to force the workers into the fields.

The international trade union movement has acted quickly to protest against the coup. Noriyuki Suzuki, General-Secretary of the Asia Pacific section of the International Confederation of Trade Unions (ICFTU) has expressed grave concern for the Prime Minister.

"The FTUC was a major force in the struggle for, and eventual restoration of, democracy in Fiji following the military coups in 1987," Suzuki said. "In the face of sometimes considerable pressure, the FTUC has maintained its stand of a united Fiji, ensuring that the Fiji labour movement cuts across race and works in the best interest of all people living in that country."

A major solidarity operation, including industrial action, boycotts and an international sanction campaign against Fiji, has been set in motion by the ICFTU, the world's largest trade union body. General secretary, Bill Jordan, said: "The international trade union movement stands firmly behind its Fiji affiliate, the FTUC, in its demands for the restoration of democracy, the full respect of the country's Constitution and the reinstatement of the elected government".

Campaigns by the ICFTU, which included embargoes and threats of international sanctions, were instrumental in restoring democracy in 1987. Chaudhry was a member of the ICFTU Executive Board.

Jordan called for the immediate release of the hostages, the reinstatement of the legitimate Government and the full respect for the Fiji Constitution, "in order to avoid the damage which will otherwise inevitably be done to the international standing and the interests of your country".

It is important that trade unionists around the world show Fiji's unions that they are not alone at this most difficult moment. You can send messages of solidarity to the National Secretary of the Fiji Trade Union Congress, Felix Anthony, at the following e-mail address: ftuc@is.com.fj

Salote Delailomaloma, delegate from the FTUC (Fiji) to the ICFTU Congress, has written to COSATU:

"The FTUC has taken a firm stand regarding the abrogation of our constitution and in its fight to restore the democratically elected government. The ICFTU has called upon its affiliates to impose a ban on Fiji in its trade and economy. So far, ACTU of Australia has fully banned everything from Fiji including cargo, mails, airport services and trade and they are now pressuring the New Zealand Trade Unions to do likewise. Ross Wilson, the President of NZTU, thinks that the workers of Fiji will need international support, instead of totally isolating them."

"Workers of the world unite"

COSATU hosts delegation from Nigerian Labour Congress

By Florinah Koko, Cosatu International Department

During the last week of May, five delegates from the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) honoured COSATU with a visit. They are union leaders in the various Nigerian states.

There is a deepening relationship between the South African and Nigerian governments. They are exploring areas of co-operation relating to commercial and development agreements. This has made it even more vital to develop a better relationship between workers in these two countries.

Both federations realised that a lot can be learned from each other through such a bilateral meeting. A range of issues was discussed, including the ANC-COSATU-SACP Alliance. This was worrisome to the NLC. They had assumed that with the ANC, and many Cosatu, comrades having been deployed to government, it was only natural that workers' interests would be protected. The major question was what strategy would be used to ensure that deployees in future carry out their mandate.

The visiting delegation was very impressed with COSATU's organisational structures and the 'quota' system that they feel COSATU has entrenched.

We learned from the NLC that they have a media union affiliated to them. Its members cover a broad spectrum of, for example, theatre workers, reporters, journalists, camera people, etc. This ensures that the media is not just sympathetic to the cause, but are part of the machinery that seeks to ensure that workers' rights are enhanced, thereby improving the workers' lot.

COSATU therefore has some very important lessons to learn from the NLC - how to organise a media predominantly controlled by those unsympathetic to our cause. This is an important instrument. With the media on our side, we could better make people aware of what is happening around them, and explain what COSATU, by calling a strike, is trying to do about the impossible living situation people find themselves in.

Another lesson learned was that the transport workers in Nigeria are organised in every means of transport - rail, buses, taxis and even air travel. So when a strike is called, literally everything comes to a halt.

COSATU however has its work cut out, organising the various sectors of transport. Although there is an affiliated transport union, the drivers in the taxi industry, which most people rely on, are not properly organised. Because of this, they are an easy target for unscrupulous taxi owners.

Given all that was learned during this short visit, by both the NLC and COSATU, it is evident that this bilateral relationship is going to be mutually rewarding. We find ourselves in a situation today that was predicted almost two centuries ago by Karl Marx. Hence the necessity to take the medicine that was prescribed then, that "Workers of the world unite!"

Seattle Ministerial Conference - Collapse at talks a breakthrough for progressive forces

WTO Is Not Invinsible
Globalisation Is Not Unstoppable

By Katishi Masemola, Bargaining Secretary, Food and Allied Workers' Union

Following the collapse of the Seattle Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO), many commentators have provided analysis and expressed views on the collapse of these talks and the implications thereof, from a far distance, relying on media coverage.

Clearly these views are likely to be flawed and inaccurate. Below is an attempt to analyse the collapse of the talks and provide a perspective on the implications, directly from the streets and corridors of Seattle.

Two views have emerged on the status and role of the WTO within the global economic system. One is that it should be consolidated, to continue the drive to propel globalisation, the other that it should shut down and for globalisation to be challenged.

These sets of views became increasingly apparent in the run-up to and during this "Millennium Round" of negotiations on increased free trade between countries of the world. In Seattle, the heated negotiations collapsed, as countries failed to reach agreement on the text for the new round of negotiations.

At the same time, the streets of Seattle were beaming with protest marches, as demonstrators – with varying and sometimes conflicting demands – showed their anger on various issues relating to WTO. Some demands were amplified further by summits and seminars in which non-governmental organizations (NGOs) scrutinized issues raised for the ministerial meeting.

These could be broadly categorized into three areas:

Both process and content issues contributed to the collapse of the talks. Clearly the Uruguay Round Agreement had left the developing world worse off. They were expecting, and insisting on, securing more gains from any agreement emerging in the Millennium Round. Equally the developed countries expected this round to open up more markets for themselves.

The other significant contributory factor was the failure by mainly the US and EU to reach agreement on agriculture and the social clause.

On the process side, the most important disagreement between developed and developing countries was the use of notorious "green room". There the rich and powerful countries retreat to strike agreements to the exclusion of developing countries and then seek to superimpose their decisions on the meeting. This time the developing world did not swallow this and the Uruguay circus was not allowed.

Likewise, the demonstrations and demands by street protesters, and the interaction of government and civil society representatives from developing countries, impacted on the ministerial meeting. This was despite some of the protesters' demands being different and conflicting in nature.

The call for Agreement on Social Clause in the WTO by US steel workers was premised on saving American jobs rather than ensuring labour rights in the developing world –a protectionist call.

A call by environmental groups to include environmental standards in the WTO was also loudly heard.

These two calls are largely based on a view that there would be nothing wrong with globalisation, or the WTO, if these social and environmental clauses were agreed to - putting a human face to globalisation.

However there were other strong denunciations of the WTO for creating a 'rule by corporate tyranny' of transnational corporations (TNCs) and calling for its shut down. These protesters depicted globalisation in their placards as a dispensation in which government powerlessness is increasing, nation-states are virtually collapsing and TNCs are becoming centres of world governance.

Other protest marches impacted on the talks - from protests against US large-scale farmers growing and patenting genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in crops and seeds, to TNCs in pharmaceuticals patenting, for example AZT medication for Aids and HIV diseases

One single march protested against global debt and called for its scrapping, to help poor countries to participate meaningfully in the global economic system.

The call for confronting globalisation and shutting down the WTO was premised on the reality that the global economy reflects ‘two worlds’ - the rich and industrialized countries of the North and the poor and less developed world of the South.

But although there is convergence that the global economy reflects two words, there are divergent views as to whether globalisation and WTO agreements will reduce the gap between rich and poor.

Globalisation will not reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. In fact since the advent of the WTO Uruguay Round, the rich have become richer and the poor poorer. The General Secretary of the Commonwealth has confirmed that the three top multibillionaires have a wealth and earn an income equivalent to that of poorest 600 million people of the world.

Globalisation is nothing but 'capitalist imperialism' - a process in which multinational corporations seek more markets and increased profits. WTO serves the TNCs' imperialist programme.

The demands for slowing down, or even stopping, globalisation and transforming or shutting down the WTO, do not suggest that the world does not need a trade regime or a rule-based trading system. These demands are for a ‘fair’, and not ‘free’, trade regime, linked to development. Governments and nation-states have the power to design a fair world trade regime that will significantly benefit the poor.

A suggestion that globalisation cannot be slowed down or even be reoriented to a developmental direction is absurd. Equally absurd is a view that the WTO cannot be shut down and replaced by a United Nations-linked trade and development institution.

Those who hold that the collapse of Seattle talks has left the developing world worse off, or rich countries better off, are naïvely ignoring the devastating effects of Uruguay Round agreement on the developing countries. More importantly they fail to realise the potentially negative effects the agreements on new issues will have on these countries.

The success of Seattle talks would have meant an impetus to imperialism and virtually none to the developing countries. To give one example: if there were to be an agreement on government procurement, Lesotho would not have the public or private sector capacity to bid and buy a telecommunications company. But any small US company could buy any state company in Lesotho.

It is therefore a victory for progressive forces that the Seattle talks collapsed. A window to revisit the Uruguay Round and its effects on developing countries has been opened. Developed countries will now have to be sensitive and put aside arrogance during negotiations on the built-in agenda issues. Lesotho has been temporarily rescued from total conquest by US.

This breathing space will have to be utilized by progressive forces all over the world. However the road ahead is full of challenges. In the corridors of Geneva, starting in January 2000, ongoing negotiations resumed on the built-in agenda on Agriculture, Trims, Trips and Gats.

Governments in Africa and the South will have to be more cautious as new issues may be slotted through the back door under the built-in agenda. MAI could come in under the guise of Trims negotiations or competition policy under the guise of Trips negotiations.

Also care must be taken on agricultural negotiations. Developing countries with competitive agricultural sectors, by virtue of large-scale commercial farming, should not fall into a trap of quickly jumping into an agreement, ignoring other developing countries that have small-scale or family farming for food security and/or employment reasons.

For the NGOs, trade unions and other civil society movements, the streets of Geneva will have to experience the same treatment as in Seattle. Because of what happened there, countries (particularly in Africa) were confident to stand up to the US and EU and not conform when 'whipped' into agreement by these rich nations.

What happened in Seattle gives rise to confidence that globalisation can be challenged and reoriented to a development path and that WTO agreements could be made to reflect this in their form, content and application.

How the Internet empowers, democratises and internationalises unions

By Eric Lee, Information and Communications Technology Co-ordinator,

Labour and Society International

The Internet is changing the way trade unions work around the world. That should not be surprising. It is, after all, changing everything else as well. There are three ways in which the Internet changes things for trade unions.

As editor of the LabourStart news website, I often come across stories that illustrate just how much the net has created a new world for the labour movement.

For example, in South Africa a trade unionist who was involved in wage negotiations came home one evening and downloaded his email messages. Among them was the daily news update sent out by COSATU and SAMWU which highlights some of the day's news that might be relevant to trade unionists. That day's news included an article which had appeared in one of the newspapers about the relationship between wages and inflation.

The following morning, he found himself across the table from the employers' representatives. They tabled a copy of that very article as their opening gambit. "I could respond immediately and authoritatively, having read the article and thought about its implications," wrote the trade unionist. The employers, he noted, "were stunned." He thanked COSATU for the service, adding that "it helped our union in the negotiations."

That story is typical - and one hears stories like it every day. The new technology is empowering unions in their relationship with employers, sometimes levelling the playing field in negotiations where knowledge is power.

But it is also compelling some unions to be more open, democratic and transparent than ever before.

A case last autumn in the US illustrates this well. The Teamsters - the union representing the 11,000 flight attendants at Northwest Airlines - had reached agreement with the employer on a new contract, which the local union head called an "important victory".

The flight attendants themselves needed to ratify the contract by direct ballot. One of them read through the contract very carefully and decided the union had done a bad deal. He began sending out email messages every day to the members of his union, telling them line-by-line, word-by-word, what was wrong with the contract.

Now, this union is a bit of a special case. Being flight attendants, they do not often get to meet. So email plays a very important role in internal union communications.

When the vote came, the union leadership was overwhelmingly defeated. The contract was rejected by nearly 70% of those voting. It came as a complete shock to the union leaders, who were absolutely clueless about the Internet.

The Internet played such a critical role for the Northwest flight attendants that following an "illegal" sick-out a few months later, the company got a court order allowing police to raid employees' homes in order to seize computer equipment that might have been used by activists to organise their protest.

In Britain earlier this year, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) asked postal workers to vote on a proposed new long-term deal with Royal Mail (the British Post Office). Debate in the union heated up. One new venue for such discussion was the union's website, which included web forums (online bulletin boards) open only to union members.

Those forums came alive as postal workers made clear how angry they were at the union's leadership for negotiating a less-than-successful contract. The union leaders only found out about what was being said in the discussion forums because someone printed the messages out for them, on paper. The rank-and-file turned out to be far more clued-in to the new technology than their leaders.

When the vote finally came, the CWU leadership was trounced and the contract rejected.

Those two examples demonstrate the incredible power of the new technology to invigorate trade union democracy - and keep union leaders on their toes.

The Internet has also allowed the reinvigoration of something written off by some as dead and buried: trade union internationalism.

This was illustrated last December when the South Korean government decided to break up a trade union protest. Riot police beat up and arrested the leaders of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). One they didn't manage to arrest was the KCTU's International Secretary, who proceeded to send off email messages to his short list of contacts around the globe.

I was one who received his message, and promptly passed it on to LabourStart's list of (at that time) 1,400 email addresses. I also made it the day's lead news story on the LabourStart website. Others who played an active role in spreading the news included the Canadian Labour Congress and SAMWU in South Africa.

The KCTU had asked us to send email protests to the South Korean President, Kim Dae Jung. He has been sometimes mislabelled "the Asian Nelson Mandela" but is nothing of the kind; he has jailed more trade unionists than his predecessor. Within 48 hours, we received a surprising email message from the KCTU in Seoul.

All the trade union leaders had been freed. And what got them out of jail was not mass protests in the streets of South Korea, not diplomatic intervention by the United States State Department, not even the protests from the "usual suspects" like Amnesty International.

It was international trade union protest, funnelled through the Internet, which convinced the Seoul government to back down. The KCTU message singled out the role played by LabourStart in getting the news out to the broader international labour movement.

As I write these words, the net is being used once again in the service of international trade union solidarity by unions in the Asia-Pacific region who are concerned about the coup d'etat and military dictatorship in Fiji.

Spearheaded by the Australian unions - who played a similar role last year in their solidarity actions with East Timor - a regional mobilisation is taking place with the Internet at its core. Indeed some websites, including LabourStart, have been hours ahead of the mainstream media in reporting developments during the crisis.

Some websites mentioned in this article

SAMWU and COSATU's daily news summary: http://www.cosatu.org.za/news.html#news-e
LabourStart: http://www.labourstart.org
Korean Confederation of Trade Unions http://www.kctu.org/
Communication Workers Union (UK) http://www.cwu.org
Australian Council of Trade Unions http://www.actu.asn.au/

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THE HISTORICAL MISSION

By Thobile Maso

Wake up -
The point of arrival is the point of departure
The first victory is the revolutionary trial
The state machinery is refusing to obey
Who is directing whom

Wake up - You have a mission
Are you in power or You are the power
Are you high jacked or straight jacked
Are you an actor of your destiny or a spectator
Are you ready to take forward the journey

Wake up - You have a mission
Confusion in the capitalist world -
The Saints are the Sinners

The Devil is divined
Swimming in the deep sea of poverty and pain
The umbilical cord of capitalism is invisible
Hidden below the belly of the beast
The mission is grand and the end is yours
You are the motivating force of the mass desires and aspirations

Wake up - You have a mission
The ice has been broken
The road is open
The way has been shown
The TINA against the TIRA
There is a revolutionary alternative

Wake up - You wake up - You have a mission

YOU HAVE A MISSION
-

 South Korean police attack strikers

From a statement by the Korean Congress of Trade Unions (KCTU)

At 4 am in the morning on 29 June, more than 3,000 special troopers of the South Korean police stormed three floors of the Lotte Hotel, in downtown Seoul, to drag out some 1,000 striking workers who were staging a sit-in in the ballrooms.

The Lotte Hotel Workers Union has been on strike since 9 June demanding a 17% wage increase, changing the employment status of temporary workers to permanent employees, a 40-hour working week and the extension of retirement age.

Police fired flares, smoke bombs and tear gas into the rooms where striking workers were sleeping and beat them with truncheons, causing serious injury to some 70 workers. Ten pregnant women workers were also brutally dragged out.

The tear gas and fire extinguisher sprays used to put out fires lit by the flares caused serious concern for the health of the pregnant women and their unborn babies.

Workers, including women, were forced to kneel on the floor with their head between their knees as the riot police herded out more than 1000 workers into buses to take them to detention centres.

The raid lasted more than three hours, as the resistance by more than a thousand workers forced the police to prolong their raid.

News of the police attack brought hundreds of workers to the scene, led by the officers of the KCTU, which organised immediate protest actions in front of the hotel, and the Lotte Department store, on 29-30 June. This led to another spate of police violence, as they tried to drag away the protesting workers blocking the police operation. 

The detained workers were released just before the expiration of the 48 hours of detention allowed without arrest warrants.

However, seven leaders of the union, who had been issued with warrants, were formally charged and detained. One union vice-president escaped capture by hiding in an air vent duct for more than nine hours.

The police rush against workers continued on 1 July, when the riot police stormed the National Health Insurance Corporation building, where more than 1,600 workers were holding a sit-in strike.

The National Health Insurance Corporation Workers Union had begun its strike on 28 June, as a part of the collective bargaining agreement campaign.

At 3 am on 1 July, more than 3,000 police stormed the building, breaking down doors and windows and firing tear gas, to drag away the strikers. The arrested workers were then held in some 20 police stations around Seoul, which were only hours before the "home" for striking Lotte workers.

As the police had issued warrants of arrest against some 30 leaders of the union prior to the raid, it is expected they will be charged and detained even after the 48-hour period.

The ferocity of police action against workers is causing serious alarm across society. It comes in the wake of two significant events - the historic inter-Korea Summit meeting between President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea and Chairperson Kim Jong Il of North Korea, and the week-long ‘strike’ by doctors against the reform aimed at setting a clear jurisdictional boundary between the prescribing activity of doctors and pharmacists.

One possible reason for the sudden upsurge in police action against workers is that they are trying to re-assert their central role in the governance of society, following the unprecedented ‘strike’ by doctors against which neither the government nor the police were seen to be effective.

The sharp contrast in the police behaviour is giving rise to a massive popular outcry against the police. It is giving rise to a popular sentiment that police are weak against the powerful doctors and strong against weak workers.

On the other hand, the Korean Employers Federation described the police action against the Lotte Hotel strikers as "an inevitable measure to restore and establish law and order". As usual they rely on the power of the state to forcibly end industrial disputes. This was echoed by the ruling party, which said: "We need to take firm action against irresponsible act of collective selfishness and illegal actions".

However, other parties in the National Assembly expressed concern that "the ruthless crackdown by police may arouse denunciation from the international society."

There is a fear that similar police action can be anticipated against strikes in two other major hotels: the Swiss Grand and the Hilton. Police have already issued arrest warrants against some of the union leaders.

Another significant target would be the FKTU-affiliated Korean Bank Industry Workers’ Unions, which has vowed to go on a general strike on 11 July in opposition to the proposed second phase of bank-sector restructuring, masterminded by the government. Trouble is expected because the banks are defined as "essential public services", which are subjected to automatic "compulsory arbitration". This prevents any dispute flowing into strike action.

The ILO has called on the South Korean government to amend the definition of "essential public service" which restricts the full right of freedom of association and collective bargaining. However the government has so far turned a total deaf ear.

This planned strike may trigger the government to invoke a massive crackdown, as when other workers in the "essential public service", that is, the KCTU's subway workers, went on strike last year.

The KCTU’s regular Central Executive Committee has decided to step up the protest actions and explore the possibility of a boycott of all Lotte services and products, in solidarity with consumer groups and unions in Korea and other countries.

(Lotte operates a number of luxury department stores, hotels and beverage and biscuit manufacturing companies; its headquarters are in Japan)

How you can protest

You can register your protest and/or disbelief by faxing at the presidential palace, The Blue House, on +82 2 770 0253. Send messages of support to the KCTU by fax on +82 2 2635 1134 or email inter@kctu.org or visit their web site on http://www.nodong.org

Yoon Younmo, KCTU

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