Volume 9, No.5 - December 2000

15 Years of Heroic Struggle

Cosatu- the fastest growing union federation in the World

By Neil Coleman, COSATU Parliamentary Office

After the hundreds of thousands of words written about COSATU and its affiliates over the last 15 years, what can one say that is new?

Most serious commentators agree that COSATU has played a pivotal role. Yet others, wanting to downplay the role of the organisation and minimise its achievements, have fiercely contested this interpretation of our history.

Academics and media analysts, some sympathetic, others hostile, have published numerous pieces, which sometimes appear to have been written on a different planet. This is not something to lament. It rather poses a challenge to us to begin claiming our own history and tell our own stories of hundreds of historic events and battles which constitute the recent history of working class struggle, such as:

It is time to record the oral history of veterans of the movement, both young and old, who are collectively a repository of the wealth of experience gathered over the last two decades. This rich tradition of organisation and struggle has enabled COSATU to play a particular role in South Africa's transition. Without the combination of democratic structures and practices, politics and organisational culture, the Federation would have been powerless and directionless.

Militant politics without strong structures would have produced a toothless bulldog. Equally, formal trade union structures without a vibrant organisational culture or political direction, would have led to bureaucratisation and an inability to engage strategically with the challenges of transformation. Others have written about the organisational history of COSATU, its campaigns and the real improvements in wages and working conditions which have affected the lives of millions of workers and their families.

This bread-and-butter role of the Federation should never be underestimated.One only needs to look back to the semi-feudal conditions which African workers faced in the early 1970s, before the Durban strikes, to appreciate the huge strides which trade unions have made, particularly since COSATU's formation.

Even with all the problems workers face today, we need to ask ourselves where we would be if these struggles had not been waged.

Organisational Strength

The respect COSATU commands in society does not derive purely from general admiration for its views or the nobility of its mission. While many may share our views, what really makes people sit up and take notice is our organisational strength and cohesion - the fact that it represents a powerful and united constituency.

Both before and after 1994, it has undeniably been the largest and best-organised formation of civil society, with elected leaders, functioning democratic structures, and clear policies and programmes. In addition to this, the strategic location of organised workers in the economy and society gives the Federation a special type of clout.

Of course the strength of COSATU's interventions goes beyond its organised power. It has also been able to make qualitative interventions on key policy issues, demonstrating that it has a coherent vision of where society should be moving. Its best-known intervention was the formulation of the RDP.

This has been complemented by many other policy interventions, on industrial or sectoral restructuring or broader macro social policy issues. Pointing to COSATU's organised strength is not to claim that COSATU is a perfectly oiled machine. We are always the first to point out our own weaknesses (sometimes we focus too little on our strengths). For example the Secretariat report to the 2000 Congress points out that 37 COSATU Locals are not functioning. But equally important, it identifies 128 functioning COSATU Locals in the nine COSATU Regions.

Similarly, commentators are quick to point to the loss of leadership since the 1994 elections - the so-called 'brain drain'. There is no doubt that this has been significant and has impacted on the organisation - but its importance has been exaggerated. Equally significant is the emergence of an experienced layer of top national and regional worker leadership, which has organically grown from the shop floor - leadership developed over the last 20 years (particularly from the cadre of about 30 000 shop stewards within the Federation).

These leaders have not been produced from thin air, but between them represent many years of organisational experience. This organisational continuity is reflected in the remarkable cohesion in the Federation, on complex political, policy and organisational issues. This was seen most clearly in the recent COSATU Congress, which revealed a degree of cohesion probably not reflected in any other mass formation in the country. This is particularly significant, given the different organisational and political traditions which existed within the affiliates at the time of the Federation's formation, and, even today, the disparate conditions facing the constituency COSATU represents - whether white-collar or mine workers, public sector workers or factory workers, or workers from different communities.

These observations should be seen in the context of the vibrant, democratic culture which has characterised the trade union movement, and particularly COSATU, during the last 15 years. The notion of 'democracy' is sometimes abused, and can conceal undemocratic practices combined with an unhealthy leadership cult. On the whole, although there are obviously exceptions in an organisation COSATU's size, democratic traditions are one of its hallmarks.

This democratic culture has played an important role in popularising the notion that democracy needs to go beyond periodic elections, to embrace more substantive participatory democracy. The culture of worker leadership and control has been a cornerstone of COSATU's democratic culture. At the same time, it has had to evolve, as unions have grown and the environment has changed. The increasingly complex range of challenges confronting unions require sophisticated strategies to empower worker leadership to participate effectively in areas such as workplace transformation and political engagement.

While throwing up difficult challenges, this gives an opportunity to deepen the democratic traditions. These new conditions arguably affect the form and detail of union democracy, without changing its essence. An important element of COSATU's democratic culture has been the tradition of frank and open debate. The quality of the Federation's strategic interventions has been greatly enhanced by the determination to address issues openly and honestly, and without illusions.

This frankness is characteristic of discussions at various levels of the organisation, including the highest decision making structures, as those who have participated in top constitutional structures such as the CEC and Congresses will confirm. At the same time, the tradition of democratic discipline means that once the key debates have been settled, comrades have generally accepted that they are bound by the democratic (majority) mandate, even if they advanced a different view in the debates. This culture of worker control and democratic openness, combined with democratic discipline, has been an important factor in uniting COSATU's membership around its strategic interventions at various levels.

Strategic unionism

Since 1994 COSATU has played a leading role as a social voice of the working people, the poor and progressive civil society. Contrary to claims by right-wing voices that COSATU represents an 'employed elite', the organisation has come to be seen by these constituencies as the key force in an emerging social movement. It has achieved this, not by claiming a leadership role, but by speaking out on a range of issues which go beyond the workplace concerns of its membership.

The unique brand of social or strategic unionism which COSATU has developed bears little resemblance to narrow economistic unionism which has developed in a number of other countries. What the right-wing critics of COSATU have failed to understand is that you cannot erect a Chinese wall between the organised employed and the unemployed and the poor in South Africa. These constituencies come from the same families and communities.

Wage labour is in fact the main social security net for working people and the poor in most communities. This objective reality is reflected in COSATU's policy interventions. It has taken a deliberate and conscious decision to combine engagement on workplace issues with broader social questions. Its campaign for public delivery of social needs for example has sought to counteract market-driven strategies tending to link access to housing, transport, health, retirement and social security to employment.

Rather, COSATU has argued for a comprehensive social security system and public provision of basic needs to all working people and the poor. This broad social vision has placed the Federation at the forefront of engagements around the need for policies appropriate to our social transformation. COSATU's opposition to inappropriate social and economic policies has not been articulated in ideological terms, but on the basis that they will frustrate the vision of social transformation outlined in the RDP.

The Federation has combined its social role with a focus on expanding and deepening its organisational reach. The Back-to-Basics campaign was aimed at revitalising effective organisational and recruitment strategies and ensuring proper servicing of existing members. At the same time COSATU has consciously sought to develop a programme to reach out to unorganised or disorganised sections of the workforce. This has included strategies to organise white and white-collar workers, atypical and informal sector workers, public-sector workers, farm workers etc.

As a result, the composition of the Federation has begun to change to one more representative of the South African working class. This of course is an ongoing challenge. Many commentators have failed to appreciate this changing reality. They have also not grasped the massive organisational feat which COSATU has accomplished in becoming the fastest growing Federation in the world (according to the ILO).

This has taken place in the face of mass retrenchments of workers, including COSATU membership. Contrary to the claim by some analysts that COSATU's total membership has declined since 1994, or stagnated, Congress credentials show that COSATU's membership has grown from 1,3 million in 1994 to 1,8 million in 2000, an increase of nearly 40%.

This, in the face of the loss of at least 150 000 COSATU members due to retrenchments, means that COSATU affiliates recruited at least 650 000 new members during this period. Hardly the sign of a declining union movement!

COSATU's engagement strategy

All these realities - the organisational power of COSATU, the coherence of its policy perspectives, its democratic character and its location as part of a broader social movement - have impacted on the character of COSATU's engagement strategy, both in the struggle to end apartheid rule, and during the democratic transition.

Some important themes which have emerged during this period include:

Sectoral engagements sought to establish sectoral forums, both to negotiate wages and conditions, as well as to reorient our economic sectors to job creating, development strategies. Nationally, the Federation has engaged in both bilateral and tripartite processes aimed at institutionalising labour's participation in decision making on key social and economic issues affecting workers.

The result of this engagement strategy has been mixed. Significant victories have been registered in establishing institutions, most importantly Nedlac. Key social, economic and labour policies have to be discussed at Nedlac before they can be tabled in Parliament. This is possibly one of the most far-reaching statutory institutions of its kind.

This has led in particular to the adoption of a worker-friendly labour dispensation. Capital, however, has pursued counter-strategies aimed at pressurising the democratic government via other channels, particularly using capital flight as a lever, to adopt 'investor-friendly' policies, without subjecting these to the scrutiny of tripartite institutions. This has led in many respects to a stalemate in negotiations on key macro-economic and social issues.

Similarly sectoral engagement processes have had mixed results. COSATU has largely been successful in defending centralised bargaining institutions in the face of attempts to collapse them. Attempts to lock capital into sectoral negotiations aimed at revitalising our industries and channelling investment into job-creating economic activity have faced active resistance. Nevertheless, labour's mobilisation through the 1998 Job Summit, which agreed to initiate sector summits, and the very effective jobs campaign in 2000, have begun to move the country closer to the approach proposed by COSATU. These institutions and forums however remain the site of intense contestation.

Progressive elections manifestos in the 1999 national elections and the 2000 local government elections have given a clear mandate to the ANC in government. In certain areas COSATU has played a critical role in driving or supporting progressive government policies and legislation - particularly in the area of the constitution, labour legislation, and some social policies, such as health care, water, electrification, and reform of retirement funds.

It has also acted effectively to block certain problematic policies or legislation, such as laws to give employers access to pension fund surpluses. Further it has pioneered the investigation of new approaches to policy, such as the introduction of a comprehensive social security system, and a basic income grant.

However serious problems have also been experienced in some areas. Most controversial was the introduction of macro-economic policies in the form of Gear, which COSATU argued was inappropriate to the development needs of the country. This framework has had devastating effects through its promotion of fiscal, monetary, trade, industrial and public-sector policies which have undermined the role of the state in reconstruction and contributed to massive job loss.

A number of other setbacks are analysed in Accelerating Transformation, the analysis by COSATU's Parliamentary Office of our engagement strategy between 1994 and 2000. This analysis of gains and setbacks are summarised in the last edition of the Shopsteward. These terrains of engagement remain dynamic and highly fluid. The period since 1994 has clearly shown that a range of powerful forces have attempted to shape the transition in their image.

Effective strategies are required to counter this agenda. This requires a functioning Alliance which drives governance; a strong COSATU; a transformed state; and a mobilised social movement of progressive organs of civil society. These four pillars need to rest on an agreed programme for transformation. New Challenges for COSATU The challenges for COSATU's engagement strategy have been extensively discussed.

But there are some areas which perhaps appear less immediate, relating to the need to assert broader social hegemony, lead society and win broad acceptance for the ideas of the movement - similar to the social role played by the UDF in the 1980s. Secondly there is a need to deepen the Federation's organisational strategy to take forward processes of engagement and to implement the gains emerging from these processes. The former cluster of issues includes: