"South Africans are amongst the most inward-looking people in the world ... we were infected with the apartheid virus, which sometimes made it difficult to see beyond our country's borders." With these words John Gomomo opened his presidential keynote address to the April 1995 Cosatu International Policy Conference (IPC). His speech indicated a recognition on the part of South Africa's workers, as 'the recipients of the largest movement of international solidarity ever seen in human history', that the time had come to reciprocate.
During Cosatu's first ten years, South African unions grew accustomed to international solidarity meaning foreign support, especially financial, for their own activities. That was inevitable, Gomomo pointed out, considering that South Africans were obsessed with their own problems and struggles. However, South African workers could now no longer merely be the recipients of international trade union aid and solidarity.
The beginnings of a recognition that South African workers had something to offer date back to 1989, during the Namibian election campaign. Cosatu-affiliated workers responded generously to the call to contribute to a fund to campaign for a Swapo victory. The TGWU 'loaned' its former assistant general secretary to the Namibian transport union for six weeks. And later, in 1990, Numsa members in the Northern Transvaal donated money and their unpaid labour, enough to make a gift of three bakkies to the Namibian metalworkers' union.
Early solidarity action
In Cosatu's early days, solidarity action from the federation and its affiliates for workers elsewhere in the world had been mainly symbolic. There had been demonstrations by Saccawu at 3M in support of that company's American workers; by Actwusa (later Sactwu) at Courtaulds against union-bashing by the company at plants organised by the American union, Actwu; and by Numsa at Caterpillar in support of a strike by 12,000 workers in Peoria, Illinois. These actions were recorded on video or photographed, and copies distributed to the sister union abroad.
Such actions were possible because of the presence of foreign multinationals in South Africa. During the sanctions years, with fewer foreign companies in South Africa, the opportunities for solidarity action dwindled.
Nevertheless, Cosatu has been able to intervene at decisive moments over the past 10 years to influence international issues. Two examples illustrate this. When Namibia acceded to nationhood and independence in September 1989, it did so without a firm guarantee on the return of Walvis Bay. The apartheid government, not yet confronted with the reality of negotiations with South Africa's liberation movement, had hoped to draw out negotiations on the future of the enclave. The ANC had, after its unbanning, not indicated publicly how it intended to deal with the issue. It was a resolution of the 1989 Cosatu congress calling for the return of Walvis Bay to the Namibian people which lay the basis for an alliance policy on the matter. Indeed, the Transitional Executive Council finally compelled Walvis Bay's return.
In August last year, a military coup overthrew Lesotho's democratically-elected government. The threat of a blockade of the landlocked country in a resolution at Cosatu's Fifth National Congress in September 1994, propelled swift diplomatic pressure to restore civilian rule.
Aid for workers
The world's workers responded with warmth to the cause of organised workers labouring under apartheid. International assistance to Cosatu took many forms. Firstly, there was assistance in building organisation. These took the form of direct monetary grants for unions' educational and legal programmes, the seconding of experts in complex bargaining issues such as productivity, training and grading, and industrial restructuring. Many foreign national centres, such as the Scandinavians, the British TUC and the Australian Actu invited South African unionists for extended periods of study programmes. The Dutch unions have given money for Cosatu's operational expenses. The three Italian federations between them support computerisation and media projects. In addition, unionists around the world took up the call for the international isolation of the apartheid state, and for sanctions and disinvestment.
Reciprocating
An example of a reciprocal internationalism by organised labour is to be found in the number of South African former unionists who work in co-ordinating or publicising union activities at regional and international level, and foreign unionists who share their experience by working in our trade union movement.
Cosatu also continues to contribute to the many debates which still occupy centre-stage in the international workers' movement: which of the international trade union centres to affiliate to, the role of the international trade secretariats, relations and dialogue between organised workers of the South and North, social movement unionism, a social clause for trade agreements, worker-to-worker contact as opposed to contact at leadership or official level, structural adjustment, globalisation and debt. Cosatu was often likened to CUT in Brazil and the KMU in the Philippines as examples of modern, crusading worker movements, characterised by rapid growth and militant struggle against exploitation and oppressive regimes.
International affiliation
An issue which may impact on Cosatu's role internationally is affiliation to an international trade union centre. Trade unions link with the international trade union movement at affiliate and national centre level. Most Cosatu affiliates are members of one or more of the ICFTU's international trade secretariats (ITS's, the international sectoral co-ordinating bodies) such as in the public sector, transport, mining, clerical and retail, chemical and energy, etc. In addition, many affiliates, such as Sactwu, Num, and Numsa are also active in regional or continental co-ordinating structures. Cosatu is also a member of the pan-African Oatuu. The question of whether to affiliate to an international centre or not and to which one, however, is still unresolved.
Hitherto, Cosatu has steered a steady course of non-alignment to the ICFTU or the Prague-based WFTU (seen as the two main contending international centres), or to the WCL. At the same time it has studiously followed the international debate for and against affiliation to the ICFTU and has promoted more 'South-South' contact. Cosatu's main 'opposition', Nactu, enjoys considerably closer ties with the ICFTU.
In February 1993, a large ICFTU delegation visited South Africa. The visit was ostensibly to express the ICFTU's concern at the violence which gripped the country at the time. Few unionists doubted, however, that the ICFTU was courting direct affiliation applications from both Nactu and Cosatu. In June 1993, the South African Labour Bulletin published an appeal from a number of Asian Pacific and Indian Ocean unionists and labour activists to Cosatu not to affiliate to the ICFTU without insisting on reforms to its Asia Pacific Regional Organisation. In a rejoinder in the same publication later that year, the Philippines' KMU questioned whether the ICFTU could reform itself. The KMU argued that, in its view, the ICFTU's hands were 'tainted with blood and bribery'. They called for a re-alignment of the national centres of the South into an effective opposition to the ICFTU.
Later that year, a joint CUT-Cosatu-CGIL (the Italian federation aligned to the former Communist Party, the Democratic Party of the Left) met in Johannesburg and agreed to work for a 'new internationalism', based on challenging neo-liberalism. Then followed the 1993 Cosatu Special National Congress. Numsa urged Cosatu to follow the lead of Brazil's CUT and affiliate to the ICFTU, but could not muster majority support. The issue came up for discussion at the April '95 IPC. After intense debate, a compromise was struck, providing for engagement between Cosatu and the international trade union centres on the need for affiliation without consideration of ideological criteria, and a commitment to forming a single, inclusive international trade union centre.
The CEC was empowered to take a decision on affiliation by a two-thirds majority, to be ratified at the next Cosatu congress. The federation is also pursuing bilateral relations with other unaffiliated national centres. Along with France's CGT, Cosatu is also planning a meeting where the non-aligned can look at their role in unifying the international trade union movement.
Charity begins at home
But it is in Southern Africa where Cosatu's commitment to the cause of internationalism and solidarity will be tested. South Africa's neighbours on the sub-continent, particularly Mozambique and Angola, have attempted to build alternative societies aimed at meeting the needs of their people. These efforts have been thwarted by destabilisation in the apartheid era.
Cosatu is seeking to turn policy on immigration and migrant labour into an instrument of practical aid. The IPC resolved, among other things, to campaign against xenophobia, and for negotiated quotas of workers to be granted access to job opportunities in countries of the region.
Num has taken this further by successfully campaigning for permanent residence and voting rights for the thousands of expatriate miners in its ranks.
The interests of South African workers are integrally linked to those of workers in the region. Cosatu has pushed for economic development and investment in the entire region, and sees this as one way of helping to stem the tide of migration to the south.
In addition, Cosatu unions are very aware that weak unions in neighbouring states will ultimately undermine their own battles, undercutting wages and worker rights. Regional ties can also help strengthen workers' bargaining power. This becomes more important as more and more companies, both South African and multi-nationals, have operations in various countries in the region.
In Satucc, Cosatu is pushing for the adoption of a Southern African Charter of Workers Rights as a precondition for renewing regional trade agreements such as the Southern African Customs Union.
Individual affiliates are also campaigning in their sectors. Sactwu is demanding a social clause guaranteeing certain basic worker rights before a new preferential trade agreement on imports of Zimbabwean textiles can be concluded. Num is calling for an end to the system of compulsory deferred pay for certain categories of mineworkers from Southern African countries.
In Oatuu, Cosatu has criticised the repression of trade union rights in Nigeria. At Cosatu's initiative, the first Southern African-Cuba solidarity conference was hosted in October, bringing together other role-players from the region. During recent worker struggles in Swaziland, Cosatu was part of a delegation which met with Swazi unionists to offer practical advice on agreement-making. These are indications that it is in the sub-continent where a practical programme of international solidarity will bring visible and immediate benefits to workers.
Genuine internationalism also requires that South African workers be alert to the dangers of paternalism and the monopolising of resources (funding, training and educational opportunities, expertise and human resources) made available for promoting worker solidarity, because of their better organisation and capacity to implement programmes.
Cosatu begins its next ten years in a world in many respects a smaller place than at its birth. The movement of capital, goods, services, information and highly-skilled workers are increasingly undeterred by national borders. Decisions taken in one part of the world are capable of being implemented almost immediately in another part.
Former IMF general secretary Herman Rehban once referred, perhaps grandiously, to the class struggles of the future being fought in outer space as capitalists - literally - pursue the search for profits to evermore absurd heights. But the point is unmistakable. The so-called 'global village' is a reality. It is no longer possible to organise workers without an international perspective. At the same time as the dominant capitalist countries of the North compel the opening of markets and trade liberalisation, they continue to regulate the South's access to their markets through organised blocs such as Nafta and the European Union. The South's ability to counter these developments is hampered by debt, no access to the new technologies, and the problems of national oppression and corruption. But, in general, Cosatu is not unfamiliar with this terrain. It is a challenge we must confront head-on if we are to repay those who suffered so much for our own cause.