Poor need to be heard rather than spoken for

Steven Friedman, Business Day

HAVE millions of citizens found a voice — or are we about to see the birth of yet another movement that will speak about these citizens but never listen to them?

In theory, the United Front, which was initiated by the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), and which met last month to prepare for its launch, should fill an important gap in our politics — the fact that millions have a vote but no voice.

Shifting the Ground of Radical Reason

Richard Pithouse, SACSIS

For some time now much of the left has either been alienated from actually existing popular mobilisation or unable to make and sustain productive connections with it. But the emergence of new forces to the left of the ANC, forces with money, a national reach, easy access to the media and, in the case of NUMSA, an established and organised membership, is generating fresh optimism.

Dinga Sikwebu on Numsa's Expulsion from Cosatu and Reasons for the Launch of the United Front

Has the giant fallen? The split within South Africa’s largest trade union federation, COSATU

Sakhela Buhlungu, Africa is a Country

Recent developments in the largest trade union movement in South Africa, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), have been nothing short of extraordinary and cataclysmic. It is now commonly accepted that the ‘giant’ whose arrival was so evocatively declared by (now South African Deputy President and then mineworkers’ union official) Cyril Ramaphosa in 1985 is on its knees. On top of that, all of its dirty linen is now on public display for all to see and scrutinize. The so-called expulsion of the National Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA), one of its largest affiliates, was supposed to be a show trial aimed at asserting the authority of leaders allied to what has been until now the hegemonic ANC/SACP political current within the federation. But the significance of these events is much greater than was intended by those who staged the show trial. This has left many in a state of shock and sadness, with analysts and journalists scrambling for ways to explain the implications of the ‘expulsion’ of the federation’s largest and best resourced affiliate.

SACP helped push Numsa’s expulsion from Cosatu

Steven Friedman, Business Day

THERE was a time when the South African Communist Party (SACP) terrified supporters of a market economy. Today, it is more likely to frighten the left.

By expelling the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s (Cosatu’s) central executive committee seems to have slapped the African National Congress (ANC) in the face: it ignored the appeal by its task team, led by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, for unity.

Raymond Suttner on Numsa's United Front

Escalating Political Violence in South Africa

Richard Pithouse, Mail & Guardian

On Monday evening, not long after the sun went down, a man with a gun stepped out of the dark and into the everyday domestic routine in Thuli Ndlovu’s home in KwaNdengezi, Durban. He shot Ndlovu seven times, and her neighbour’s teenage son twice. Ndlovu died on the spot. Her neighbour’s son is in a critical condition.

Ndlovu was the chairperson of the KwaNdengezi branch of Abahlali baseMjondolo. Like Nkululeko Gwala, a member of the same organisation, who was assassinated in Cato Crest, also in Durban, in June last year, she had been subject to serious intimidation for some time and had told her family and comrades that she expected to die.

Interview with Irvin Jim from NUMSA

Taking Politics beyond the Factory Seriously

by Richard Pithouse, Amandla Magazine

Numsa's resolve to break with both the ANC and the authority that the SACP has tried to exert over the union movement carries the potential for a real political opening. The union's commitment to work with other struggles, including community struggles, in a broad united front offers the prospect of these struggles, often isolated in organisational terms, attaining a greater degree of collective coherence and power.

Trade unions, like any other form of organisation including community organisations, social movements and political parties can become overly bureaucratic, reliant on charismatic individuals or corrupt. They can make strategic misjudgements, they can chose to integrate themselves into social institutions and arrangements that reproduce domination and exclusion and they can be captured by elites for their own purposes. In South Africa a number of unions, most notoriously NUM, have not only become bureaucratised and integrated into various kinds of elite power, including capital in the case of NUM, but have also degenerated to the point where there is a vast social distance between union bosses and ordinary workers. But, especially when they remain democratic, unions can be hugely important mechanisms for workers to advance their power and interests against that of capital.

No to Police Brutality! No to Attacks on the Right to Protest!

Chris Vick speaks to Proffessor Suttner about the political effects of the Cosatu rupture

Raymond Suttner on Democracy in the Current Conjuncture

A New Direction in the Trajectory of the Workers Movement

Benjamin Fogel, The Con

In January 1973, dockworkers in Durban embarked on a wave of wildcat strikes against low wages. In total, some 61 000 workers took part.

What became known as the “Durban Moment” not only broke the industrial relations framework that had been established after black trade unions had been smashed by the apartheid state in the 50s and 60s, but also led to the rebirth of the black trade union movement, which saw the establishment of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) in 1985.

Declaration of the Numsa Special National Congress December 17 to 20, 2013

1. Introduction

Numsa's Special National Congress convened from December 17 to December 20, 2013. It was attended by 1,200 delegates representing 338,000 metalworkers from 50 Locals throughout the provinces of South Africa. Numsa was proud to announce in the Congress that it is the biggest union in the history of the African continent. In the last 17 months, since our 9th Congress in Durban, we have grown from 300,000 members to 338,000 members. We are ahead of schedule in our goal to organise 400,000 workers by the time of our 10th Congress in 2016.