Jay Naidoo, The Daily Maverick
The Cosatu that Elijah Barayi led was answerable only to its
members. It never flinched in the face of brutal repression from either the
Apartheid state or the bosses. It was a fighting force of organised workers not
just on the shop floor, but it militantly espoused the political aspirations in
society. Still, it always connected back to the factory floor for its mandates
and to report back. That independence, deep in its DNA, gave it the moral fiber
and ferocious stamina to endure the battles it faced. Today, it’s a very
different organisation.
Careerism is poisoning the lifeblood of Cosatu. Gone are the
days when we were inspired by the passion for justice and human dignity.
Volunteerism and discipline defined the struggles we fought. As a volunteer
organiser in the late Seventies, I remember standing outside the factory gates
or hostels from early morning till late at night discussing issues with
exhausted workers coming off shifts.
I remember those valuable lessons learnt from migrant
workers, who often said to me:
“You seem like a really committed comrade. But the pamphlet
you distribute speak about issues that workers have no interest in. And they
don’t understand it. We are concerned with wages, unfair dismissals, and abuse
from the foreman. You have to start with the bread-and-butter issues that
affect workers. Politics will come later.”
The backbone of Cosatu was built on the struggles of migrant
workers. It was in those brutal hostel conditions where our first organisers
met with battle scarred workplace activists and secretly plotted out the path
forward. The dangers festered and we had to guard vigilantly against police,
management informers, and the inevitable victimisation.
Starting from these inauspicious beginnings, the various
strands had eventually come together into a powerful movement, united by the
opposition to repression, opposition to a brutal regime that dehumanised South
Africa and set us back decades. Years of organisation building, education and
training had built an army of tens of thousands of Cosatu shop stewards,
connected by an umbilical cord to needs, aspirations and hopes of workers on
the shop floor. We were ready. We stood fist to fist ready to slug it out, in
spite of many of our leaders being victimised, detained and our offices bombed.
Our survival was driven from the ground, from the twin wells of understanding
and commitment.
There was no Twitter, Facebook, e-mail or WhatsApp. We did
not run our organisation through press conferences.
That dream was what crystallised on 1 December, 1985, when
Elijah Barayi was elected the President and I the founding General Secretary of
Cosatu. While we did not agree on every issue and had robust debates amongst
the National Office Bearers, we always acted as a team in pursuing the
interests of our members. And not once did we ignore the grassroots demand for
debate on the Federation's decisions.
Turn the clock 27 years to August 16, 2012, and the bloody
stain of the Marikana massacre. It is the pinnacle of a growing ferment in our
land. The people in our workplaces, townships, rural areas and squatter camps
are bitter that democracy has not delivered the fruits that they see a tiny
elite enjoying.
Our leaders across the spectrum are not talking to our
people. They are not working with them systematically to solve their problems,
in providing the hope that one day, even in their children’s lives, things will
be better. It is a debilitating threat not from enemies outside, but those who
lurk within our bosom.
Thousands of workers are deserting our Cosatu unions. They
have lost trust in their branch leaders. I have been in many places where I am
personally told: “Comrade, we do not see union organisers. We don’t know what
is happening in our union. Our leaders are too involved in politics and we do
not get the services and education we did in the past.”
It is true. Union leadership is more engaged in looking up
to the political jockeying than down to the base of its members where its real
strength on the shop floor should give it voice. We cannot hide the disunity
and divisions that cripple Cosatu today.
The critical question is whether Cosatu has become part of
the status quo, sucked into co-governing a political and economic system that
is failing to deliver the promise of a better life we made to our people twenty
years ago.
The current ructions within affiliates and the federation
itself are evidence of an organisation in clear decline. The explosion of
full-time shop stewards, trustees of pension funds and boards of union
investment companies has created a layer of bureaucracy and careerism that is
increasingly detached from the worker base.
Has the election to the position of shop steward, union
official, union office bearer or trustee of a pension fund become part of
system of patronage? Are our leaders seduced by the positions on government
SETAs, state-owned corporations, board positions and the free trips to exotic
locations in exchange for delivering their constituencies to business interests
or to their political paymasters?
Across many union investment companies we have seen the
hazards of unions venturing into business. That grey area has largely become a
toxic cesspool in which union tenderpreneurs, commission-taking sharks and scam
artists swim. Most of these companies have no levels of accountability to the
union structures and in most benefit individuals and the union elites.
As activists we studied Gramsci especially in reference to
his notion of 'the iron law of oligarchy'. Is the union movement part of the
system? Are the layers of union leadership, percolating down to the shop
steward level, being sucked into a system of patronage that defends an
inherently corrupt system itself?
I ask these questions not out of some ulterior political
motive. I harbor a deep commitment to social and economic justice. While my
Cosatu days are long over, and this indeed is a different time, the principle
remains the same: Only the workers themselves can answer the burning questions
of the modern union's nature, structure and leadership. It was true then, and
it is true today.
It was never supposed to happen this way. Cosatu should
never have become a pawn in a greater political game of deadly chess; pawns are
always the first and easiest to sacrifice.
Sadly, in a country that is facing as many problems as South
Africa does today, Cosatu is but one example of a general decline that is
afflicting the country. The issues that are facing are not much different from
the issues that affect the lives of all citizens in South Africa today.
Many in our country are losing trust in their leaders;
Cosatu is not different. But the question that is burning in my mind today is:
Did Cosatu lose trust in itself?
