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

'The New Radicals: A Generational Memoir of the 1970s' - A review

Glen Moss, The New Radicals: A Generational Memoir of the 1970s, Jacana, Johannesburg, 2014

Reviewed by: Benjamin Fogel, Journal of Asian & African Studies

The New Radicals is a generational memoir, or rather a political memoir of a generation of white South African student radicals that came of age in the early 1970s through the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). This generation formed a key part of the emerging movements that awakened South Africa from the political slumber of the 1960s. As Glenn Moss puts it, his book “records how they (a group of students) moved from the relatively liberal protest and symbolic politics of an elite university to help in creating the preconditions for a radical challenge to the society that had formed them” (p.vii).

Life after Marikana

Stuart Wilson, The Daily Maverick

First the facts. In August 2012, a group of Rock Drill Operators, dissatisfied with their wages, and with the representation available from either of the labour unions with a presence at the Lonmin Marikana Shaft, embarked upon an unprotected strike to push Lonmin for higher wages. The strike, and its attendant protest, soon gained widespread support, and incited a violent response – both from union officials and the police. In the days before 16 August 2012, the striking miners, union officials, Lonmin security guards, and the police themselves, all took a small number of casualties. The striking miners – about 3,000 of them – retreated to the top of a small rocky outcrop just outside the Lonmin shaft compound. There they stayed for four days, demanding that Lonmin management come and address them on their demands.

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.

Interview with Irvin Jim from NUMSA

The New Radicals: A generational memoir of the 1970's

The rise and fall of Cosatu: From vanguard to sacrificial lamb

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.

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.

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.

Time to stop feeding the parasites

by Lindela 'Mashumi' Figlan, The Daily Maverick

Apartheid was defeated by the will of the people, but when freedom arrived, along with it came a parasite. This parasite is eating the people’s struggle from the inside out. It’s time to rid South Africa of its unwelcome guest.

At home in Flagstaff my mother used to feed the two pigs with one big walking dish. One day I noticed that she was no longer feeding the pigs from one big walking dish and that she had separated one pig from another and was using two walking dishes. I was very stressed because one was getting thin and the other was getting fat. I asked my mother about her decision to feed the pigs separately. She told me the thin pig had a parasite that was eating it from the inside.

The Durban strikes of 1973: Political identities and themanagement of protest

The Durban strikes of 1973: Political identities and the management of protest by TigersEye99

The Runaway Union

by Aman Sethi, The Hindu

Emperors Palace casino — edifice of dreams, self-proclaimed Vegas of Africa with its 1,724 slot machines, 68 gaming tables, and giant fibreglass statues of Egyptian pharaohs — is a five-minute drive from Johannesburg airport.

In a country of desperate inequality, the casino offers one way past the seemingly impermeable barriers of race and class. Yet, Emperors Palace is a bet in itself, a wager, placed by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on behalf of its many thousand members that money pulled from gamblers’ pockets in Johannesburg will find its way past the city’s smart suburbs into the streaked overalls of men crouched at a faraway mine face thousands of feet underground.

COSATU: a house divided

By Benjamin Fogel, Amandla!

COSATU is in the midst of the biggest crisis in its 27-year history. This crisis has arisen from an SACP-driven attempt to oust democratically elected COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, under the guise of corruption charges. The conflict's roots are in longstanding political contradictions and ideological tensions between COSATU and its Alliance partners – the ANC and the SACP. At stake is not only the leadership of COSATU, but its political and moral direction.

COSATU's history: coming full circle

Interview with Dirk Hartford, the first head of COSATU media and editor of COSATU News in the 1980's, about the implications of the current tensions in COSATU. Amandla!

Amandla!: What do you make of what is happening in COSATU now with the allegations against its General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi ?

DH: I think what we are seeing is a direct result of the decisive victory of the Zuma-SACP faction at the December ANC Congress in Mangaung. The SACP essentially triumphed at Mangaung, and now has more people in the ANC's NEC, government and Cabinet than ever before. They are on the offensive to take out any significant opposing voices in the Alliance. Julius Malema, the ANCYL NEC, and the Limpopo NEC are already history. Now they are coming for the biggest thorn in their sides, which has always been Vavi and the independent trade union or worker views that he reflects.

Unions: a need to get back to first principles

Terry Bell

by Terry Bell, Tery Bell Writes

On January 31, exactly 40 years ago, the modern trade union movement arrived on the South African scene. Its birth was heralded by a wave of strikes in Durban that had gestated over 22 days from the time 2 000 workers at Coronation Brick and Tile downed tools.

These strikes, that culminated in nearly 5 000 workers at three major plants declaring a dispute on that fateful day in 1973 were not only to demand better pay and shopfloor conditions; they also had a broad, anti-apartheid, political dimension. And, like the worker committees that emerged during the recent turmoil on the platinum belt, they had no fixed leadership or bureaucracy.

Workers' Power Thrives On Unity

Steven Friedman

Steven Friedman, RU Perspectives

The Durban strikes of 1973 empowered workers and helped destroy apartheid.

This month 40 years ago, South Africa learned an important truth which shaped our future - that people without power can challenge those who have it, but only if they act together.

The lesson was taught by the Durban strikes of 1973; they began a process which shifted power to working people and played an important role in defeating apartheid.

Tumi Moloi, striking miner from Amplats, speaks in London

Cape winelands: Why the farmworkers defied Cosatu

Driving through the Hex River Valley after Wednesday’s chaotic protests feels like entering a ghost town. Yet when one manages to find residents and speak to them, it becomes crystal clear that the farm workers are planning to hold out for their wage demands – and that few of them know anything of the well-publicised promises that they would be back at work this week. By JARED SACKS, The Daily Maverick

Entering the Hex River Valley on Thursday morning was a surreal experience. Following Cosatu's well publicised statement on Wednesday, I had expected that most farmworkers would already be in the fields trying to recuperate their lost wages over the past two weeks.

The Farm Workers' Strike: It's Far From Over

by Anna Majavu, SACSIS

The mines and the farms are two enduring symbols of old white colonial theft, of the minerals and land. Because of the monopoly of the National Union of Mineworkers, whose leaders and officials have long preferred compromise and co-determination over worker control, it has been difficult for mineworkers to strike – until the Marikana massacre.