Input by Blade Nzimande, SACP General Secretary, to the SAMWU Congress
20 August, Pretoria
Comrade President, Petrus Mashishi, General Secretary, Roger Ronnie, the SAMWU NEC, other National Office Bearers of SAMWU, leaders of COSATU and affiliates present, leaders of the ANC and other allied formations, local and international guests, comrades and friends, the South African Communist Party expresses its gratitude for the opportunity to address this all-important Congress of SAMWU taking place a month before the 8th Congress of COSATU and on the eve of the 3rd democratic elections in our country’s history.
It is significant that today is the 20th anniversary of the launch of the United Democratic Front. Let us also use this occasion to celebrate this event, and recommit ourselves to building people’s power in society, underpinned and driven by a strong, politically conscious working class!
We hope that this input and our participation as the SACP will contribute to the success of the Congress and SAMWU given the massive challenges facing workers in particular, and the working class in general.
We have been asked to talk about the role of the trade union movement in building our Party and the ongoing relationship between the Party and the trade union movement. As we speak and address this Congress on this topic, we emerge from having lost Comrade Smiso Nkwanyana, our Party’s Provincial Secretary in KwaZulu Natal, who was one of the practical manifestations of how to grapple with this question that you have posed to us. Comrade President, allow us therefore to also dedicate the presentation of this message of support to the memory of Cde Simiso Nkwanyana.
In dealing with the relationship between communists and the labour movement, the most definitive guideline and approach is that enunciated by Lenin in 1900. Allow me to quote from this:
“Social democracy is a combination of the labour movement with socialism. Its task is not passively to serve the labour movement at each of its separate stages, but to represent the interests of the movement as a whole, to point out to this movement its ultimate aims and its political tasks, and to protect its political and ideological independence. Isolated from Social-Democracy, the labour movement becomes petty and inevitably becomes bourgeois: in conducting only the economic struggle, the working class loses its political independence; it becomes the tail of other parties and runs counter to the great slogan: ‘The emancipation of the workers must be the task of the workers themselves’. In every country there has been a period in which the labour movement existed separately from the socialist movement, each going its own road; and in every country this state of isolation weakened both the socialist movement and the labour movement. Only the combination of socialism with the labour movement in each country created a durable basis for both the one and the other” (Lenin, 1900)
The above approach is as relevant today as it was relevant then. The enemies of the working class everywhere know this, that is why one of their strategies is to drive a wedge between communists and the labour movement, thus aiming to weaken both and strengthen the capitalist character of society. That is where the highly sectarian left works to the agenda of the bourgeoisie when they call for COSATU to split from the Communist Party and the Alliance, and transforms itself into a workers’ party. The bourgeoisie would love this as it would isolate organised workers from the Party and drive it into a cocoon!
The question of the relationship between the Communist Party and the trade union movement is an important question, which needs to be grappled with in the context of practical experience. And thus our focus on this input on the following themes:
Throughout these themes, we come to the question of the relationship between the Party and the trade union movement.
The last few months have seen the development of a medium term vision by both the Party and COSATU, independent of each other. Our Party has placed for debate within our structures a Medium Term Vision for the next 10-12 years, which addresses what kind of society we want to see in South Africa by the end of the second decade of our freedom in 2014. At its last CEC (16-17 July), COSATU received and extensively debated "Vision 2015". Why this seeming "coincidence" that our prime working class and worker formations are suddenly pre-occupied with a medium term vision?
It is not a coincidence, nearly a decade after our 1994 breakthrough it is critical that the trajectory of what has been achieved and the trajectory of where we are going, or of where we should be going, is assessed strategically from a working class perspective. As we will argue, for objective reasons, the centrality of class in the NDR is more critical than even before.
Some of the lessons being learnt by South Africa's working class during this period include the following:
- The 1994 democratic breakthrough secured state power for a fundamentally progressive, multi-class, national democratic power bloc in which the working class has been a significant factor. Over the last decade, as a direct consequence of the breakthrough, very significant constitutional, legal and institutional power has been shifted towards the working class. There have also been major, if uneven, resource transfers (housing, electricity, water, telecommunications, health-care, education, social security, land) to the working class and to working class dominated communities.
- However, in other respects, working class power has been weakened and diluted in this period, especially by the staggering number of jobs lost in the formal sector (more than 1 million), and by other drastic restructuring measures directed at the working class (casualisation, informalisation, etc). This major and brutal restructuring of our economy, in which the working class and working class communities have borne the brunt, has, in fact, been under way in our economy since the mid-1970s. But, in many respects, the process has been accelerated and also extended into new sectors (retail, finance and, critically, the public sector) since 1994. However, two and a half decades of labour-shedding restructuring has left a persisting legacy of systemic, structural unemployment with levels of unemployment around a staggering 40%.
- The trajectory of post-1994 transformation has been contested by a variety of class forces, including from within the Alliance itself. There has been a notable, if still relatively weak, emergence of new black capitalist and upper middle strata closely related to and dependent upon the new democratic state and the ANC-led alliance. These developments have, naturally, impacted upon the policy perspectives and internal contradictions within the new democratic state, and our movement.
- The majority (black) sector of the working class and these emergent upper middle and bourgeois strata have shared interests, not least in the consolidation of an effective, powerful, non-racial, democratic state capable of intervening and strategically directing the economy, whose commanding heights continue to be dominated by established domestic capitalist forces, and by transnational corporations (who would prefer to see a lean state whose principal activities would be limited to creating an investor friendly climate and protecting existing bourgeois property rights). Our multi-class ruling bloc also shares a general vision of and a common interest in regional and continental development, overcoming the existing patterns of imperialist accumulation and underdevelopment.
- However, the strategic nature of the democratic state’s interventions into the economy, the region and continent are, themselves, contested within the Alliance itself, and this contest reflects different class interests. Should BEE be narrowly or broadly defined, not just in theory but in practice? Should our objective in regard to support to township survivalist operations be transforming them into formalised, market effective businesses (i.e. enterprises based on labour exploitation and profit maximisation), or should we be trying to de-link entrepreneurship from labour exploitation and the “laws” of the market? Is the restructuring of state owned enterprises geared to consolidating a more effective development state and parastatal sector, or is it, again, about creating business opportunities for emerging elites? Increasingly, these kinds of strategic questions are at the heart of the evolving trajectory of the NDR. This is why we are insisting that a conscious, working class perspective and the deliberate, systematic building of working class power have become more imperative than ever.
- The weaknesses and disarray of alternative left perspectives and practical ideologies and technical know-how through the 1990s have also been key factors.
- However, while working class strategies face serious challenges, there are important positive factors upon which we need to build. Our ANC-led liberation movement, while contested, remains fundamentally rooted amongst the working class and poor. The working class forces, at the point of production and in communities, unleashed in the struggle against apartheid, while partially destabilised by objective and subjective factors, remain a significant national factor with important organisational and mobilisational revolutionary experience. The emergent capitalist and upper middle strata remain weak and highly dependent on state power, which, in turn, depends upon electoral success and therefore a relatively unified and mobilised mass base. The globally dominant ideological prescriptions are totally incapable of addressing the socio-economic challenges of our society.
What does the medium-term vision discussion document of the SACP say? To quote:
“We cannot … guide, lead and grapple with the current period and all its developments, as well as the second decade of our freedom, unless we develop a medium term vision... The fundamental goal of the SACP for the next 10-11 years should be that the working class by then must be having a decisive and qualitative impact on all key sites of power and influence - particularly political, mass and economic sites of power - such that no significant centre of power in society can … exercise that power without a significant input from, and centrally taking into account the class interests of, the working class” (Bua Komanisi, July 2003, Volume 3 No.1 p.3).
In relation to the ideological struggle, the SACP's discussion document on the medium term vision calls for: "Building a conscious cadre able to impact on state institutions and policy, economic and mass formations in favour of the workers and the poor." Most critically, the document states that: "In the same way that the locomotive and bedrock of the struggle against apartheid was the organised power of the working class, any further qualitative advance in the NDR is dependent on the power and political consciousness of that working class" (Bua Komanisi, July 2003, p.4).
The COSATU CEC document ("Consolidating Working Class Power for Quality Jobs - Towards 2015") argues: "We need a 2015 plan because it has become clear that only deep-seated restructuring of our economy and the state can bring about the aims of the National Democratic Revolution" (p.1). Of fundamental importance in achieving this goal is the fact that:
“Our assessment of the past ten years suggests a complex pattern of gains and setbacks. On the one hand, the 1994 transition brought major political and social gains, with the introduction of democracy... and extension of government services to our communities... On the other hand, whilst the democratic forces have entered political office, the economic ruling class has remained the same. Our economy remains in white hands, dominated by the mining finance complex in alliance with foreign capital” (p.3).
By putting forward its medium-term vision discussion document, the Party, as a working class political party, is also making it possible for the trade union movement to, from a consistently working class perspective, to grapple with current challenges whilst also building working class power in order to tilt the balance of class forces in favour of poor and working people over the next period starting with a sober analysis of this balance of forces in the current period. In other words, the realisation of the emerging working class vision, let alone winning the struggle to build socialism, is not possible without deepening the socialist outlook, consciousness and confidence of the working class. The medium-term vision discussion document of the Party is about how the Party can discharge its role and responsibilities to the trade union movement.
Working Class Unity
It is however important that against the background of all what we are talking about, working class unity is absolutely central. We must consciously nurture and deepen the unity of the working class, its ideological perspectives and programme during this period. Central in achieving this is the unity of the trade union movement itself. It is important that we defeat opportunism and sectarian tendencies within the trade union movement, and ensure that we develop and strengthen. Trade union unity is a critical factor in broader working class unity. We hope your Congress will contribute towards this goal of broader working class unity.
The role of the trade union movement in building the SACP has been under discussion for some time in COSATU structures. But it is important that we revisit this in order to understand its basis and to review our experience thus far.
Throughout the discussion of this issue, almost all COSATU affiliates have resolved to build industrial units of the SACP, to start socialist forums and to mobilise for the debit order campaign. As the Party, we have seen important strides made in the debit order campaign across all COSATU affiliates and the Party also receives important support from COSATU affiliates including support for district offices in some of the SAMWU locals. We appreciate this. However, we cannot say the same of the building of industrial units and socialist forums which should be the lifeblood of working class political life in the workplace.
Very few Party districts and branches have succeeded to build industrial units and socialist forums despite the fact that many workers in COSATU love and respect the Communist Party. In our assessment this is due to a number of reasons:
These are formidable challenges we dare not under-estimate. We strongly believe that building SACP workplace units is one concrete way through which our Party can work closely with the labour movement. Through these we can conduct political education and cadre development, and bring the Party closer to organised workers. We need to jointly look at ways of putting more effort into this task.
The principal roles of Party workplace structures are:
These units are not a replacement of, or parallel structures to, trade union structures and shopstewards at the workplace. And they should not be used as platforms to fight battles inside the unions.
Some may see this discussion as a narrow input to the benefit of the SACP without a direct benefit to workers and their day-to-day struggles. Whilst understandable, but this view could limit the scope of working class struggles. It was partly in recognition of this possibility that our CC meeting held over the weekend emphasised that the Party must play its role and discharge its responsibilities to the trade union movement. In our view, the responsibilities of the Communist Party to the trade union movement derive from the strategic objectives of the National Democratic Revolution and the struggle for socialism in our country. As the Communist Party we have argued consistently that the main motive force of our revolution is the working class and that the logical conclusion of the NDR is the achievement of socialism.
The debates on the working class as the main motive force will not be won in the boardrooms. This debate will be won on the ground, by ensuring that we build independent working class power, through deepening the socialist outlook of the working class and building strong structures, particularly unions. It is for this reason that I would like to turn to the question of concrete struggles around local government transformation.
Consistent with the outline of the emerging working class vision, SAMWU, as the main representative of workers in the local government and related sectors needs to approach this discussion with the benefit of its sectoral struggles. What lessons are local government workers learning in their own sector? What is the balance of class forces in the local government sector? What is the working class vision on local government transformation? What is the capacity of the working class to achieve this vision?
The 11th Congress of the Party, held in July last year, resolved that the Party must do everything in its power to ensure that the ongoing transformation of the local sphere is guided by the strategic objectives of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR), and, in particular, our commitment to a growth and development strategy that is both people-centred and people-driven.
It is at the local level that it can be possible to develop a people-centred and people-driven approach. Our neo-liberal strategic opponents like to limit discussion of transformation policy options to an elitist and technocratic domain that is often disempowering to working class formations, not to mention our mass base. Local transformation is, potentially, one terrain on which we can seek to mobilise popular participation.
A new, progressive legislative framework
One of the important constitutional and legislative achievements of the post-1994 period is a relatively unique, and remarkably progressive legal framework for community participation in local governance. In our new local government system, a municipality is legally defined as comprising not just the councillors and administration, but the local community as well. Among the objects of local government in the Constitution are “to provide democratic and accountable government for local communities” and “to encourage the involvement of communities and community organisations in matters of local government”.
In terms of the Municipal Systems Act a municipality “must develop a culture of municipal governance that complements formal representative government with a system of participatory governance”. The Act makes it clear that residents have the right to contribute to the municipality’s decision-making processes. They also have the right to submit recommendations and complaints to the council and are entitled to prompt responses to these. They have the right to “regular disclosure of the state of affairs of the municipality, including its finances”. In order to encourage residents to pay promptly for their services, municipalities are required to inform them about the costs of providing the services, the reasons for the payments of the fees, and the uses to which the monies raised are put. Residents also have the right to give feedback to the municipality on the quality and level of services offered to them.
The new system also provides for ward committees to be set up in each ward of a municipality in order to “enhance participatory democracy”. A ward committee may make representation on any issue affecting a ward to the councillor or through the councillor to the council. It can also exercise any duty or power delegated to it by the council. In terms of the Code of Conduct, councillors are required to have at least four public report-back meetings every year.
This framework summarised above constitutes a remarkably progressive framework for consolidating popular working class power at the local level. However there are many challenges.
Challenges
The local sphere of democratic government has been the slowest to be instituted. It was only with the December 2000 local government elections that a fully democratic dispensation really began.
Local government is beset with many capacity and resource challenges including human resources.
Despite the progressive legislation summarised above, many of our people are completely unaware of their local government rights, and municipalities themselves have often been slow in implementing participatory measures – either ignoring them, or doing the bureaucratic minimum requirements.
The tendency towards the demobilisation of our mass forces after 1994, and weaknesses in the mass and community based organisations that had been so important in the anti-apartheid struggle, have further contributed to a slowness in taking up the new possibilities for popular participation.
In addition, we have also already encountered many difficulties and shortcomings in the implementation of participatory measures. Ward committees are, in practice, often little more than formalistic affairs, to fulfil the letter (but not the spirit) of the legislation. Sometimes the same ward committees are dominated by a handful of self-appointed community notables, gate-keepers, who suppress, rather than facilitate genuine community involvement. IDPs are reduced to pet projects, or uncoordinated wish-lists rather than being genuinely integrated, three-year developmental plans.
In the transformation of local government we have also seen some municipalities implementing restructuring plans to make municipalities function along what are regarded as modern structures. Many such restructuring plans were rooted in a private sector, managerialist paradigm which has displaced meaningful discussion and consultation with workers and local communities.
In particular, the constant challenge of the globally hegemonic neo-liberal paradigm, with its new “public management” perspectives has argued for many local governments to be strong in forcing through unpopular structural adjustment measures whilst weakening the capacity of local government to drive economic growth and social service delivery. Hence the concept of “user pays”, “market determined pricing”, “introducing competition into social delivery”, and, of course, privatisation. These neo-liberal management techinuqes strip local government of its long-term, strategic public mandate which requires public entities capable of being organised and motivated around the mandate.
We need to ask some hard questions about local government transformation, starting with ourselves. For example, do municipal workers and unions have their own vision on the kind of local transformation we need? How accountable are the Boards of the municipality-owned utilities, agencies and companies to local communities? Who serves on these Boards and how are they appointed? Do workers and local communities have a say in how these Boards are made up and function?
Also important is the SETAs including the local government SETA which SAMWU is an active part of. To what extent have workers ensured that this SETA addresses the needs and interest of workers and communities? The recent COSATU Education Conference began to raise and answer some of these questions. This requires consolidation and action. Thus the importance of the role that SAMWU must continue to play in engaging and leading the Local Government SETA. The recent decision by the SETA to develop a programme on co-operatives is an example of how workers can use their strategic location to advance a working class agenda.
None of these problems are insurmountable but they underline that building an effective developmental state at the local level is not something that simply flows spontaneously from progressive legislation. It requires ongoing working class mobilisation. In the coming period, the SACP intends to play an active role in massive educational and mobilisational programme on the rights of residents to take part in municipal affairs and on the importance of community participation including in IDPs, municipal budgets, ward committees, the provision of free basic amounts of water and electricity, and the review of a municipality’s performance management system.
The big challenge therefore is to mobilise SAMWU members, all municipal workers and local communities behind socio-economic transformation that will benefit the workers and the poor.
In the recent past, municipal workers have also been grappling with the restructuring of municipal pension funds. The Communist Party believes that the restructuring of these municipal pension funds must not just be driven by management without significant input from the workers. Consistent with the SACP-led banks campaign, the SACP calls on this SAMWU Congress to consider how SAMWU can strategically position itself in the restructuring process to ensure that workers’ interests are protected and also that the power of workers over the investment decisions and strategic direction of these municipal pension funds is guaranteed. This will be important in ensuring worker control and democratisation of the retirement fund industry. Why should municipal workers contribute to retirement funds which they do not control and do not even invest in development of our townships, rural areas and informal settlements?
Critically, all these tasks and challenges require that we use the Chris Hani Institute and other working class institutions to research, analyse and develop policies to advance our own struggles as municipal workers and local communities.
The last but most important and immediate task facing the workers of our country, is to ensure an overwhelming majority for the ANC in the elections next year. As workers, it is in our deepest interest to return the ANC government overwhelmingly. The ANC is the best placed organisation to take forward transformation in our country, and the only government best capable of addressing the interests of the overwhelming majority of our people.
It is also important that as a matter of urgency we ensure that workers fully participate in all the ANC election structures. We must also ensure that we participate in the drafting of the election manifesto and ensure that the interests of workers are prominent. The immediate task however is to throw our weight behind the ID campaign. It would be crucial that this Congress adopts specific resolutions on how SAMWU is going to be part of this important electoral effort.
There are additional challenges facing our unions in relation to the election campaign. We need to ensure that we reach out to the millions of workers to ensure that they come out and vote. Particular attention needs to paid to the urban African working class, particularly in areas like Durban and Pietermaritzburg in order to ensure that we win that province. Part of the problem is that our people in these areas have in the past not come out in the numbers we need. What is the role of SAMWU in this regard?
Another key challenge is that of focusing on the Coloured working class in the Western Cape. We need to use the co-operation between the ANC and NNP to ensure that we reach out to the Coloured working class as a whole. If a union like SAMWU, and all the COSATU unions, can throw its weight behind this effort, our job will be half done in the Western Cape.
An important challenge however is that as we draw up the ANC election manifesto we need to ensure that we begin to draw up a joint Alliance programme to make sure that the implementation of the manifesto is driven collectively. This will overcome the problem of tensions that sometimes arise out of the interpretation of the implementation of the manifesto. This is also important in order to ensure that joint Alliance work does not only happen during the election campaign and not after it.
Our last Central Committee also took a decision that more effort needs to be focused on building the alliance at local level. We sometimes tend to focus on the national level, when in fact the alliance must be built from below. In order to achieve this, it is important that workers participate effectively in ANC and SACP branches, in order to shape the alliance from below.
Let us get down to work to ensure a convincing victory for the ANC next year!
Moving towards a conclusion, this SACP input to your Congress has highlighted the following:
This SACP message may end up just being a message of support. As the Party we believe that both the Party and SAMWU are in a position to energetically and systematically take forward the above challenges. Therefore the Party proposes the holding of an SACP-SAMWU Bilateral Meeting as soon as possible after this Congress in order to:
With these words we wish you a successful Congress!