2010 Mass Strike in South Africa DIGEST

THE 2010 MASS STRIKE IN THE STATE SECTOR, SOUTH AFRICA (2010)
by Ian Bekker and Lucien van der Walt

DIGEST PRODUCED FOR TUSG.ORG

Recently, around 1.3 million state sector workers went on strike for four weeks against attempts to impose neoliberal austerity measures. The strike took place just weeks after South Africa’s government spent billions on hosting the FIFA World Cup, the biggest sporting event in the world. It was the biggest state sector strike in recent history, dwarfing even the month-long mass strike of 2007, involving unions affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), as well as eleven non-COSATU unions linked together in the Independent Labour Caucus (ILC), a loose alliance.

The strike was all the more remarkable given that COSATU, the largest union centre, is part of a Tripartite Alliance with the African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party in South Africa. (The third leg of the Alliance is the South African Communist Party, SACP, many of whose leaders serve as key figures in the ANC government, but also as union leaders.) In striking against the state-as-employer, the federation inevitably had to confront the ANC-as-government, on the eve of the ANC’s September 2010 National General Council (NGC).

Historically, strike action has been illegal in most forms of state employment, but legal reforms in 1993 were consolidated in the post-apartheid Labour Relations Act (LRA) of 1995 (amended in 1996, 1998 and 2002). This covers all employees besides military and intelligence personnel and allows any employee to strike except those in “essential services”, i.e. services that, if interrupted, endanger life, personal safety or health.

The 2010 Mass Strike in the State Sector, South Africa (Bekker & van der Walt 2010)
In this context, state sector trade unionism has forged ahead at a time when mining- and manufacturing-based trade unionism has been hard hit by the country’s economic difficulties and move towards free trade. With 224,387 members, the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) is now the second largest affiliate of two million-strong COSATU, the largest union federation in the country. It is closely followed by the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU), which organizes in hospitals, schools, universities and elsewhere, with 216,652 members.

Both have overtaken the National Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA), with 212,964 members, and are catching up with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), with 270,536 members.
While COSATU is a mainly African union federation, with origins in the anti-apartheid movement, the ILC is a front for a range of other unions – almost all these unions proclaim that they are not aligned with any political party, and their membership is noticeably drawn from the more skilled layers of white, coloured and Indian workers.

One such union is the Public Servants Association (PSA), with 205,000 members, affiliated to the Federation of Unions of South Africa (FEDUSA), which has 550,000 members, the second biggest federation in South Africa. Another is the National Union of Public Service and Allied Workers (NUPSAW), with 60,000 members, affiliated to the centre-right Confederation of South African Workers’ Unions (CONSAWU).
COSATU has played an important role in the ANC, most recently in the political rebirth of Jacob Zuma. Zuma was a disgraced politician who had been fired from the post of deputy president in 2005 and prosecuted for alleged corruption (as well as on a rape charge). COSATU’s backing of Zuma against incumbent ANC leader President Thabo Mbeki allowed him to make a spectacular comeback: Mbeki was pushed out of the ANC leadership; Zuma became the country’s president after the 2009 general elections.

COSATU played an absolutely critical role in the ANC’s election campaign.

The Strike

A months-long state sector dispute came to a head in August this year with a one-day general strike on Tuesday 10 August. With inflation running above six percent, unions had aimed at increases of 8.6 percent as well as housing allowances of R1,000 (approximately USD 140). Government officials, claiming “resource constraints,” said could not afford more than 6.3%. The government gave the unions 21 days to consider this offer before the government would unilaterally implement the package.

The state’s hard line was partly a result of its determination to impose the neoliberal framework. It also served to signal that COSATU’s support for Zuma in no sense gave the unions the right to set ANC policy. One of the unions’ gripes with Mbeki had been his continual insistence that COSATU was a subordinate part of an ANC-led Alliance.

Zuma, it seems, shares Mbeki’s view that the unions must play second fiddle to the party and be kept in their place.

On the evening of Tuesday 17 August, the negotiations between government and union representatives collapsed. An indefinite strike started the next day, involving around 1.3 million workers, both COSATU- and ILC-affiliated.

State schools were closed, hospitals were affected; courts were disrupted because stenographers and interpreters were part of the strike action. The army was instructed to assist in the hospitals. Police arrested dozens of strikers for “public violence”, following attacks on strike breakers. Sixty-one strikers had been arrested by the seventh day. Rubber bullets and water cannons were used on several occasions. Zuma condemned the strike for its violence, and for “tarnishing” the country’s image abroad. He also threatened to fire strikers.

The police, however, are also unionized, with police unions linked to both CONSAWU and COSATU. On 21 August, the courts issued an interdict preventing the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (POPCRU, a 95,864-strong COSATU affiliate) from joining the strike.
On 24 August, COSATU threatened countrywide sympathy strikes from non-public- sector unions; two days later, there were countrywide rallies.

A Partial Victory

The intractability of the rank-and-file workers forced union leaders to hold out for a better deal despite heavy ANC government pressure and very hostile media reporting.
The state finally made a new offer of 7.5 percent raises, and an R800 (around USD 110) allowance. This was certainly a substantial set of gains, although they fell short of the original demands.

Despite the pressure from below, and widespread rank-and-file resentment towards ANC leaders, COSATU took care to ensure that the strike was suspended before the ANC National Government Council. The strike was suspended on 6 September and officially ended on 13 October, although at that point there was no union agreement on the proposed settlement. Even the next day, a 51 percent mandate from striking unions was still not achieved.
The decision to suspend the strike, despite the power of the strike movement, illustrates how the Tripartite Alliance has a very negative impact on the labor movement.

COSATU maintains the Tripartite Alliance despite the ANC’s overt neoliberalism for two main reasons: loyalty, dating back to the anti-apartheid struggle, and strategy: the hope that the ANC can be shifted towards COSATU’s alternative economic policy – centered on a mixture of Keynesianism, protectionism and union rights – was not even discussed at the 2010 National Government Council, despite initial ANC promises.

Perhaps, however, the most glaring failure of the strike was the failure to link the union struggle to the struggle of other sections of the working class. The strike was strongest by far in the state hospitals, and in state schools in the townships – the slums in which the African, coloured and Indian working class remains concentrated.

In other words, the main impact of the disruption of production at these facilities was on these working class communities.

The disruption of health and education only affected the ruling class indirectly, i.e. inasmuch as it generated public outrage, not least by those personally harmed by the strike. A court interdict forcing essential workers back to work was ignored. Meanwhile, the media widely publicized strikes which left hospital patients without care and students unable to take end-of-year examinations. Zuma’s condemnation of the strike had resonance precisely because such actions are widely and understandably condemned within the working class.

Some have suggested the strike signals the beginning of the end of the Alliance. This is unlikely as long as COSATU’s politics remain unchanged and as long as COSATU ignores the possibility of an alternative alliance: not with the ANC, but with other unions, as well as with the post-apartheid community movements that fight around issues such as housing and electricity.
COSATU’s commitment to using the country’s corporatist system for social partnership – notably the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC), but also various forms of workplace and industry-level cooperation – to forward its social democratic agenda also reinforces the trend towards centralization of union power and resources in the hands of the leadership.

A lot of activism and work will be required to ensure that trade unions help focus the energy of the working class on the root causes of current social ills and on the common links between the struggles of workers and the unemployed, unions and community movements, thus developing a broad front of oppressed classes in order to secure social and economic equality, as well as participatory democracy and social justice, in South Africa. This also means that the unions need a clear vision of a libertarian and socialist transformation, and that the unions themselves remain under the strictest rank-and-file control.