{"id":2212,"date":"2020-10-16T18:14:09","date_gmt":"2020-10-16T16:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marxistworkersparty.org.za\/?p=2212"},"modified":"2021-01-26T14:27:04","modified_gmt":"2021-01-26T12:27:04","slug":"review-october-7-general-strike-an-opportunity-missed-for-saftu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?p=2212","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: OCTOBER 7 GENERAL STRIKE | An Opportunity Missed for Saftu"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The 7 October general strike called by Cosatu came against the background of an all-out assault on the working class by the ANC government and the bosses over the six months of the lockdown. The government had refused to pay public sector workers the increase agreed in the three-year 2018 collective agreement \u2013 a wage theft that was the most audacious attack on the working class since the government\u2019s walk out from the wage negotiations in 1999.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.2m jobs have been lost, mainly in the private sector, but also through the termination of contracts of thousands of precarious workers in public sector slave-labour schemes like the Expanded Public Works Programme, Early Childhood Development and School Governing Bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result of the government\u2019s lockdown measures, by May almost one million people in Johannesburg, SA\u2019s economic hub, were in need of food aid in addition to the 12-15 million who had been going to bed hungry every night in the country even before. Thousands are experiencing callous non-compliance with pandemic health and safety protocols by management, long delays in the non-payment of unemployment insurance and temporary relief scheme payments, and arbitrary reductions in care and child support grants, as well as the termination of school meals. This has caused enormous hardship with hundreds of thousands more starving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Rising Anger<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rising anger was reflected both amongst organised workers and in working class communities more broadly. Prior to the 7 October general strike, there had been a month of protests by Cosatu\u2019s major healthworkers\u2019 union Nehawu, including strike action at the National Health Laboratory Service, responsible for Covid-testing, over inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE). Community protests had increased significantly \u2013 from an average of two per day before the lockdown, to eight per day under it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ANC\u2019s PPE-corruption scandal<\/a> set alight the smouldering anger of workers and society broadly after the government\u2019s R500 million pandemic emergency budget was descended upon, like hyenas in a feeding frenzy, by corrupt ANC officials and politicians. Acutely aware that there is powder keg waiting to explode, Ramaphosa was obliged to try and defuse public outrage. In his weekly newsletter he admitted that when it comes to corruption, the ANC government was \u201caccused number one\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against the background of an attack simultaneously on ALL section of the working class \u2013 the employed, the unemployed, organised and unorganised, children and the aged \u2013 there was a legitimate expectation of a thunderous response from the leadership of the organised working class. All the explosive ingredients for a massive response from the working class were present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflecting this pressure, Cosatu leaders promised that the economy would be brought to a standstill on 7 October. The strike was supported by all four trade union federations whom together claim to represent 2.8 million workers \u2013 nearly 25% of the workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

But what was the outcome?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The economy was not shut-down \u2013 not even partially. Overwhelmingly, 7 October was just a \u2018new normal\u2019 day. The public sector general strikes of 2007 and 2010, not to mention previous general strikes, tore through the country like a hurricane compared to the brief light drizzle of 7 October 2020. Even the smaller April 2018 Saftu action dwarfed 7 October into insignificance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Johannesburg, Cosatu\u2019s march and motorcade of maybe one thousand passed the around 300-strong Saftu rally with provocative shouts of \u201cone country, one federation\u201d interspersed with hypocritical chants for \u201cworkers unity\u201d. Later, in Johannesburg, separate Cosatu\/Fedusa and Saftu marches converged for a rally where the leaders all sang songs of unity. But they were not, and could not, have been singing from the same hymn book of working class unity in struggle against capitalism and the ANC government. What was on display was not unity but the divisions between the federations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The federations called marches and pickets in major cities. We estimate that not many more than 10,000 nationally could have participated in these. Despite much rhetoric \u2013 and the potential<\/em> for a massive mobilisation \u20137 October was in practice little more than a day of action by a layer of trade union leaders, some shop stewards and some worker activists. The mass of trade union members, if they were even aware of the strike, were not motivated to sacrifice a day\u2019s pay to participate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is necessary to face this hard truth \u2013 to analyse and understand it. Far from harnessing the anger of the masses and organising the \u201cfight back\u201d promised by Saftu, the 7 October \u2018general strike\u2019 revealed anew the crisis of leadership facing the working class. In order to overcome the current weaknesses in the workers\u2019 movement we need explain why this happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Cosatu<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cosatu leadership had no intention of trying to harness the working class\u2019s anger. They were not trying to position the organised working class to give leadership to the unemployed and starving communities. Their calculations were far more cynical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the pre-general strike protests the Nehawu leadership desperately avoided the issue of public sector pay, which was clearly a decisive issue. It is also the issue that goes right to the heart of the contradictions of the Tripartite Alliance and instantly calls into question the Cosatu leadership\u2019s political support for the ANC government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 7 October strike announcement gave the Nehawu leadership the cover for cancelling a health sector-wide strike they had announced for 10 September. Such an action was far too dangerous to risk. It had the potential to spread across the public sector and place the restoration of the public sector pay rise front and centre. The 7 October strike call was also careful to avoid the issue of public sector pay \u2013 it was originally called against corruption. But as the weeks passed the aims of the strike continued to shift and slide depending on which Cosatu leader was being interviewed. Now and then the anger of public sector workers over pay broke through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, revealing the manoeuvres of the bureaucracy, on 2 October the Cosatu and Fedusa leaderships announced a new joint public sector \u201cprogramme of defiance\u201d over the cancelled pay rise. However, this would be action short<\/em> of a strike, consisting rather of lunch-time pickets and work-to-rule. This announcement, five days before<\/em> the 7 October strike, without even mentioning it, was clearly intended to de-mobilise public sector workers, diverting them away from strike action and ensuring that 7 October did not become the starting point for an explosion of struggle from public sector workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even after this self-sabotage, the Cosatu leadership had to ensure that 7 October remained limited to a \u201cletting off steam\u201d exercise. In its demands it was against \u2018everything\u2019 so made no clear demands for anything. Compromised beyond redemption, nevertheless, the Cosatu leadership issued the most extravagant threats that the strike would bring the country to a standstill. At the same time they (dis)organised it to ensure the very opposite \u2013 that it would be business as usual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Workers were asked to engage in a stay-way, to remain at home, to comply with Covid lockdown health protocols instead of demonstrating their power on the streets. The Cosatu leadership would parade through the cities in motorcades! Cosatu\u2019s justification for the stay-at-home was based on fears of breaking the lockdown regulations. But this was an excuse. The working class is more than capable of organising protests that abide by genuine health & safety concerns, for example by marching in strictly isolated contingents of 500 with marshals assigned the additional duty of ensuring social distancing, mask-wearing and the availability of sanitiser at rallies. But the Cosatu leadership did not want<\/em> to go to war. It wanted to keep the peace between the classes \u2013 between the capitalist bosses and their ANC government and the working class. The federations were united in one thing only \u2013 to keep their members off the streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Saftu<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cosatu\u2019s announcement of the 7 October strike was made whilst Saftu\u2019s August NEC was in session. In reality Saftu was outmanoeuvred, exactly as we warned they would be in our Open Letter<\/a> published the week before. But nevertheless, as the ANC government\u2019s popularity plummeted in the face of popular outrage, the general strike offered Saftu the opportunity to demonstrate class solidarity and simultaneously expose the Cosatu leadership\u2019s role in both the workplace and on the political front. But if the Cosatu leadership was determined to labour like a mountain only to produce a mouse \u2013 to, in reality, sabotage its own strike, diminish its impact and defuse its political significance, the Saftu leadership had no intention, perhaps even no conception, of how to seize the moment. The Saftu leadership allowed a significant opportunity to be missed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the Saftu affiliates\u2019 revolt against the de facto<\/em> suspension of the federation\u2019s leadership structures under the lockdown, there were legitimate expectations that Saftu would awaken from its lockdown slumber by placing itself on a war footing against the bosses and the government. The calling of a public sector general strike should have been an outcome of the August NEC, but unfortunately it was not. Saftu correctly announced its intention to support the 7 October strike whilst simultaneously announcing its intention to plan its own programme of action culminating in its \u2018own\u2019 general strike on 2 December, to be followed by three-day mass action in March 2021. But the 7 October general strike should have been used as a dress rehearsal and preparatory mobilisation for 2 December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It should have used the Marxist approach of the united front tactic: not to fraternise with the Cosatu leadership <\/em>but to reach out to its members<\/em> over the heads of their leaders, to expose their crimes, uniting with the Cosatu rank-and-file. Saftu members could have fraternised with Cosatu members engaging them on why they should come over to the new federation. They should have been armed with leaflets, for distribution in every workplace, explaining Saftu\u2019s approach to working class struggle, comparing and contrasting it with Cosatu\u2019s. Saftu could have appealed to the Cosatu rank-and-file over the heads of their leaders and asked them to support the resolution unanimously adopted at the 2018 Working Class Summit \u2013 to launch of a mass workers party on a socialist programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It could have been used as an opportunity to demonstrate Saftu\u2019s recognition of the political significance of the establishment of the new federation; that it represented a break not only with class collaboration in the workplace, but also on the political plane. Saftu\u2019s August NEC should have set a date for the re-convening of the Working Class Summit. Armed with this approach, comradely appeals could have been made to Cosatu members to send their own delegates. Instead the Saftu leadership dilly-dallied sending out guidance to affiliates only seven days before the strike. There was no serious mobilisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even worse, it is reported that on the eve of the strike, the general secretary of Numsa announced that Numsa would not support the strike, echoing the Cosatu leadership\u2019s position on Covid-19 regulations. This amounted to strike-breaking and undermined a decision taken democratically and unanimously by the Saftu NEC with not a single affiliate opposed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Encouragingly however, Numsa\u2019s president attended on 7 October and addressed Saftu\u2019s opening rally. A Numsa contingent from Ekurhuleni defied their general secretary and joined the Saftu march. Even more significantly, at the closing rally, Numsa members trampled on the flag of the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party headed by their general secretary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Why are the federations adopting his approach?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately the basis of the position of the leadership of all the federations \u2013 the ANC-aligned Cosatu, the non-aligned Fedusa and Nactu, and the \u2018independent but not apolitical\u2019 Saftu – is<\/em> political. Despite the differences amongst them, not one federation is based on an understanding that the root of the crisis in society is capitalism, and that the strategic objective of all struggle must be the socialist transformation of society. Through its membership of the Tripartite Alliance Cosatu is trapped in class collaboration in pursuit of a \u201cNational Democratic Revolution\u201d \u2013 the first of the SACP\u2019s two-stage theory. In practice this means the indefinite postponement of the second stage, the socialist revolution, as the NDR attempts to \u201ctransform\u201d the economy through the creation of a black capitalist class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fedusa\u2019s and Nactu\u2019s \u2018independence\u2019 is merely a cover for abstention form the political aspect of the class struggle \u2013 leaving the management of the economic dictatorship of capitalism in the hands of the political representatives of the capitalist class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within Saftu itself, the sharpness of the factional differences between the reformists who believe the crisis of capitalism can be overcome through Keynesian state intervention measures, like fiscal stimulus packages, and the dominant Numsa faction\u2019s NDR conception, obscures the fact that these positions intersect around a common acceptance of capitalism. Both believe a better capitalism is possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saftu, whose founding ideology is \u201cMarxist-Leninism\u201d, would do well to heed the words of these giants of the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone who read Marx and failed to understand that in capitalist society, at every acute moment, in every serious class conflict, the alternative is either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat, has understood nothing of either the economic or the political doctrines of Marx.\u201d<\/p>Lenin, The Third International and its Place in History<\/em> (April, 1919)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Lenin led the first socialist revolution, the 1917 Russian Revolution, the greatest even in human history to date. But one hundred years later, the leaders of the South African working class, from different vantage points, almost all say that that neither the economic prerequisites, nor the working class itself, is ready!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Workers Party<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In spite of the Saftu NEC\u2019s failure to address the workers party question during its August meeting, it could have been raised subsequently before 7 October. A leading member of the MWP, representing the Greater Eldorado Park United Civic, in a Zoom meeting of the WCS steering committee on 2 October, proposed setting a date for the convening of a second Working Class Summit to get moving on the workers party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately Saftu general secretary Vavi agreed with the arguments of one of the left organisations to reject this proposal, on the absurd grounds that a workers party should not be \u201cimposed from above\u201d. The decision to establish a mass workers party on a socialist programme was taken democratically and unanimously by the 1,000 delegates representing 147 community, trade union and student organisations present at the 2018 WCS. The WCS Summit composition was designed precisely to ensure democratic debate so that no one organisation, including the powerful trade unions, could dominate another. This built on democratic decisions in Saftu\u2019s structures, including at its founding Congress in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arguments to the effect that the SRWP\u2019s failure in the 2019 elections is a cautionary tale about rushing to launch completely miss the point about the SRWP\u2019s failure. Its haste was determined by its leadership\u2019s mission: to obstruct the formation of a mass workers party around Saftu and the WCS using the Stalinist methods they were trained in by the SACP.  Having failed to collapse the WCS Summit the Numsa leadership ignored its outcome and proceeded to launch the SRWP the following December, in violation not only of the Saftu founding resolution it was bound by, but behind the backs of Numsa members themselves. This too amounted to strike breaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Forward to 2 December<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are less than seven weeks to go before Saftu\u2019s 2 December general strike. The mobilisation for that event, preparation for which should have been well underway by now, is already lagging behind. Against the background of Saftu\u2019s poor performance on 7 October, a successful general strike is far from assured. There is a danger that another flop could have a demoralising effect and undermine the three-day action planned for March 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it is not too late. There is enormous anger in the working class at being asked to pay the bill for the crisis of capitalism. Whatever concessions the government may be forced to make on the 2020 wage increase e.g. by the courts, they are very clear: there will be no wage increases for the next three years over which they intend to impose cuts so savage that they will achieve a primary budget surplus (i.e. before interest payments) by 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ANC government and the bosses have no intention of retreating. The capitalist system cannot be reformed. It must be overthrown. The ANC government cannot be reformed. It must be removed from office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The irreconcilable contradictions between the interests of the working class that founded Cosatu, and the capitalist ANC in the Tripartite Alliance are at breaking point. An appeal must be made to the rank-and-file of Cosatu, Nactu and Fedusa to join the 2 December action. The creation of workplace- and sector-based industrial locals that unite workers regardless of union affiliation can be used to make working class unity a fact on the ground and liberate workers from the manoeuvres and hesitations of their leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The foundation of Saftu\u2019s approach must be to link the struggle on workplace issues with the political struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the socialist transformation of society. All the forces already in the WCS process, and those not yet, must unite to ensure the success of the 2 December action, the reconvening of the Working Class Summit and the launch of a mass workers party on a socialist programme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 7 October general strike called by Cosatu came against the background of an all-out assault on the working class by the ANC government and the bosses over the six months of the lockdown.Cosatu leaders promised that the economy would be brought to a standstill on 7 October. The strike was supported by all four trade union federations whom together claim to represent 2.8 million workers \u2013 nearly 25% of the workforce. But what was the outcome?<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2213,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trade-union"],"aioseo_notices":[],"acf":[],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2212"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2221,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions\/2221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}