{"id":8265,"date":"2026-07-22T16:37:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T14:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?p=8265"},"modified":"2026-07-22T16:37:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T14:37:21","slug":"the-crisis-in-numsa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?p=8265","title":{"rendered":"The Crisis In NUMSA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Towards the resuscitation of Numsa\u2019s traditions of workers control, democracy and socialism<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The MWP welcomes the revolt against the corrupt Stalinist cabal that has captured Numsa\u2019s apparatus and subverted its structures from national, regional to local level. It has engaged in class collaboration with the bosses and colluded with the pro-capitalist foreign policy of the Stalinist regime in China and condoned its authoritarian anti-working class domestic regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has plundered the union\u2019s resources for personal gain as well as for the benefit of anti-working class, racist, xenophobic and corrupt political formations in SA. It has contaminated the union\u2019s noble traditions of class independence, uncompromising opposition to capitalism and for the socialist transformation of society.  The MWP fully support the efforts of the rank-and-file to restore Numsa\u2019s traditions of worker control, democracy and socialism. This is vital not only for Numsa members, but, given Numsa\u2019s role in the development of the labour movements, in the struggle against apartheid, the forging of the unity of the working class and in spearheading the ideological direction towards socialism, for the working class as a whole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The revolt has led to demands by a majority of Numsa regions for accountability and a special central committee. It was precipitated by the explosive January 2026letter addressed to the Numsa central committee by the former Numsa Investment Company\u2019s former Chief Executive Officer and current disputed head of one of the NIC\u2019s subsidiaries, 360 Financial Services, that owns Dove\u2019s Funeral Services,  NUMSA Industrial Holdings and NUMSA Property Group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, like the foreshocks that precedes an earthquake, the current revolt against the Ivin Jim grouping first manifested itself publicly at thew SA Federation of Trade Union\u2019s second congress in 2022. Then, the precipitating factor that gave rise to a revolt was the Numsa delegates\u2019 rejection of the Jim leadership\u2019s opposition to the re-election of comrade Zwelinzima Vavi as Saftu secretary general as well as the right of then Numsa second deputy president, comrade Ruth Ntlokose\u2019s right to contest for the position of Saftu president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our post Saftu congress statement (https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?p=3903<\/a>) \u2026) the MWP welcomed the defeat of the Jim grouping. We called upon Saftu to translate its reaffirmation of its commitment to socialism into a programme of action to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. ideologically and politically rearm the workers movement<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. lead the struggle of the working class to reclaim its class and political independence<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. to reconvene the Working Class Summit\u201d to implement the 2018 Working Class Summit declaration to form a workers party on a socialist programme (https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?p=3743<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    The Numsa comrades that spearheaded the revolt against the Jim-grouping came to be known as \u201cNumsa 2\u201d. Their revolt occurred against the background of the humiliating defeat of the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP) in the 2019 general election. Consistently and alone  the MWP  pointed out that many on the left had mistakenly swallowed the claim that the SRWP had been established in line with the decisions that has led to the convening of Numsa\u2019s 2013 Special National Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We pointed out that the SRWP was in reality a SACP Mark 2, intended to obstruct the implementation of the 2017 Saftu founding congress resolution to form a workers party and to establish a Political and Ideological Commission (PIC) to clear the path towards it. The Stalinist Numsa leadership had already engineered the 2013 SNC to ensure it did not launch a workers party as promised. Fearing that a workers party that would emerge out of Saftu\u2019s founding congress resolutions would not be under its control, the Stalinist leadership dedicated itself to undermine the process, undermined the PIC and unsuccessfully tried to collapse the 2018 WCS. In an act of political strike breaking, the leadership ignored both the Saftu founding congress resolutions as well as the 2018 WCS declaration by launching the SRWP behind the backs of both the Numsa and the Saftu rank-and-file.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As we pointed out at the time, the most significant fact arising from the SRWP\u2019s failure to secure even one seat in parliament, is that it represented an emphatic rejection of a party that campaigned in their name and whose presidential candidate was their secretary general. Had the Numsa rank-and-file viewed the SRWP as their own, Numsa\u2019s 340 000 membership would have guaranteed it 10 seats in SA\u2019s proportional representation system. With Numsa and Saftu members and their families votes, the SRWP could have emerged as the biggest opposition party in parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Numsa 2\u2019s mistakes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Following the Saftu second congress, the MWP drafted a platform and programme of action for Numsa members for discussion and debate as a basis for the restoration of workers, control, democracy and socialism. We did not release it publicly at the time. We circulated it to members of Numsa 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Unfortunately, the Numsa 2 comrades in our view made the serious mistake of registering a new union. In informal discussions with some Numsa 2 members, we counselled against this decision. We warned that Numsa members would not leave a union that has taken blood sweat and tears to build to join an unknown, untested entity without a programme that clearly differentiates itself from the existing Numsa regime. Good intentions are not a substitute for a clear platform, programme of action, strategy and tactics. It would be seen as divisive precisely at a time when the unity of the rank-and-file was even more paramount than before. Above all, the Numsa 2 comrades did not provide an analysis showing an understanding that the degeneration of the Jim grouping was ideological and political.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The consequences were that when the Labour Appeal Court handed down a judgment against the Jim grouping, the Numsa 2 comrades had placed themselves outside the union. They were consequently unable to organise a campaign for the enforcement of the LAC judgement. This in turn enabled the Jim grouping to remain in power unconstitutionally. The corruption and maladministration as the eye-watering revelations of Khandani Msibi\u2019s report to the central committee reveals, were thus able to rise to levels that threaten to drown the union in debt and expose it to the possibility of being placed under administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    To insulate his authoritarian regime from accountability and to consolidate its Stalinist bureaucratic dictatorship, Jim\u2019s grouping stepped up persecutions, suspensions and witch-hunting of dissenters. The departure of the Numsa 2 comrades meant this dictatorial rule was free to continue without organised rank-and-file resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Politically, it enabled the Jim grouping to attempt to push Numsa to the right and to reincarcerate it into the political prison of the Tripartite Alliance, to reaffiliate Numsa to Cosatu, and to collapse Saftu. Ideologically and politically the Jim grouping offered the SACP itself a lifeline from the implosion that the bankruptcy of the Stalinist two-stage theory of revolution and the capitalist National Democratic Revolution has consigned it to. It attended without a rank-and-file mandate the SACP\u2019s so-called Conference of the Left together with the outright capitalist and xenophobic MKP and other corrupt ANC-linked individuals and formations. All of them were only too happy to conceal their right-wing anti-working class capitalist policies under the SACP\u2019s \u201cleft\u201d blanket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The strategic calculation behind the Government of National Unity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This Conference of the Left was in fact the latest attempt to obstruct the working class\u2019 struggle to reclaim its class, political and ideological independence. The SACP\u2019s near-lifelong commitment to the preservation of capitalism and the slavery of the working class dates back to its adoption, as the CPSA, of the Stalinist Communist International\u2019s 1928 Native Republic thesis which it formally incorporated into its own programme on 1st<\/sup> January 1929.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It is the common thread running through the formation of the Tripartite Alliance in 1990 and the participation of the leading SACP members in the neo-liberal capitalist ANC cabinet. The strategic aim of the first edition of the Government of National Unity in 1994 cleared the political pathway towards the imposition of the neo-liberal Gear programme in 1996 which, after some bleating, the SACP supported. If GNU 1.0 was constructed as the political pathway towards Gear, GNU 2.0 was to continue, misrepresenting the class divisions as divisions between \u201cnations\u201d and to provide the political authority of racist and xenophobic parties with the political authority to sow divisions in the working class on national, racial, ethnic\/tribal basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In both instances the blanket of \u201cnational unity\u201d was thrown over the gaping class divisions in society between a predatory capitalist class and the working class compelled to revolt against its worsened slavery on the electoral plane. The main difference in the three decades that separated the two editions of the GNU is that the ANC did not need the electoral support of the Nationalist Party and Inkatha Freedom Party to impose Gear in 1996 \u2013 this is why it was imposed anyway within a month after the NP had withdrawn from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Having lost its overall majority for the first time in a thunderous rebuke by the working class electorate in 2024 in what was in fact a rebellion against the disastrous social and economic consequences of Gear, the ANC was obliged to enter into a coalition with especially the DA which had always been in full agreement with neo-liberalism, to continue the same assualt on the working class. The SACP\u2019s hysteria over the GNU, suggesting that neo-liberalism was born in 2024 and not three decades earlier, merely confirms its undiminished commitment to deceiving the working class.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In what amounts to a division of labour in class collaboration the Jim grouping sabotaged the aims of the 2013 SNC preventing it from creating the promised workers party, formed the SRWP with funding from the corrupt billionaire, Roy Singhmam and paralysed Saftu. The Conference of the Left represent a convergence of the class collaborationist, programme, strategy and tactics of the SACP and the Numsa Jim grouping in a political and ideological reconciliation after the post-Marikana separation announced at the 2013 SNC.                                     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The rebellion in Numsa today could not be more timely. Both the working class and the capitalist class, against the background of the worst crisis of capitalism in SA in three decades and worldwide since the Great Depression of the 1930s, are in the throes of a deep crisis of political representation. Globally the capitalist system is in its death agony. This is exemplified amongst others, by the Gaza genocide, the death and destruction in Lebanon, the war on Iran, the civil war in the Sudan and the DRC, the Ebola pandemic, the climate disaster and the rise of the far right worldwide. in turmoil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The capitalist class has been compelled to conjure up the GNU to protect its class interests and to plaster over the deepest ever class divisions of post-Apartheid SA. It is an attempt to abdicate its responsibility for the crisis and to maintain the pretence that it has restored \u201cpolitical stability. But the GNU is in fact a coalition of the rejected. Collectively it represents no more than 38% of the eligible voting population\u201d, it is bound by a doctrine of common purpose: to continue the neo-liberal assault that has turned SA into the most unequal society on the planet; to divide and to turn the working class against themselves. The ruling elite\u2019s orchestration of xenophobia in SA is not unique. The capitalist class globally is following exactly the same strategy with the malignant narcissist, sexual felon and corrupt US president Trump providing the point pf reference for right wing reaction everywhere \u2013 England, Ireland, India, Pakistan, Germany, France, Argentina, Korea, Sudan etc. The capitalist class has no way out of the crisis. The crisis calls out for the overthrow of capitalism and the socialist transformation of society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Capitalism at a dead end \u2013 it must be abolished<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

     In 2012 the National Planning Commission (NPC), which included Cyril Ramaphosa, published the National Development Plan (NDP) that set lofty targets of, amongst other, creating 11-million jobs, eliminating poverty and reducing inequality by 2030. It calculated that this would require an average growth rate of 5.4% per annum for ten years consecutively. As Business Day<\/em> (11\/07\/2026) points out, average growth has been under 2% since then. \u201cThe jury is no longer out on the NDP. The verdict has been delivered: the plan will not attain the vast majority of its state goals\u2026  bar a miracle of biblical proportions<\/strong>.\u201d (emphasis added)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There have been repeated attacks on the working class and the poor  particularly since Ramaphosa came to power. These include: the attempted crippling of the right to strike through compulsory secret balloting that the Cosatu leadership traded for the slave minimum wage; the tearing up of the 2018-2020 public sector wage agreement rendering collective bargaining meaningless; the LRA amendments that restores elements of apartheid workplace dictatorships and weakens protection against unfair dismissal.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Trade and Industry Minister Parks Tau has responded positively to a World Bank proposal to reduce corporate tax in Special Economic Zoes where companies already enjoy exemptions from regulations in the rest of the economy, to 15% from the current 27%. Yet despite the billions of additional profits gifted to big business through the reduction of corporate tax from 52% before the ANC came to power to 27% today, they have not invested. Measured as Gross Fixed Capital Formation, investment stands at the same level as in 1946 when these stats first began to be measured. According to Stats SA\u2019s May 2026 figures, 32% of SA\u2019s industrial capacity is lying idle. Just reactivating this part of the economy could create 8m jobs. The jobs bloodbath that has given Saftu\u2019s campaign its name, does not apply to the private sector alone. Government is contributing to rising poverty and joblessness by failing to fill over 100 000 public sector vacancies and intensifying exploitation through slave labour schemes like the Expanded Public Workers programme that provides not jobs, but\u201d job opportunities\u201d, ie recycling of poverty. The government has congratulated itself for achieving a \u201cprimary budget surplus\u201d for three years consecutively. What this means in practice is that the 22c in every Rand that goes to debt servicing prioritised above all else, is excluded from the social spending allocation in the annual budget. The government first feeds the amashonisa \u2013 the sharks in the tanks of the international and domestic money markets it borrows from at the rate of R2,1bn per day. The working class must make do with whatever is left. This means cuts in social spending. The government has also appealed against a decision by the South Gauteng Hight Court ordering it to pay over 10m who qualify for the insulting Social Relief of Distress Grant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The budget of the Presidential Employment Stimulus (PES) has slashed to R3.3bn in 2026\/27 from R8.3bn in 2025\/26. The axe has fallen on the necks of thoseyouth who were at least secured temporary relief from these miserable \u201cjob opportunities\u201d that complemented the poverty recycling EPWP and Community Works schemes. This has meant the cancellation of the much hyped Basic Education Employment Initiative that provided work opportunities for 1.4m teacher assistants as well as the majority of 15 other programmes that created work opportunities in activities such as early childhood development, after-school programmes, community-based paralegals, agriculture, the arts and micro enterprises. Only 81,000 work opportunities will be provided in a country that has the world\u2019s second-highest youth unemployment rate. (Duma Gqubule – Business Day 02\/06\/2026). <\/em>Yet at the same time the youth employment tax incentive (ETI), government\u2019s least effective \u201cjob creation\u201d programme that since 2013 has given companies tax breaks of R47.4bn is being retained despite youth unemployment rising to 7-m in 2025 from 5.2 million. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Xenophobia \u2013 exploiting the vacuum on the Left<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This is the context in which the orchestration of xenophobia should be understood \u2013 a calculated attempt to divide the working class to avert the transformation of the 2024 electoral rejection of the main capitalist parties into a mass revolt on the streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Whilst pursuing their own ambitions for self-enrichment and corruption, they are at the same time acting as the useful idiots of the big business, distracting attention from their looting and pillaging the SA economy. As SARS appointed Judge Denis Davies\u2019 report on illicit capital flows , exposes,  it is the top 200 multinationals that operate in SA that are responsible for the R400n that is smuggled out of SA annually – over R1bn per day. Over R13 trillion has left the country through capital flight since 1995. Wealthy foreigners capable of looting like the Guptas and the Royal Family of the UAE who are shielding the Guptas from extradition are welcome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We publish the Platform for an Opposition in Numsa written in 2022, for Numsa comrades to consider. Although events have moved on since then, the perspective of the ANC losing its overall majority and the formation of a coalition government have been borne out. The warning we issued over xenophobia has unfortunately also been confirmed by events. The orchestration of xenophobic in SA, as elsewhere has been made possible by the vacuum on the left of the political spectrum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It is an indictment against the trade unions in SA that the xenophobic mobilisation has not been answered by a mass action campaign. The trade unions in Ireland gave a magnificent example of a counter-mobilisation against the racist anti-immigrant thuggery. Siyafana Sonke has done tremendous solidarity and humanitarian work. But the issues that the xenophobes have taken advantage of \u2013 unemployment, poverty, crime and corruption – render the unorganised, marginalised, declassed sections of society vulnerable to being exploited politically by these forces. Siyafana Sonke\u2019s heroic work, indispensable as it is, is, however, not capable of mobilsing the organised power of the working class without the trade unions. Nor is it a substitute for a mass working class party on a socialist programme needed to address the crisis on the political plane. \u00a0It must supplement the work on the political plane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The attacks on the working class require a mass workers party on a socialist programme. It will cut cross the propaganda of the xenophobes and stop the rise of racism and tribalism, its bloody offspring, that have followed it. We call upon the Numsa rank-and file not only to reclaim the union\u2019s traditions of worker control, democracy and socialism but to retie the knot with the generation of 1993. The Numsa congress that year resolved that the ANC be supported only in 1994 and that thereafter the building of a workers party must commence immediately.(https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VNmtngv7bpc<\/a>) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The capitalist class has been able to keep its post-apartheid neo-liberal capitalist programme on track through the GNU. But, as we predicted, it is unstable buffeted by the disarray in the main political parties of capital, the ANC and the DA. Ramaphosa\u2019s Phala Phala scandal and possible impeachment pose a huge threat to the stability and cohesion of the ANC and therefore the post-apartheid bourgeois democratic dispensation. Within the DA itself relations amongst the leaders often resemble a circle of frenemies. The EFF\u2019s political fortunes had begun to stall even before the latest revelations at the Madlanga Commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u00a0A workers party on a socialist programme needed \u00a0<\/strong> The working class, on the other hand is still without its own party. In a previous article (https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?p=6522<\/a>) we traced the history of the idea of a workers party from the 1980s. Throughout that period, it is the leadership of the working class itself, in the trade unions, the SACP, various middle class led left formations and social movements have for different reasons opposed the formation a workers party. These range from opposition to the very idea of a political party of the working class, to a rejection of socialism and the belief in the illusion of capitalism with a human face. Some argue that it is possible to arrive at socialism through incremental reforms, what we refer as reformism, like daisies flowering after the rains in the Namaqualand dessert.  Others, like the SACP believe that if you plant the capitalist NDR feather, a socialist chicken will grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In the MWP\u2019s view, the revolt currently unfolding in Numsa, is in the final analysis political. It also provides yet another opportunity, squandered more than once to create a mass workers party on a socialist programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We call upon\u00a0 the Numsa rank-and-file to, in the words of the title of US Black Panther Bobby Seale\u2019s book: Seize the Time. Turn Numsa\u2019s political and ideological backbone once again into \u2018metal that will not bend\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Instimbi Ayigobi! \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Towards the resuscitation of Numsa\u2019s traditions of workers control, democracy and socialism. The MWP welcomes the revolt against the corrupt Stalinist cabal that has captured […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8264,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comment"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/marxistworkersparty.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/stop-dividing-the-working-class.jpg?fit=670%2C370&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8265","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=8265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8267,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8265\/revisions\/8267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}