What lies behind the current turmoil within COSATU? By Cde Jeremy Cronin Last Friday cde Zwelinzima Vavi was invited as the key-note speaker to the South African Labour Bulletin’s 40th anniversary event. “Is labour at a turning point?” was the question he was asked to address. Focusing on the divisions within COSATU, cde Vavi answered in the affirmative. There is much to welcome in this very important speech by the general secretary of the largest trade union federation in Africa. Cde Vavi quite correctly dismissed the “many shallow commentators” who would have it that the root cause of current divisions in COSATU lies, for instance, “in personal differences”. Also to be welcomed is the strongly expressed support for the reclaiming of worker-democracy and work-place organisation. Likewise cde Vavi’s insistence that “We cannot have a situation where unions say one thing in the public arena, say for example on the need to tackle corruption, and then refuse to be accountable in their own unions.” Above all, the speech is to be welcomed for its dire warning to those who imagine that casually splitting the Federation and forming another is the answer. This is how cde Vavi puts it: “The easy option might appear to be to simply walk away from it all by announcing a split and the formation of a new Federation, forged around a more radical economic agenda combined with a determination to start afresh to entrench accountability and workers’ control. I know [that] to many of you in this room [he is addressing an SALB audience remember] this sounds like a good option. But this is not as easy or desirable as it might sound. In a context in which temperatures are running high, and fierce loyalties are felt in one direction or another, any split will produce multiple conflicts at every level.” Cde Vavi goes on to warn that a split will inevitably spill over into factionalising of some 230 shop stewards councils countrywide, the factionalising of 18 affiliates, a civil war of purging and counter-purging, and even the real danger of violent confrontations (which have already happened, by the way). In all of this cde Vavi is absolutely correct. He is to be commended for stepping up to the plate and warning all those, and we trust he means ALL those, from whatever direction, who are reckless about safe-guarding COSATU unity. He is also correct to say that “unity at any price”, a mechanical unity of the kind that arguably emerged from the last COSATU national congress, is not a lasting solution either. It must be a principled unity based on an active programme of action And I say: Welcome back, my GS, our GS, Cde ZV, now I hear you!!
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 10:17:47 +0000
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