South Africa: COSATU & Social Movements
southern africa |
the left |
news report
Friday August 12, 2005 23:15 by Michael Schmidt (International secretary) - Zabalaza anarchist Communist Federation, southern africa)
COSATU has remained an ANC loyalist organisation - despite the 1-million job-losses under ANC rule but a survey by the human sciences research council shows that while 75% of COSATU members still consider themselves ANC loyalists - 25% of its 2-million members have lost confidence.
South Africa: COSATU & Social Movements
Recently, much debate has been generated in South Africa by the
announcement by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
that it was launching a campaign against joblessness and poverty with
a "united front" similar to the united democratic front that fought
apartheid in the 1980s - and which was unilaterally disbanded by the
now-ruling African National Congress (ANC) in 1990 because of its
potential to pit the grassroots against the emerging ANC elite.
COSATU has remained an ANC loyalist organisation - despite the
1-million job-losses under ANC rule and the current rash of hundreds
of thousands of mine, municipal and other workers out on strike. but
it has recently made approaches to the Social Movements Indaba (SMI)
with a view to joining hands on this campaign against joblessness and
poverty (currently, some 40% of south africans are unemployed). the
smi is an umbrella of new anti-neoliberal organisations - numbering
some 200,000 supporters - founded in about 2000 by anti-apartheid
veterans and socialist revolutionaries including anarchist-communists
like ourselves.
For an in-depth report and our perspective on COSATU 's approach
(we welcome rank-and-file collaboration between COSATU and the SMI,
but say no to collaboration with the ruling elite), look at the
article "the president from the skies vs the auntie who says 'no!'"
in our journal "Zabalaza" (struggle), online at:
http://www.zabalaza.net or
a full version written for the centre for civil society at:
http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?3,28,10,1472
Now, we read in "business day" that a survey by the human sciences
research council shows that 75% of COSATU members still consider
themselves ANC loyalists - meaning that 25% of its 2-million members,
or 500,000 workers, have lost confidence in the ability of the
neo-liberal elite to deliver "a better life for all" (the key ANC
slogan) to the working class. the survey says that only 7% of those
polled favoured cosatu breaking with the ANC and forming a "workers'
party", an option favoured primarily by trotskyist militants within
the SMI - but naturally opposed by ourselves as a tried-and-failed
bourgeois approach to socialism as evidenced clearly by the betrayals
of the workers' party (pt) government in Brazil currently.
Michael Schmidt (international secretary, zabalaza anarchist
communist federation, southern africa)
Based on an email sent to the
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anarchy_africa
list
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