The "workerists" believe that organisations such as the ANC will also oppress the workers should they come into power. In July this faction within Cosatu op-posed the acceptance of the Freedom Charter as a guideline for the liberation struggle. Cosatu is concerned about the economic and social welfare of all its members, but because of the organisation's close ties with the UDF, its political activities have increased. Numerous stay-aways and strikes to protest against the state of emergency, elections and national days of commemoration among others, were launched by Cosatu in cooperation with the UDF.
Cosatu also supports the sanctions and disinvestment campaign against South Africa. Two important campaigns were initiated by Cosatu. In it launched the"Living Wage" campaign. National cooperation under the motto "An injury to one is an injury to all". To correct this perception Fosatu sent prominent unionist Moses Mayekiso to join the stayaway committee.
The response to the stayaway call was massive, and about , workers heeded the call in the Transvaal. Sactu convinced the UDF-aligned unions to resume unity talks, and within Fosatu some were arguing that these unions should be accommodated, and Fosatu proposed the reopening of talks.
On 8 th and 9 th June, , a final summit was held at Ipeleng in Soweto, where a wide range of unions brought their national executive committees to deliberate on the way forward. Unions aligned to the UDF, Black Consciousness, and representing various positions on the nature of the federation, were represented by delegates.
In the end, the Azactu and Cusa unions rejected the federation, with the important exception of NUM, which signed up. UDF aligned unions, although suspicious of the feasibility committee, were persuaded by the ANC and Sactu to join, which they did. The feasibility committee was expanded to include UDF unions, and it set about preparing for the launch of the new federation. On 30 th November , more than delegates from 33 unions descended on the sports hall of the University of Natal, in Durban, to inaugurate the new trade union federation.
After his earlier success as convener at Ipeleng, Ramaphosa presided over the launch. The congress began to draw up a constitution, making amendments to a draft that had been circulated earlier, the most significant being the creation of the post of assistant general secretary. Among employers, reaction was more mixed, the larger corporations seemingly unfazed by the development, while smaller companies sometimes pressured unions to switch to the Inkatha-organised United Workers' Union of South Africa Uwusa , and withheld recognition if unions continued being affiliates of Cosatu.
Anti-apartheid organisations welcomed the launch of the federation: the UDF expressed enthusiastic support in a pamphlet; Sactu declared that it saw no reason for antagonism between it and the new federation; and the ANC appealed to the Black Consciousness federation, Azactu and Cusa, to work together with Cosatu, and hailed the launch of the federation in its annual January 8 statement.
Because of these talks, the federation was attacked by the government and Inkatha, who both reiterated the charge that Cosatu was a front for the ANC. This accusation came despite the fact that people from a broad range of organisations had been meeting with the ANC in Lusaka and Harare since , including prominent black and white businessmen and white politicians.
By the end of March, the figure rose to ,, a huge increase on the , total for These killings often resulted in strike action. Strikes took place in many sectors, including manufacturing and service sector. The federation sought to steer a middle path between populism and workerism. Cosatu resolved to be politically active and to form alliances with political organisations, yet maintain its independence. May 1 marked the th anniversary of International Labour Day, commonly referred to as May Day.
While unions had tabled the date as one of the key demands throughout the early s, employers had rarely conceded May Day as a paid holiday. The newly formed Cosatu now demanded that May Day be recognised as a public holiday, and called for a stayaway.
On May Day , more than 1,5-million workers observed the call, joined by many thousands that included school pupils, students, taxi drivers, hawkers, shopkeepers, domestic workers, self employed and unemployed people. While the call was less successful in some regions, in the PWV area, the heartland of industry, the response was massive.
Rallies were held in all the major cities, even though many of these were banned in advance by the state. Following this, many other companies bowed to the inevitable.
About 60, people, many not workers, attended the launch, bussed in by the IFP from all over the country. Cosatu officials and offices came under attack by IFP and government forces. Offices were invaded in Madadeni and Newcastle; the house of Cosatu official Mathews Olifant was petrol-bombed; while other officials were abducted or arrested, and workers were attacked. The state, for its part, declared a second state of emergency, and mounted a vicious campaign of detentions and crackdowns.
Many unionists were arrested or harassed, including Jay Naidoo , whose house was raided by plain-clothes security police on the first night of the emergency, 12 June In the first six weeks of the emergency, unionists were detained, the majority of them from Cosatu.
But workers also retaliated. Hundreds went on strike to protest against the detentions. When five NUM regional leaders were arrested in Kimberly, workers at four mines went on strike, one of many such incidents. Most of the delegates wanted to call for a stayaway, despite fears of dismissals and insufficient mobilising capacity.
The UDF and other organisations had been unprepared for the call and failed to support the strike. On 16 September a fire broke out inside a mine at Kinross, and about miners lost their lives. Gencor, the mine owner, tried to play down the true nature of the disaster, releasing news of the incident late and under-reporting fatalities. They also prevented access to the media and union officials.
Wages and safety had always been the biggest concerns of mine workers, and the disaster caused deep anger. NUM called for a work stoppage on 1 October, and , miners heeded the call. A large number of industrial workers supported the call — as many as ,, according to Cosatu estimates. More than 2,5-million people responded to the call.
The day after the strike, in the early hours of 7 May, Cosatu House was rocked by two bomb blasts. The bombs were placed near support columns in the basement, and the damage was so extensive that the building was declared unsafe. This proved to be easy in some instances, but a logistical and diplomatic nightmare in other cases. The food sector Fawu had been fairly successful in mergers by early , as were domestic workers and transport workers TGWU.
Construction workers came together in Cawu, chemical workers in CWIU, and Nehawu brought together hospital and education workers. Micwu, not a Cosatu affiliate, also joined up. Affiliates are usually aware of who their significant rivals are, but what is often not analysed or taken into account in developing organising and servicing strategies is the combined competition from a multiplicity of small unions.
Some unions may be registered for more sectors than their name suggests however. Most of these unions focus their recruitment in the low paid sectors. Apart from tertiary education, all these sectors have a predominance of low paid and vulnerable workers.
We know already that union density is low in these sectors. But this tells us that the huge space that exists for recruitment is currently being taken up, in significant part, by small local independent unions. Numbers of registered unions per sector, identified rivals to COSATU affiliates, and their declared membership Department of Labour figures or depending on which are most recent. These include However, despite the attempts of most Provinces to facilitate the sharing of these ideas, strategies remain largely confined to individual unions.
There is an urgent need for cross-affiliate sharing of ideas on recruitment at national, provincial and local level if we are to reach the 4 million target. Such sharing should also extend to the sharing of material and human resources, especially in rural areas where worker density is low. The Federation adopted a recruitment framework that amongst other things required unions to provide membership data every two months.
This was frustrated by the lack of compliance by affiliates, which in turn lead to the framework being abandoned. Even the biggest and most stable affiliates are unable to produce detailed membership data. With modern information technology we should be able to produce data which at the very least gives us ages and gender based on ID numbers , but this is not the case.
There is an urgent need to convene a forum of those people who are familiar with their union's membership system. At minimum we should share best practice and ideas on systems. The first prize would be to work towards a common system.
Such a plan must take into account the identified issues of gender, age, skill, education level, type of employment, and race. The full report can be accessed by clicking the link below. Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter. A monster we failed to strangle at birth.
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