Between 1987–1994 an evolutionary change in Numsa's politics unfolded, expressing itself in a dilution of the union's socialist aspirations. The draining of Cosatu's and Numsa's socialist politics was in part due to the hegemony that the ANC asserted from the mid-1980s and was also related to developments within alliance politics. The other significant factor was the escalation of Inkatha violence from the late 1980s.

Superficially the ideological underpinnings of the opposed forces in the civil conflict that erupted could be characterised as capitalist versus socialist/revolutionary. Here the state and Inkatha would be characterised as the pro-capitalist force and Cosatu – and to a lesser extent the UDF and ANC – as the socialist and revolutionary forces. This was indeed how much of business characterised the camps prior to the growing contact that it established with the ANC in the late 1980s. In reality, the civil war in Natal was to draw Cosatu and the ANC closer but this was not to cement a revolutionary socialist alliance; it was rather to draw Cosatu and its most socialist union Numsa further from their socialist mission. The Cosatu/Numsa alliance with the ANC centred on a paradox. Cosatu sought an alliance with the ANC because of the latter's popular support and historical legitimacy which conferred strength on its worker constituency, including the muscle to pursue a socialist agenda. At the same time it prompted a counter-revolutionary attack which mainly took the form of civil conflict. The attack failed in one respect – the overt goal of preventing the ANC alliance from seizing political power. But it succeeded in another sense since it demobilised most of the organs of popular power, whose vitality was essential to underwriting a socialist project, so the opportunity for a deeper socialist transformation was lost.

Uneasy truce: Fosatu and Inkatha

From the mid-1980s, Cosatu and the UDF faced growing opposition from Inkatha in the form of verbal attacks mainly opposing disinvestment and Fosatu and Cosatu stayaways.