INTRODUCTION

Growing desperation in South African society and evidence of state failure in many sectors would seem to strongly indicate the need for a counter-hegemonic project. But who will lead such a project, and what role will social movements play? In May 2018, a few months before the ‘Future of Labour’ conference at the University of the Witwatersrand, Trevor Ngwane launched his book Urban Revolt at Nelson Mandela University (Ngwane, Ness and Sinwell 2017). During his presentation at the launch, Ngwane reflected on how urban social movements ‘challenge the hegemony of global capital’. This provoked reflection on grassroots social movements and their relationship to the labour movement in South Africa, as well as the relationship of social and labour movements to the formal politics of representation and policy-making.

Since the conference, there have been dramatic developments that have brought inequalities and injustices in South African society (and across the globe) to the fore. Most recently the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in new civil society coalitions that have responded to these inequalities in various ways. The climate crisis has also posed fundamental challenges to social movements in South Africa, including the labour movement. The crisis of corruption within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has forced the labour movement to reassess its alliance with the ruling party.

The main question posed in this chapter is thus to ask whether, in the years since the 2014 trade unions and democracy survey (see Bezuidenhout and Tshoaedi 2017), a new and unified social movement led by the working class has emerged. In answering this question, new political alignments since the ‘Numsa moment’ are explored, including the emergence of the United Front and then the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP). The question is posed whether the ANC is still hegemonic and, if so, has a counter-hegemonic movement emerged? And if it has, how does the labour movement relate to this counter-hegemonic movement?

Additional questions posed are: Is there a disjuncture between the forms of organisation and mobilisation of the organised working class, employed in the formal economy (the ‘labour movement’) and those of the precariat (the masses of unemployed, and those in the informal economy)? Do the latter constitute a working-class movement or a social movement? Are they a movement of any kind?

INTRODUCTION

Dramatic events since the 2014 national elections have seen the Tripartite Alliance come under increasing strain. Contestation around policies – most recently the Tax Administration Laws Amendment Act – and around political processes has seen the tensions between the three parties to the Alliance testing it to the limit. However, in the last months of 2015, when it seemed that the days of the historic Alliance were numbered, it was brought back from the brink of collapse. Cosatu lost its strongest affiliate, but the federation retained its cohesion – at least formally – and the Alliance was declared to be alive and well.

Although analysts and activists on the left anticipated a fundamental break between Cosatu and the ANC, and looked to extra-parliamentary movements for a new progressive alignment in South African politics, this was not reflected in the views of ordinary workers. That the majority of delegates to the Cosatu special congress of July 2015, and again at the national congress of November 2015, voted to ratify the expulsion of Numsa and of Zwelinzima Vavi and to reaffirm commitment to the Tripartite Alliance should not have come as a surprise. If the voice of ordinary workers (rather than worker or political leadership) is carefully listened to, the reason for the maintenance of the Alliance, despite its deep divisions along policy lines, can be better understood.

This chapter reflects on the key debates and divisions around policy issues within the Alliance, how ordinary workers understand these debates, and what influence they have on policy making. The chapter will show that increasing tension in the Alliance is clearly reflected in the Taking Democracy Seriously survey and in interviews with Cosatu leaders. As with previous surveys, the 2014 survey was conducted before an election, primarily to test the relationship of the organised labour movement to the institutions of representative democracy in South Africa. In this chapter, that relationship can be assessed through worker participation on two levels: the election of representatives in government (at various levels) and the participation in policy formulation by those representatives.

The main institutional reflection of this relationship is the Tripartite Alliance between the ANC, the SACP and Cosatu. This chapter will show us that the relationship has changed, and is strained.

INTRODUCTION

South Africa has seen an explosion of protest in recent years – protests in the poor, working-class townships and informal settlements in every city, and in many small towns across the provinces. These protests, termed ‘service delivery protests’ as many (although by no means all) of them are demanding the provision of services, are usually targeting the local authorities or municipal councillors responsible for such services in the townships where the protestors live.

How do organised workers, who are members of the same working class, respond to or interact with these protests? Do they share the demands of the protestors? Do they perhaps provide leadership – organisational or strategic – to these protests, based on their trade union experience? This chapter explores the relationship of Cosatu members to ‘the community’ – and whether there are in reality two working classes: those in formal employment, living in formal townships, and those who are at the margins of the economy and society, without jobs or services.

The ‘service delivery protest’ phenomenon has drawn a significant amount of academic attention, and a range of explanations: see Karl von Holdt et al. (2011), The Smoke that Calls; Peter Alexander (2010), The Rebellion of the Poor; and Doreen Atkinson (2007); among others. Von Holdt and his colleagues have reflected on how the protests are integrally related to local power dynamics within the African National Congress (ANC), and that the ANC itself is ‘the locus of many of these struggles and contestations’ (Von Holdt et al. 2011: 7). Many of the protests are led by ANC activists or activists from other members of the Alliance, notably the South African Communist Party (SACP). In one of the case studies documented in The Smoke that Calls, a trade union leader was also among the leadership of the protests. However, there has been little reflection on the relationship of members of Cosatu affiliates to these protests. As the protests are in the main residentially based – in that people who are resident in a particular locality have a grievance related to that locality, whether it be a demand for housing or for toilets or clean water – it could be expected that workers living in these areas might share the demands and participate in the protests.