OF PERSONAL SUCCESS AND WORKING-CLASS LEADERSHIP

What is common to the NUM leadership ideals considered in this chapter is a tension between, on the one hand, the union's aspiration to the type of organisational modernity epitomised by neoliberal forms of management and, on the other hand, the organisation's aim to remain a class-conscious union committed to fighting for mineworkers’ rights. This was well captured in Gwede Mantashe's 2002 report to the central committee in which he prescribed:

This tension is also found in two ideals of NUM leadership that I shall call the ‘trade union executive’ and the ‘communist cadre’ – two ideals that have, I argue, become complementary in the contemporary NUM. Another tension, which partly overlaps with the former, is linked to the age or generational factor, opposing the figure of the ‘legitimist elder’ to that of the ‘young leader’. As mentioned in the above quote, NUM people who made it into business after apartheid have become ‘role models’ for many, given the rapid transformation of the job market, which has seen black and white elites converge at the top.

Aspirations to success, both symbolic and material, are palpable among local NUM leaders and they recall the fact that only a happy few among the union leadership have made their way out of their former socioeconomic condition. In May 2012, I spent time with NUM in and around Lonmin's Marikana operations.