WHY PROBLEMS LIE WITH THE POLICIES

08.08.2008
To obtain answers that may be correct and useful, it is first necessary to ask the right questions. Yet every time there is a a strike, particularly at the national level, the same questions are asked of the same business people, economists and politicians and the same trite answers are trotted out.

The main query is: how much has this work stoppage cost? While there is usually passing reference to the loss of earnings by striking workers, the main thrust of the question is aimed at the economy, and/or particular business sectors.

But the only loss that can accurately be measured is the loss of wages. Because of adequate warning of impending strike action and steps that can be taken to minimise the economic impact, all other cost claims amount to vague, and usually exaggerated, guesswork.

However, the picture painted is of a destructive exercise in which there are no winners. Workers lose money, the economy and various sectors within it are damaged along with the image that government and business feel is essential to encourage investment.

This was the picture painted again this week with the nationwide stoppage organised by Cosatu unions. There was also some confusion about why the strike had been called, because Cosatu formally referred to it as a strike “against the electricity crisis”.
It was much more. But, as Cosatu’s Western Cape regional secretary, Tony Ehrenreich explains: “We were constrained by law because permission for a legal stoppage had only been given regarding electricity.”
However, the tens of thousands of workers in every major centre who gave up a day’s pay to protest, probably agreed with Cosatu’s Mpumalanga regional secretary, Norman Mokoena. He noted: “This is a strike against destructive neo-liberal policies. We are saying, enough is enough.”
In fact, as speakers at the various rallies made clear, the “gatvol factor” was in full swing against soaring electricity, fuel and food prices, along with the overall rise in the cost of living. The blame for this is laid squarely with government policies.

Unions across the board have pointed out that government could pay for needed infrastructure upgrades at Eskom by means of a grant and could radically lower the fuel price and bring in needed capital by levying a “windfall tax” on the massive profits generated by synfuel maker Sasol.
From the union perspective, the question that should therefore be asked is: What is the cost in human lives and suffering of continuing with these policies; policies that benefit a rich minority at the expense of the majority?

When rational argument and pleas make no headway, the only means trade unions within our society have to try to bring about change is to withhold labour, to strike. It is not an action taken lightly because the loss of a day’s pay is a real hardship, but one willingly undertaken because of the perception that a continuation of current policies will result in much greater hardships.

And the main sufferers are women. In a week that ends with national Womens’ Day, a classic and tragic example emerged with news of the death of Irene Grootboom. She was the woman who won a constitutional court challenge to the government to develop a programme to realise the right of access to adequate housing.

That was eight years ago. On Tuesday, Irene Grootboom died in the leaking shack in the informal settlement of Wallacedene outside Cape Town in which she still lived.

Says Ehrenreich: “Shortage of resources — asinamali, we have no money — is always the argument. But the money is there. There resources are available. It is the policies that are the problem.”

THE TROUBLE WITH WEARING TWO HATS

01.08.2008
A sad chapter in labour movement history ended this week with the formal dismissal of Willie Madisha as president of the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu). And while there has been much concentration of the machinations, claims and counter claims surrounding his case these are merely symptoms of a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the governing ANC-led alliance.

Who is telling or has told the truth about alleged cash donations, disciplinary procedures, credit card misuse and professional misconduct may all be resolved before the Equality Court. But the underlying political reason for this eruption of hostilities remains clouded by confusion and tends still to be seen primarily as a fallout over who supported Jacob Zuma and who Thabo Mbeki as president of the ANC.

As a trade unionist, Madisha argued that neither should be supported, but that the union movement should concentrate on building its strength to demand alternative policies from whoever led the ANC. At the same time, as an ANC member, he felt free to support whichever candidate he thought best, while stressing that unity of the alliance was a priority.

He insisted there was no contradiction, but this was a classic example of the “two hats” argument that raged within the ANC-led alliance more than a decade ago. It was well summed up in 1997 by a member of the SA National Civics Organisation (Sanco).

Referring to Sanco members who were also ANC councillors, he asked: “How will a Sanco leader, who also holds the position of councillor, conduct himself if he is called on to lead a march of residents against the local authority? Who will he lead the march against — himself?”

This is a problem that has for decades confronted the members of the ANC alliance as opposing factions fought for control of what is now the ruling party. The stakes today are so much higher, but the questions remain the same.

For those committed to the alliance, there seem two choices: either support everyone being made to “wear the same hat”, by one faction seizing control over the ANC and, through this, hoping to control the levers of state power, or accept unity in diversity, with constant transparent debate among factions.

However, this latter course raises the prospect of a breach in alliance unity as contradictions come to the fore. And unity has always been stressed as a priority above all else.

Madisha fell foul of that by opposing the tactic that won the day for the “one hat” brigade at the ANC congress in Polokwane in December. Thanks to the organisational muscle of Cosatu, the support of the SA Communist Party (SACP) and a willingness to forge alliances with business and other interest groups, this faction has made government now theoretically answerable to an ANC executive which claims, through the ANC, to be the political representative of the population.

Yet the ANC has only 621 237 members, including almost all of the claimed 53 000 SACP members, out of a population of 48 million, against 1.6 million or more for Cosatu. At the same time, the economic policies of Cosatu are, in many ways, diametrically opposed to those of the ANC.

A senior Sadtu official explains: “Things have changed. Willie was great in the days of shopfloor democracy, but now we are in the era of democratic centralism. He can’t cope with that. He’s just too blunt; too outspoken.”

In other words, shopfloor democracy is history? If that is the case, perhaps a policy of backwards to a better, more democratic future might be in order.

WHY A R17M WIN COULD BE A PYRRHIC VICTORY

25.07.2008
This week’s R17 million award against a KwaZulu-Natal textile company for not paying wage rates agreed by the bargaining council highlights yet again a fundamental, obvious and yet frequently unrecognised reality: the conflict between societal demands, government policies and business principle.
It has been said often enough, in this column and elsewhere, that the only principle for business is the maintenance and growth of the bottom line. That is a simple fact of life in our profit-driven global economic system.
It is one that trade unions, as the major societal bulwark against gross exploitation, have constantly to battle against. And the conditions under which this struggle is waged are largely determined by government policies.
But, in this brutally competitive, dog-eat-dog environment where labour confronts capital, hostility can also erupt between different sectors of capital. So it is that domestic garment manufacturers find themselves sharing the concern of the SA Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu) regarding the continuing flood of cheap imports.
However, as surveys presented to the National Economic and Labour Council (Nedlac) have shown, there has also been a marked reluctance by local manufacturers to invest domestically. This dearth of capital investment has made it even more difficult for South African workers to compete in a liberal trade environment supported and, in part created, by the government. It is this environment that enables and encourages the flood of cheap imports.
And it remains a flood, despite the two-year “voluntary restraint” quota deal done with China on a range of items. In fact, there is strong evidence that Chinese goods, at a marginally higher cost than previously, and labeled “Made in Malaysia”, may still be a prime undercutting culprits. If this is not the case, it is difficult to account for last year’s 1 094 per cent surge in the value of Malaysian imports in this sector.
There is also evidence that importers, faced in September 2006 with the prospect of quotas on Chinese goods, placed forward orders. According to a report produced in March by Clothing Trade Council executive director Jack Kipling, it is estimated that as many as 51.7 million additional items of clothing were ordered in 2006 for delivery last year.
But the voluntary restraint agreement with China, which ends this year, has resulted in a quite sharp decline in imports sourced directly from China. However, a range of other countries has benefited greatly from this quota deal as importers switched their orders to countries such as Vietnam, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and even Zimbabwe.
Most galling for the labour movement is the fact that the value of imports from Burma (Myanmar) a brutal military dictatorship, have soared by 450 per cent from R17.5 million in 2006 to R78.7 million last year. However, the biggest gainer in monetary terms is Indonesia which saw the value of its imports grow by 232 per cent to R160.1 million.
What this means is ongoing pressure on local manufacturers — and a continuing loss of jobs. Since 2003 when the flood of cheaper imported textiles, garments and footwear got fully underway, more than 20 000 jobs have been shed by major manufacturers in the clothing sector alone. Proportionately hardest hit has been the footwear sector where Sactwu estimates that two-thirds of some 30 000 jobs have now been lost.
With the system firmly in place, domestic policy unchanged and the end of the voluntary restraint agreement looming, more jobs are threatened. In such an environment, the R17 million award to 393 underpaid workers in KZN may be a pyrrhic victory. Unless the unions and wider society can persuade government to alter the rules.

IS ANOTHER ANTI-POOR INFLATION MASSAGE LOOMING?

18.07.2008
Forget all the arguments that have raged this week about weightings and rebasing, about dangerously high pay rises and the technical details of recalculating inflation. So far as the labour movement is concerned, there is only one simple fact to bear in mind: the cost of surviving, let alone living, especially for the working poor, has far outstripped any pay rises granted.
Trade unions have also for years now argued that official inflation figures have lagged far behind the real cost of living for most of the population; that wage rises, invariably measured against an official inflation rate, all too often amount to wage cuts.
This includes the latest 9 per cent to 14.25 per cent deal for garment workers, done via the bargaining council and announced on Monday. What the deal does is narrow the gap between the poorest and the sightly less poor in one of the lowest paid sectors of manufacturing.
According to this deal, slightly better paid workers in urban centres will receive the lower wage rises while the lower paid in more rural centres will take home slightly more in percentage terms. What this means for skilled and experienced machinists working in areas such as Botshabelo, Ladysmith or Caledon is a 12.71 per cent pay rise while general — unskilled — workers in the same areas receive 14.24 per cent.
These are figures that tend to cause near apoplexy among corporate economists and employers. But what they mean in fact is that skilled machinists now earn a basic wage of R399 a week or R1 726 a month while their unskilled co-workers can now look forward to weekly pay of R361 or R1 564 a month. By any standards, these are wage rates below poverty levels.
The women and men who receive these paltry wages also tend spend most of their income on basic foodstuffs. These were the items this column started monitoring in July last year in an urban supermarket. A comparison between the cost of 14 basic items 12 months down the line, is telling.
A year ago this week, the 14 items, ranging from bread and cooking oil to whole chicken, flour and mealie meal, cost exactly R118. This week, the same items cost R172.92, an increase of more than 46 per cent.
However, that staple, mealie meal, showed only a 5 per cent price rise, while samp cost 18 per cent more. Cooking oil, in contrast, almost doubled in price. Overall, what does seem clear is that the cost of living — of surviving — for the lower paid, even before taking into account soaring transport costs, is substantially greater than the official figures show.
In the row this week between Investec Asset Management and the official Stats SA there was agreement that the official inflation figure is “not accurate enough”. The main difference of opinion centred on when the new methods of calculation would be introduced because both parties seemed convinced that the revised calculations will reveal a lower inflation figure.
This rings warning bells for trade unionists and anti-poverty campaigners. They fear that the statistics are about to be massaged to the further disadvantage of the working poor. Of prime concern is the fact that the average amount of disposable income — the weighting — given to food may be lowered in the new year from 26 per cent to perhaps 18 per cent.
Without apparent irony, statisticians refer to the present — and coming — methods of calculation as “plutocratic” as opposed to “democratic”.
“And that really does sum it up,” was the reaction of several garment worker unionists.

WHY PROTEST TACTICS NEED STRATEGIC GOALS

11.07.2008
According to an old English rhyme, the famous Duke of York marched ten thousand men to the top of a hill — and marched them down again. This has come the represent an exercise in futility, the amassing of collective strength to attain a goal to no ultimate purpose.
What it has all too often amounted to within the labour movement internationally is the dissipation of justified collective anger by calls to futile protest. This is probably best described as the safety valve syndrome.
The current “rolling mass action”, called by Cosatu and which started in the Western Cape and KZN this week, has been labeled within sections of the labour movement in precisely such terms. Critics maintain that it is a tactical blunder, because no clear and detailed policy alternatives were first put forward.
But despite the arguments about tactics, there is unanimity about the need for alternative policies to be implemented as a matter or urgency. The detail is open to debate, but all seem agreed that a crisis exists that has resulted in mounting anger in working class communities across the country.
Anger is understandable since fuel, food and power price hikes have meant rapidly eroded buying power at a time when wage increases are failing to match the rise in the overall cost of living and already massive unemployment is growing.
Criticism of the current mass action is summed up by Federation of Unions (Fedusa) general secretary Dennis George: “It’s not good enough just to protest. Before we threaten to bring the country to a standstill, we should first put forward clear, alternative policies and insist government listens to us.”
George points out that, like Cosatu, Fedusa also lodged a “Section 77”, the notice under the Labour Relations Act of potential protest action that would be protected. But it gave no date for such action, calling first for an urgent meeting of the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) to be convened to address what all the unions agree is a crisis.
Among the demands listed for such a meeting, which would bring together representatives from labour, government and business is “urgent short-term intervention…..to provide income and food support” such as “social relief and distress grants” to vulnerable households.
However, Cosatu’s Western Cape regional secretary Tony Ehrenreich maintains that sufficient demands have been made in Nedlac and other forums and that government has turned a deaf ear to them. He lists in particular the demand that the financing of Eskom infrastructure be from the government budget and not through increased tariffs to users.
The issue of the nationalisation of Sasol and of the coal mines had also been raised “although Cosatu could have made more of a noise about that”.
Eskom and Sasol also feature in the Fedusa notice, with that federation echoing Ehrenreich’s demand that import parity pricing be investigated and that there should be “increased investment by the government” in Eskom.
Other areas where the federations are in agreement are on the issues of price fixing and lack of competition, along with the level of corporate concentration in the food industry. Unions across the board are also united in their rejection of inflation targeting and the “crude mechanism” of raising interest rates.
In this they have the support of former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz who has noted: “One hopes that most countries will have the good sense not to implement inflation targeting; my sympathies go to the unfortunate citizens of those that do.”
So far as the unions are concerned — despite their tactical differences — we are among the most unfortunate of citizens and the time has come to do something about improving matters.

UNION ROLE — AND SURVIVAL — IN ZIMBABWE

04.07.2008
“They seem to have won. They claim to have won, but still the beatings continue.” That was the bitter reaction yesterday of a Zimbabwean trade unionist in Harare.

He and several of his fellows also bewailed the fact that the contribution and suffering of the labour movement tends to be ignored. They argued, with justification, that the issues and the positions of the various parties in the conflict in Zimbabwe have become confused in the public mind.

Although not widely publicised, it is certainly true that the trade unions and their members have been among the greatest losers in the repression and violence across the Limpopo. They have also provided much of the impetus and policy direction for the opposition, quite apart from playing the key role in establishing the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

The Professional Teachers’ Union (PTUZ) has been particularly targeted in recent months. Union research reveals nearly 5 000 teachers claim to have been assaulted with 600 hospitalised as a result of beatings. At least 230 homes belonging to teachers have also been burned down.
The general secretary of the PTUZ, Raymond Majongwe, who has twice in the past suffered beatings and electric shock torture, was yesterday reported missing. On Wednesday afternoon a group of men raided his Harare home. “We don’t think they found him, but we don’t know what has happened to him,” a union official says.

PTUZ treasurer Lad Zunde was also not home when a group of men arrived on Wednesday evening to say they had called to “take him to a funeral”.
However, the persecution of the unions is no recent phenomenon. The ZCTU and most of its affiliates have been prime targets of the state ever since Morgan Tsvangirai, as general secretary of the ZCTU, led the federation on an independent course from and, ultimately into, collision with the Zanu-PF government.

“Yet we were fighting the very things Mugabe now claims to be opposing,” says a ZCTU official. The unions, which were initially linked to the ruling party, opposed the liberal economic policies pursued by President Robert Mugabe and his government on the advice of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

In 1996, at the same time that the trade union federations in South Africa were drafting their alternative economic policy proposals, the ZCTU produced a 109-page “Beyond ESAP (Economic Structural Adjustment Programme)” document.
Like the South African labour movement’s Social Equity and Job Creation document, Beyond ESAP presents much more thoroughly considered policy positions than anything put forward by government. But the ZCTU also drew on the experience of South Africa’s Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) which, at that stage, had not yet given way to the liberal vision of GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution).

Beyond ESAP argued for the establishment of a tripartite — labour, business and government — forum such as the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) to consider and confirm government policies. But it also demanded that “land redistribution should be given the highest priority” at a time when the Mugabe government was doing little about redistributing land.

The MDC has maintained this position, both on a “Nedlac-type” forum and on land redistribution. “There is no question of returning land to anybody,” Tsvangirai said in a interview last week with the local Amandla magazine. But he had no specific policy.
However, among the remnants of perhaps the most battered of all the Zimbabwe unions, the agriculture and plantation workers, there is now a demand for the establishment of farm worker co-operatives.

“But we first have to survive before we can talk about that,” says a co-op supporter.

BITTER IRONY OF SADC’s ZIM DEMOCRACY TALKS

27.06.2008
Zimbabwe’s embattled trade unionists were aghast this week when they heard that a Southern African Development Conference (SADC) meeting, dealing with Zimbabwe, was convened in the royal palace in Swaziland. Without a hint of irony it was announced that the SADC “troika organ” comprising Angola, Tanzania and Swaziland would be hosted by King Mswati III to discuss the state — or lack — of democracy in Zimbabwe.

This tri-national grouping is responsible for politics, security and defence within the regional body. As such it is another of the peculiarities of SADC, because political parties have been banned in Swaziland since 1973 and the country is ruled by an absolute monarch.

A voting system, authorised by Mswati, does exist. Known as Tinkhundla all voting for nominated individuals is done publicly and monitored by chiefs and headmen who have the power of patronage and are appointed by the king. Mswati also appoints the government, controls the judiciary, and exercises veto rights over all laws passed.

As Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven notes: “It is bitterly ironic that a conference to discuss democratic elections in Zimbabwe should be hosted by an autocratic monarch who stages elections that are no more free and fair than those staged by [President Robert] Mugabe.”

The Swazi unions and other pro-democracy forces in the mountain kingdom now hope that the issue of Zimbabwe will focus greater attention by governments and the public on the issue of democratic rights throughout the region.

That Swaziland remains a member in good standing of a regional grouping professing to promote and support freedom of association and parliamentary democracy is seen as hypocrisy within the labour movement. It is one of the reasons that Cosatu has, in the past, staged protest blockades of the Swazi border.

Plans for similar action along the border with Zimbabwe, which are likely to have wider local union backing, are now underway. This will also have the support of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) which represents 168 million trade unionists organised into 311 federations worldwide.

Earlier this month, at conferences of both the Commonwealth Trade Union Group and the ITUC it was resolved to intensify pressure on the Zanu-PF government in Zimbabwe. While there has been much media concentration on violence and harassment of members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), many of these individuals have been trade unionists.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), its affiliates and members have been specific targets of the regime. None more so than members of the Professional Teachers’ Union (PTUZ) who acted as polling station monitors during the March 29 elections, won by the MDC.

The ITUC this month lodged another official protest with Mugabe about the sacking of a regional PTUZ office and the severe assault of union members on June 8 and 9.

ITUC has also protested about the May 19 arrests of ZCTU president Lovemore Matombo and general secretary Wellington Chibebe. With the presidential run-off election still on the cards, they were released on Z$20 billion bail each, restricted to their homes and banned from addressing any political gatherings.

They appeared in court again on Monday this week. According to the prosecution they “communicated falsehoods” and “incited the public to rise against the government”.

“These are not charges per se, but they amount to accusations of treason,” says a ZCTU official who, for obvious reasons, wishes to remain anonymous. The case against them was again remanded, this time to July 30.

So July 30 is likely to be a focus for international trade union protest. But the beatings, abductions, torture and killings continue.

“All I can hope is that the situation in Swaziland does not have to degenerate to that stage before SADC acts to help us,” says Mario Masuku, president of Swaziland’s major — and still legally non-existent — pro-democracy Peoples’ United Democratic Movement.

NATIONALISATION MOVES UP THE UNION AGENDA

20.06.2008
Using statistical sleight of hand and a smokescreen of misleading rhetoric, Eskom and the government have created the impression that they are not responsible for the energy crisis; that a combination of wasteful consumers and forces beyond their control created the mess we are in. And that mess, in turn, justifies the massive increase in tariffs that has now been agreed by the National Energy Regulator.

“Which is all nonsense. The responsibility for the entire mess rests with Eskom and the government,” says National Council of Unions (Nactu) president Joseph Maqhekeni. “We are not going to pay when the fault rests with the state.”

His views are echoed throughout the labour movement where consensus exists that bungling, short-sightedness and lack of planning on the part of the electricity utility and the government are at the root of the energy crisis.

This has brought to the forefront again the question of nationalisation, following the Eskom complaint that the high coal price is one of the reasons for added costs and and higher tariffs. The idea that Eskom should pay import parity prices for locally mined coal is seen as nonsensical.

It is put on the same basis as the fallacious argument about the country having “the cheapest electricity in the world”. As Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven points out, this frequently repeated official mantra is a myth. It was created by converting the cost of local electricity into US dollars and then comparing it with countries such as Denmark and the United States.

When like is compared with like — when costs, household incomes and prices are assessed in rand terms — South Africa certainly does not provide the cheapest electricity in the world.

“Besides, the electricity tariffs were set in a way that made the ordinary consumer pay more while the big companies paid less,” says Craven.

This is now leading to demands that Eskom declare how much the energy guzzling aluminium smelters at Hillside and Bayside in KwaZulu-Natal and the Mozal smelter in Mozambique pay for their electricity and how much these plants really contribute to the domestic economy.

The unions fear that the government and Eskom are again acting in an ad hoc manner; that they are preparing to take another disastrous step in the wrong economic direction. An urgent rethink is being called for.

Says Nactu general secretary Manene Samela: “There is still the opportunity to call a meeting of all stakeholders to address this issue and to shift this burden to the state.”

As the unions see it, the financial burden resulting from the crisis belongs with the state, which is both largely responsible for the problems and which has the wherewithal to fund the necessary infrastructure. “Because[the government] is cash flush, we are calling for a grant to Eskom, not a low-interest loan,” says Craven.

Maqhekeni agrees. “Trevor [Manuel] has a surplus. Why does he save it at the expense of poor people?” he asks.

Federation of Unions (Fedusa) general secretary Dennis George also questions why Eskom’s infrastructure cannot be financed by a government that could find R15 billion to finance the unproven technology of the pebblebed modular reactor.

These are matters the unions want urgently to discuss in order to find what some have referred to as “a sensible and holistic approach” to the power crisis. This would involve the drawing up of a comprehensive industrial strategy which many of the unions feel will involve elements of nationalisation.

Says George: “It s nonsense that the market will sort things out. A massive increase in electricity tariffs will affect just about everything else.”

And so the unions prepare to protest, not so much against the proposed increases in the cost of electricity, but for a set of policies that would make such increases unnecessary.

‘LACK OF LEADERSHIP’ GETS MILITARY UNIONS MARCHING

13.06.2008
South Africa’s defence forces are in a shambles, mismanaged, badly led and grossly underpaid. That is the view of the military unions which are threatening further protest action in coming weeks and months.

And it is claimed mismanagement and lack of leadership leading to the waste of human and material resources that will be the prime focus, rather than pay. However, wage rates, expecially for highly skilled and specialist staff, are far below those in the private sector.

A protest march on the Union Buildngs in Pretoria last week by a section of the SA National Defence Union (Sandu) grabbed headlines when the memoradum handed in by the protestors demanded the resignation of defence minister Mosiuoa Lekota. Also highighted was a demand for a 19 per cent across-the-board pay rise.

This demand for Lekota’s resignation and the reaction it, ensured considerable publicity, which was the apparentl intention, although not all Sandu members agreed with the tactic. Nor did officials of the generally more militant SA Security Forces Union (Sasfu) who also criticised the pay demand.

Says Sasfu president Bheki Mvovo: “At a meeting on November 2 last year, we were told that there would be a complete review of pay and that a package would be presented that would amount to more than 19 per cent.” But despite “numerous approaches” to the ministry, there was still no word about what this package might contain or when it would be available.

Mvovo, a naval lieutenant, points out that some of the lowest ranks in the miltary earn a basic rate of only R3 000 a month. As a naval lieutenant with a university degree in mechanical engineering, his basic pay is R106 000 a year.

The air force has already admitted that the low rates of pay and declining morale have seen a steady exodus from the servce of pilots and skilled maintenance personnel. “Same in the navy,” says Mvovo.

He adds: “We bought ships and submarines, but cannot adequately man them; the air force cannot keep all its planes in the air because of personnel shortages.” As he sees it, this results largely from the misalignment that exists between top leadership “hailing mainly from the liberation movements” and middle management from the old apartheid order.

“It affects all services because we have much of the top leadership without vision or experience and who, as a result, are remote controlled by white middle managers from the old order who still have difficulty coming to terms with the new dispensation,” he says.

Although it has been officially denied, several officers at the country’s major naval base in Simonstown maintained that there were now insufficient crew to enable the navy’s newly acquired submarines and frigates to sail simultaneously. “We only have one fully trained submarine crew available now,” one petty officer claimed.

Ashore the situation is also serious. According to Mvovo, the mechanical workshops are “40 per cent staffed” with the result that they cannot handle much of the work “which is then outsourced at great cost”.

Accusations of insensitivity and arrogance have also been levelled at senior officers. A particular target is army chief Lt General Solly Shoke following a series of recent statements by by him relating to court cases won by the unions. Shoke has categorised as “problems” the high court decisions which last month forbade discrimination against HIV-positive service personnel and the 1999 decision which allowed union organisation in the military.

Says Mvovo: “The unions are not the problem. The reason that it is necessary for us to exist is because of the lack of leadership.”

WHAT KIND OF ‘SOCIALISM’ IS DEMANDED?

06.06.2008
The events of recent weeks in South Africa, followed by statements from Cosatu about plotting a new way forward, raise again the spectre of the past. And it is an international past. Especially when these events are looked at against the background of conflicts in regions such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia and the politely termed world economic crisis.

I say politely, because it is a potentially avoidable crisis that is causing misery, death and horrendous suffering to millions of people across the globe. This is also an era where that self-proclaimed “great democracy” the United States, practices judicially-sanctioned kidnapping, torture and murder under the euphemism of “rendition”; where acts of state terror are portrayed as examples of lauded patriotism.

Given this situation it is little wonder that there is a growing chorus of voices calling for change. Some change. Any kind of change.

While the world has certainly changed in the years since 1915, all of this has echoes in the writings in that year of a then imprisoned revolutionary socialist, Rosa Luxemburg. She was jailed for opposing World War I at a time, such as now, when lies and propaganda tended to take the place of needed analysis and debate, when a minority controlling international business continued to thrive on destruction and slaughter.

In a famous pamphlet, smuggled out of her cell, she warned that the world faced a stark choice: transformation or barbarism. She saw the necessary transformation as “socialism” a term also appropriated as the goal of Cosatu and the SACP.

Luxemburg clearly understood the absurdity of a world producing a surplus of food alongside millions of people dying of starvation and the diseases of malnutrition. She also saw how business could “flourish on ruins” and how profits can can spring “like weeds, from the fields of the dead”.

So she presented the alternatives as she saw them: “…..the destruction of all culture and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; or, the victory of socialism”.

In rather less grandiose and poetic terms, this is what Cosatu’s newly appointed president, Sidumo Dlamini stated last week. In fact, such a general statement would almost certainly find favour with the majority of trade unionists.

But since Luxemburg was murdered in 1919 by rightwing troops on the orders of a “socialist” government, it is best to be clear about definitions. “Socialism” is a label which clearly means different things to different people.

Luxemburg, born in Poland and active in Germany, saw socialism as the extension of meaningful political and economic control to the majority of humanity. That she was totally “unpatriotic” she saw as a prerequisite of her “socialism”.

The last paragraph of her 1915 pamphlet reads: “This madness will not stop, and this bloody nightmare of hell will not cease until the workers of Germany, of France, of Russia and of England, will wake up out of their drunken sleep; will clasp each others hands in brotherhood and will drown the bestial chorus…..with the mighty cry of labour, ‘Workers of all countries, unite!’”

If the only test of truth is the ability to predict, Luxemburg’s 1915 warning was an accurate — truthful — assessment of conditions at the time and where they might lead. But the global barbarism that now threatens seems much worse than what followed Luxemburg’s prediction and culminated in the holocaust and World War II.

In these conditions the trade union movement is again to the forefront in stating that meaningful transformation is an urgent requirement. “Socialism” is the word used. But what, exactly, does this mean?