Text 5251, 106 rader
Skriven 2004-11-23 20:07:52 av Stephen Hayes (5:7106/20.0)
Ärende: Debate: Behind the Cosatu-ANC spat over Zimbabwe
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* Originally from family.debate@family-bbs.net (8:8/2) to All.
* Original dated: Tue Nov 23, 04:23

From: family.debate@family-bbs.net (Debate)
From: "Steve Hayes" <khanyab@lantic.net>

SOUTH AFRICA: Behind the COSATU-ANC spat over Zimbabwe

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/607/607p19.htm

Dale T. McKinley, Johannesburg

During the last week of October, a 13-member delegation from the Congress of
South African Trade Unions (COSATU) arrived in Zimbabwe for a brief
fact-finding mission that, according to COSATU, was designed to get a full
first-hand picture of the conditions under which our sister organisation [the
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, ZCTU] operates.

COSATU had gone ahead with the long-delayed visit despite the stated opposition
of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. Shortly after arriving in Harare, during
its first meeting with ZCTU officials, the COSATU delegation was detained by
police. Within hours, the COSATU delegation was unceremoniously dumped at the
Zimbabwe-South African border post of Beitbridge.

In the week that followed, a war of words broke out between COSATU and its
ertswhile alliance partner, the ruling African National Congress (ANC), over
the incident. Loyalists of South African President Thabo Mbeki were quick to
call the visit irresponsible games that do not contribute anything towards
solving the crisis in Zimbabwe.

A 3000-word official ANC statement was published in the November 5 ANC Today,
the party's online newsletter, in which COSATU was accused of showing contempt
for a head of state [and] sovereign government, evidently because COSATU had
ignored Mugabe's opposition to the visit. It went on to say that, we fully
support the statement made by our Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the South
African government accepts that Zimbabwe is an independent, sovereign state
that has an inalienable right to determine and to apply its immigration
legislation as it may deem appropriate and in its own interest'.

COSATU deputy secretary-general Bheki Ntshalintshali provided a succinct but
low-key response the next day: The ANC and the government have their own ideas
on how the Zimbabwean crisis should be dealt with. However, we do not agree
with them.

It was left up to COSATU general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, to give a more
energetic defence of COSATU's actions. The only reason why the Zimbabwean
government objected to this mission, Vavi said, was fear of what it might
uncover. The mission's short visit proved beyond doubt that this is a society
where people's human rights and civil liberties are being crushed. We will not
keep mum when freedom does not lead to respect for workers and human rights.

Following a script that has played itself out time and again in South Africa's
press, and among most political commentators and analysts when a tactical
political disagreement has emerged between the alliance partners, claims were
soon made that the Alliance was in trouble. This time it was the Zimbabwe
incident that showed up serious divisions between the ANC and COSATU (alongside
the South African Communist Party, which came out in support of COSATU).

Of course, what such analysis failed to reveal and has always failed to reveal
is that the respective leaderships of the alliance partners have never allowed
verbal spats and tactical differences to impinge on their underlying strategic
and class consensus.

In the past several years, this has been repeatedly proven in the realm that
matters most to South Africa's organised workers and poor the neoliberal
macro-economic policy of the ANC government, GEAR. While the left flank of the
tripartite alliance  COSATU and the SACP  have continued to launch verbal
attacks on GEAR, most often tied to very occasional and limited strikes, these
have never developed into any sustained working class-led struggle with the
potential to undermine the pro-neoliberal ANC leadership's domination of the
alliance.

The result, not surprisingly, has been that the foundation and pillars of GEAR
have remained intact, the occasional left genuflections of the ANC government
have been welcomed by COSATU and the SACP as evidence of the strength and
relevance of their role in the alliance and, all the while, the social and
economic plight of the vast majority of the working class has continued to
worsen.

In the case of the Zimbabwe incident, the same pattern has applied. On November
17, Vavi warned that the ANC Today statement could foreshadow a situation in
South Africa in which trade unions could be accused of guilt by association
with imperialist forces, which would then be the pretext for the sort of
attacks on human rights we see in Zimbabwe. The only buffer to such a scenario,
according to Vavi, was a strong ANC-COSATU alliance.
--
Steve Hayes
E-mail: shayes@dunelm.org.uk
   Web: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
 Phone: 083-342-3563 or 012-333-6727

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