COSATU Congress: Bureaucrats Burn Literature Supporting Striking Mineworkers

The following letter by our comrades in South Africa was sent to the Congress of South African Trade Unions on September 25.

On 20 September, supporters of Spartacist/South Africa, section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), went to sell our literature at the 11th national congress of COSATU. An important aim of ours was to intersect delegates to the congress who are outraged at the brutal massacre of striking mineworkers by police in Marikana on 16 August, and who feel a sense of solidarity with the wildcat strikes in Marikana and elsewhere.

We distributed our statement of 23 August denouncing the massacre, as well as the latest issue (14 September) of Workers Vanguard, published by the American section of the ICL, with the front-page headline: “ANC/SACP/COSATU Tops: Front Men for Mining Bosses—Striking Miners Defiant After Massacre.” Our placards emphasised the need for labour solidarity with these strikes, something our comrades have campaigned for internationally, demanding: “Drop All the Charges! Victory to the Striking Mineworkers!” Another placard underlined the Marxist understanding—bloodily confirmed by the Marikana massacre—that the cops are not workers but the hired guns of the bourgeoisie, calling for “Cops and Security Guards Out of the Unions!” A third placard pointed to the need for working-class independence from bourgeois-nationalism and a revolutionary perspective against neo-apartheid capitalism: “Break With the Bourgeois Tripartite Alliance! For a Black-Centred Workers Government!”

While quite a number of delegates were interested in checking out our political slogans and literature laying out our broader programme for new October Revolutions and the genuine communism of Lenin and Trotsky, some others were not very happy to see us. The latter certainly included members of POPCRU, the cop “union” affiliated to COSATU, and some top bureaucrats from the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) who had notoriously denounced the Marikana strikers and called for state repression against them both before and after the 16 August massacre. After our comrades had been at the congress venue for about an hour, a group of bureaucrats—unable to answer our criticisms with political arguments—decided to use their fists to silence our support to the striking rock drillers and opposition to the neo-apartheid massacre. An organised group of 10-15 bureaucratic thugs moved in on our comrades, roughed them up, overturned our literature table and set fire to our newspapers and placards. A number of delegates who witnessed the attack voiced their protest against this thuggish method of silencing political opponents, but the bureaucrats were not listening to anybody.

While immediately directed at our comrades, the point of this attack was to deliver a threat against anyone who would fight within COSATU for working-class solidarity with the wildcat mineworkers’ strikes or take a stand against the pro-capitalist bureaucrats’ stranglehold over the unions. The Lonmin mineworkers waged a six-week long, determined struggle against the mine owners, defying bloody repression by the capitalist government while being stabbed in the back by the NUM/COSATU tops. And they won an important victory: on 18 September, Lonmin agreed to substantial wage increases for rock drill operators and other workers. The COSATU bureaucrats fear that other sections of the working class, inspired by this, will take the road of class struggle, thereby upsetting the cosy relationship of the bureaucrats with the capitalists and their government. That’s why the Alliance tops are now denouncing the Lonmin bosses for “caving in” to the wildcat strike. According to the Mail & Guardian online (19 September), on the day of the settlement, COSATU general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi complained via Twitter: “Cosatu and NUM will have to act fast or this deal can collapse the [sic] every bargaining system in place…it can communicates [sic] the message workers can lead themselves and get what they want.”

The Marikana massacre and its aftermath are exposing the truly gruesome, viciously racist nature of neo-apartheid capitalism for all to see. Some 78 workers were injured and at least 34 killed, many of them hunted down and shot in what amounted to a killing spree by the cops. Marikana shows that the blood of black workers is just as cheap today, in the “new” South Africa, as it was under apartheid rule. And it shows what we have repeatedly emphasised from 1994 on: the leaders of the bourgeois ANC/SACP/COSATU Tripartite Alliance are the enforcers of neo-apartheid capitalist misery for the majority black masses, defending the rule of the (overwhelmingly white) mine bosses, Randlords, and their imperialist senior partners.

This is clearly shown by the role played by the NUM misleaders. They have defended the cops and repeatedly demanded repression against the strike leaders and particularly the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), which many workers have been joining out of disgust with the NUM bureaucracy’s betrayals. Immediately after the massacre, NUM general secretary Frans Baleni said in a radio interview: “The police were patient, but these people were extremely armed with dangerous weapons.”

At COSATU’s national congress, Baleni was joined by Alliance tops like SACP general secretary (and minister of higher education) Blade Nzimande in denouncing the mineworkers and crying out for more state repression. In a speech to the congress on 17 September, Nzimande railed against “lumpen-patriarchal networks” supposedly duping and intimidating the mineworkers, and declared brazenly: “The SACP fully supports government’s crackdown on the illegal carrying of weapons, on intimidation and on incitement to violence. The ring-leaders must be dealt with and separated from the mass of misled strikers (many of whom are not actually employees of Lonmin or even workers).”

The SACP and COSATU leaders have a problem: after more than 18 years of the Tripartite Alliance in power, anger at continued neo-apartheid oppression is erupting at the base of society, including among many SACP and COSATU members, who are fed up with their leadership’s repeated betrayals of working-class struggles in the name of the bourgeois Alliance. The Marikana massacre has become a focal point for that anger.

According to online reports by the bourgeois papers Mail & Guardian and Daily Maverick, the bureaucrats who burned our literature then marched into the congress hall singing pro-Zuma songs, which led to a shouting match between pro- and anti-Zuma delegates. We oppose all factions of the bourgeois ANC and fight to win working-class militants to breaking from the Tripartite Alliance along class lines. For years, the workers’ interests have been sold out in the name of the bourgeois Alliance and support for this or that bourgeois politician—before [the ANC conference in] Polokwane 2007 it was Zuma vs. Mbeki; now, before Mangaung 2012, it is Zuma vs. Motlanthe/Malema. This is just a squabble over which representative of the class enemy to back, and we reject the whole swindle: The interests of the working class are irreconcilably counterposed to those of the bourgeoisie. To get rid of neo-apartheid capitalist misery, the workers need a leadership which is independent of and opposed to all wings of the bourgeoisie and their repressive state. We remain steadfast in our fight to build the revolutionary internationalist vanguard party needed to achieve this.