New South African Review 2. Paul Hoffman
a more robust champion of the working class, capable of uniting the broad left.12
In late October 2010, Cosatu, in conjunction with the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and civil rights group Section 27, held a civil society conference and did not invite its allies (except the South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco)) on the understanding that political parties were not part of ‘civil society’. The ANC and SACP were furious. Gwede Mantashe warned Cosatu against working towards ‘regime change’; the ANC’s National Working Committee (NWC) accused the gathering of attempting ‘to put a wedge between civil society formations, some unions, the ANC and its government’ (Cosatu, 2010c); and the SACP’s Jeremy Cronin (2010) suggested that Cosatu was falling into a ‘liberal’ trap to upset the NDR. Contrary to popular convention, Cronin defined ‘civil society’ as including the corporate sector; from his perspective, civil society was suspect, a terrain of anti-state, pro-market liberalism, and because the conference made no reference to the NDR, he proceeded to portray it as ‘anti-transformation’. While acknowledging that it would be ‘crass’ to suggest that those formations present at the conference were ‘simply imperialist agents’ or part of some ‘major conspiracy’, he warned Cosatu that ‘we need to be very careful that we are not manipulated into someone else’s strategic agenda, particularly when that agenda is itself increasingly hegemonised by a much more right-wing, anti-majoritarian liberalism’ (Cronin, 2010).
These harsh criticisms were followed in January by a cutting admonition of Cosatu’s criticism of government’s New Growth Path. Cronin accused Cosatu of ‘entirely missing the bigger picture’, and having a ‘redistributionist approach to transformation’ which, he implied, did not ask ‘what is right and wrong about our productive economy’. This ‘paradigm shift’, Cronin asserted, was implicit in the NGP’s emphasis on job creation (2011a).
Cronin seemed to ignore Cosatu’s substantial policy document on a new growth path, issued in September 2010. Far from being narrowly ‘redistributionist’, it is a far-reaching call for decisive intervention in the economy to steer it away from the minerals-energy-financial complex. These proposals were fully endorsed by the civil society conference,13 underlining its deeply transformative, progressive agenda. Indeed, Cosatu’s reservations about the NGP were that it did not take on board Cosatu’s proposals (Cosatu, 2011).
In an address to Barometer SA in March 2011, Vavi argued for a ‘radically different macroeconomic strategy, based, among others, on lower interest rates, a weaker rand, and more tariff protection for vulnerable industries identified by IPAP214 and NGP as potential job drivers’. He also underlined the need for a ‘much bigger role to the state in directing investment into the sectors where jobs can be created’, including using state-owned enterprises to create jobs (Vavi, 2011).
Cosatu is clearly of the view that the NGP has not shifted government away from a neoliberal paradigm which contradicts the developmental goals set out in the NGP. Vavi asked: ‘Even the most developed countries are now abandoning this pro-market approach and taking quite drastic action to try to discipline the private sector, particularly the banks. How much more do developing countries need to build a strong, dynamic, but also democratic public sector and developmental state to drive the agenda of the NGP?’
Cosatu did not publicly attack Minister Ebrahim Patel, nor his ally the SACP’s Rob Davies (the minister of Trade and Industry and responsible for industrial policy). These two departments are clearly at odds with more conservative bureaucrats in the Treasury, which has constrained their more heterodox economic perspectives within a macroeconomic strait-jacket. Cosatu was appreciative of the fact that the NGP did contain progressive proposals for job creation, and that Patel’s department seemed to have won the battle to become the lead department in economic policy development. Cosatu’s difference of opinion with the SACP seems to lie in whether to knock quietly on the door of opportunity, hoping it will open, or to knock loudly, even threatening to break the door down, knowing that there are many on the other side who would rather keep it closed.
CONTINUED, BUT DECLINING, SUPPORT FOR THE ALLIANCE
Cosatu’s support for the ANC during the 2011 municipal elections (even while it continued to criticise government policy) underlined its commitment to building the ANC Alliance. It continues to believe in the strategy of ‘swelling the ranks’ of the ANC to ensure that in future it elects leaders who truly have the interests of the working class at heart.
A survey15 of Cosatu members’ political attitudes confirmed the continued, if gradually declining, popularity of the ANC and the alliance among workers. Support still remains at sixty per cent (down from eighty-two per cent in 1994, seventy per cent in 1998 and sixty-six per cent in 2004). However, those who are now unhappy about the alliance are more interested in Cosatu being nonaligned (twenty-one per cent), than being part of a new workers’ party (nineteen per cent). Most members clearly have no appetite for breaking away from the party of Mandela, despite their unhappiness with aspects of the ANC’s policies and performance (particularly those concerning access to nutritional food (fifty-five per cent), higher wages (seventy-two per cent), land (fifty-nine per cent), and jobs (seventy-two per cent)).
Interestingly, despite Cosatu’s denunciation of the neoliberal macroeconomic framework Gear, most workers (seventy-five per cent) had never heard of it. Of those that had, only forty per cent believed it was achieving its goals of growth, employment and redistribution. However, only forty-five per cent believed that it was not. Tellingly, sixty-two per cent of the workers vote for the ANC because of its policies or past performance, while only twenty-one per cent vote out of loyalty or because the union told them to (two per cent). It is clear that, despite anger at government for not meeting many working-class aspirations, for most workers this does not yet mean abandoning the ANC or the alliance. If the ANC does not satisfy workers in future, only six per cent of them are interested in forming an alternative workers’ party (compared to thirty-eight per cent in 2004, and thirty-three per cent in 1998). Workers prefer ongoing mass action or pressurising unionists in parliament (sixty-two per cent). In other words, worker sentiments are not out of line with those of the union leadership. Working-class aspirations, for most Cosatu members, must be fought for within the ANC and the alliance, rather than outside it – and the post-Polokwane ANC appears more attentive to the working class. Nevertheless, while worker support for the ANC during the May 2011 municipal elections was largely uncontested outside the Western Cape, Cosatu’s Vavi revealed that he had to campaign vigorously in Port Elizabeth to ensure that workers came out to vote ANC.16
Is this the case of relative ‘insiders’ (organised workers) being comfortable with a liberation movement that has brought them some benefits such as better housing (fifty-six per cent), access to clean water (eighty-one per cent), electricity (seventy-nine per cent), a telephone (sixty-five per cent), better public transport (fifty-five per cent), better healthcare (fifty-three per cent), HIV/AIDS treatment (sixty-two per cent), education and training (sixty-two per cent) and a clean and healthy working and living environment (sixty-one per cent)? While the majority seems relatively satisfied, a sizeable minority is not. The unemployed and underemployed majority are likely to be much less satisfied, as rising ‘service delivery’ protests indicate.
Nevertheless, the ANC vote increased from 10.9 million in 2004 to 11.7 million in 2009 (less than the 12.2 million votes cast in 1994, but significant nonetheless) (Southall and