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Papers The
State of Working Class Struggle and Labour Media in South Africa Thank you very much to the organisers of the conference for inviting me and especially to share some information, insight and experiences of the South African situation pertaining to the struggle of the working class, the state of the labour movement and of course labour media. In order to understand
the South Africa of today one needs to understand its unique history,
which lie in the developments at the turn of the 20th century, which
could be summed up as a monopoly capitalist revolution from above.
This was in contrast to England, elsewhere in Europe and in America,
where monopoly capitalist rule during the imperialist epoch emerged
after about 50-100 years of progressive capitalist development.
In the period 1899-1902 a bloody three-year long imperialist war, the Anglo-Boer War, was fought on South African soil, resulting in the triumph of the imperialism over the semi-feudal Afrikaner landowners. A new racist capitalist state and White bourgeois democracy was established in 1910. For the White monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie, liberal democracy, with its notions of universal rights and freedoms, including one-parson-one-vote, was an unaffordable luxury. The black majority of workers and peasants were excluded from this racist democracy. At the same time, the racist capitalist state played a key role in systematically co-opting white workers and the petty-bourgeoisie into supporting monopoly capitalist relations. This co-option largely occurred under the banner of Afrikaner nationalism. The new racist state ensured rapid capitalist development and over the past 100 years of monopoly capitalist rule, first the colonial state and then, from 1910, the racist capitalist state assisted in the further expansion the monopoly capitalist national bourgeoisie from mining into other sectors of the economy. To assist overall capitalist development, the state developed infrastructure and systems of transport and communication. It established para-statal companies in key sectors (iron and steel, coal production and electricity generation). It also assisted in the emergence and consolidation of an Afrikaans-speaking bourgeoisie, that also became increasingly monopoly capitalist in character. Naturally, to secure its racial capitalist framework of white wealth and privilege and black exclusion and oppression, it had to have effective and large repressive organs of state to ensure the suppression of the black masses and their organizations. It therefore also guaranteed the maintenance of law and order, including the suppression of strikes and other forms of mass unrest. Even White workers were violently crushed in the miners’ strike of 1922. In the period after the Second World War, the apartheid-capitalist state brutally suppressed the 1946 mineworkers strike and crushed the mass struggles of the 1950s, banning the ANC, the PAC and the SACP and jailing thousands of leaders. Having crushed the mass uprising, the apartheid-capitalist state presided over the boom years of economic growth in the 1960s. These years saw the further strengthening of monopoly capitalism, including the increased merger of English- and Afrikaans-speaking monopoly capitalist corporations, as well as the establishment of foreign monopoly capitalist firms, especially in the manufacturing sector. The apartheid state introduced a range of new oppressive laws, expanded its bureaucracy and repressive apparatuses (police, army, courts) and consolidated the monstrous Bantustan system to keep the black working class divided and in a state of fear and subservience. All these actions served to stabilize conditions of capital accumulation and to raise the rate of profit to record levels. Despite this, the black working class regrouped and responded in the context of economic crisis and declining living standards during the early 1970’s. And in 1973, we experience and mass re-awakening of working class struggle through the Durban strikes which saw over 70 000 workers come out in spontaneous strikes. This re-ignited the movement and was the beginning of the new progressive left-wing trade unions that led to the formation first of FOSATU and later COSATU in 1985. Moreover it sparked a radical and militant struggle movement that was to last two decades. This struggle, that involved vast sections of the working class and often led by the trade union movement through COSATU, reached heights of struggle that bordered on insurrection or even pre-revolution until eventually the Apartheid regime entered into negotiations with the liberation movement leaders, primarily the ANC to end Apartheid and introduce a new democratic dispensation based on universal suffrage of one person, one vote. COSATU Then and Now During the 1980’s, COSATU was at the forefront of the Mass Democratic Movement, along with the United Democratic Front, in the struggle for freedom from oppression and exploitation against the Apartheid government and the capitalist class. At the time, COSATU’s radicalism, militancy and strength of organization elevated it to being the most revered and respected trade union organization in the world. Millions of workers in South Africa and the world looked towards COSATU as a shining example of struggle against capitalism and advancing the struggle for socialism. Today, COSATU is a shadow of its former self, largely inactive in mass struggles and its focus of activity has shifted away from struggles on the ground, workplaces and communities, to the boardrooms of NEDLAC and similar fora. I say this despite the several general strikes around COSATU’s jobs and poverty campaign as these campaigns are designed and carried out extremely bureaucratically, without much involvement and direction given by ordinary COSATU members. The centre of this campaign and like so many others in recent years is located at the level of the COSATU CEC and its office-bearers. Many of its current leaders, union officials and several shop-stewards at various levels and in most of its affiliated trade unions, have degenerated politically, with very little inclination to lead and immerse themselves into mass struggles around issues that affect their members or working class communities. The trade union movement in South Africa, with COSATU at its helm, has essentially become bureaucratized with very little democratic participation of its members and little or no inclination towards the orientation of the COSATU during the 1980’s, namely radical, militant and organized and generally inspired by the struggle for socialism as an integral part of the struggle to overthrow the then Apartheid regime. However, upon careful historical scrutiny of COSATU then and now, we will observe as many of us knew then, that the dominant political currents within COSATU were not by any means revolutionary and were thoroughly reformist in their political orientations. This understanding goes a long way to explaining the COSATU and its affiliates’ leadership’s ready acceptance of the negotiated political settlement and betrayal of working class interests by the ANC and the Tri-partite Alliance. The Socio-economic Conditions
of the South African Working Class The Taylor Report commissioned
by government and done by reputable social researchers estimated
that between 20 and 28 million South Africans, i.e. between 45 and
63 percent of the population are currently living in poverty. 71%
of people in rural areas are poor while 29 % of people in urban
areas are poor. The average poor household in rural areas would
need an increase in income of over 70% to reach the poverty line,
compared more than 40% in metropolitan areas. About 13, 7 million
people, live in rural areas and 85% of rural African households
earned less than R1500 (US$200) per month. Young African women in
the rural areas have the highest chance of being unemployed in South
Africa. Ironically, the South African “democratic breakthrough”, for the working class has meant being bled to death by the capitalist system. Despite these socio-economic setbacks organised labour and the working class remains resilient and willing to fight to defend itself. However, not many consistent struggles on the part of COSATU and other working class formations have happened over the last number of years. Trade unions and other organisations have in fact been weakened, despite the democratic space and opportunities when compared to the Apartheid era. The working class and
organised workers are under attack. Privatisation, job losses, low
wage increases and industrial restructuring are all measures by
South African monopoly capital and the new government that have
ensured that hard won gains have been and continue to be reversed
in the interests of capital’s relentless pursuit of maximising
profits. In addition, the HIV/AIDS epidemic is claiming the lives
of thousands of working class people. The government refuses to
provide proper medical services and drugs to stop the pandemic and
support those living with HIV/AIDS leading to an indirect genocide
of black working class people. Yet it is the same bourgeois ANC
government, leading the neo-liberal onslaught against the working
class that COSATU and the SACP has and is so loyally supporting.
This is our political conundrum, the classical situation of objective
factors being ripe for revolutionary struggles, but almost contradicted
by deep-seated subjective factors that undermine such possibilities.
However, as is always the case, ultimately the working class prevails
and over the past few years there have been signs of revival of
enradicalisation and militant struggles on the part of working class
people. Initially, by poor communities in response to issues relating
to housing and community service delivery such as water, sanitation
and electricity and more recently a strike wave by workers and their
trade unions. The ANC, once the leading
liberation movement party, has crossed the class line and now leads
the new state, predominantly in the interests of white monopoly
capital through its neo-liberal economic policy. The Politics of Labour
and the Tri-partite Alliance The last 10 years have also seen the consolidation of the COSATU leadership’s rightward political shift that started in the late 1980’s. This could be characterized as a shift from radical and militant trade unionism to co-determination and “corporatism”. The radical and militant period of COSATU culminated in the 1987 strike wave inspired by the “Living-wage Campaign” and the insurrectionary climate created by the preceding years of struggle by the masses against the Apartheid government. The defeat of the mineworkers strike during 1987 had a profound effect on the trade union leadership who then seriously started to embrace the co-determinist and reconciliatory approach with the capitalist ruling class. The international balance of class forces at the time and later the collapse of the “socialist” USSR and thereby “socialism”, also paved the way for the ANC/SACP’s rightward shift and strengthening of the negotiated settlement route for the national liberation of oppressed South Africans. This further hastened the rightward shift of the COSATU leadership, most of whom were members of the SACP. Media and Labour Media in South Africa The mainstream media in South Africa, like in the US, is highly monopolised. There are two major news groups, the foreign owned Independent News & Media PLC, a Dublin-based company are outright owners of Independent Newspaper Group and Independent Online. The other group is Media 24, which has its roots in the former state supported, pro-Apartheid company, Naspers. Television is dominated by the SABC, with 3 national channels and an Africa wide channel. There are two other TV channels, E-TV a private free to air channel which is owned by a union investment company, Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI). Yet is this TV channel that flatly refused and created several financial obstacles against starting a weekly 30-minute labour TV show. In some cases, Independent
are the sole supplier of information for entire markets in the Southern
Hemisphere in which they represent a massive media cartel, shoving
out smaller operators, clamping down on dissent, censoring journalists
and recreating the news in their own image. After a period of stagnation
in which South Africa's press has been dominated by a few large
media groupings, the small press is making a come-back, albeit in
an unconventional format that draws inspiration from the world of
electronic publishing. Our other challenge is the content of the media. Much of the mainstream media, as I said is dominated by commercial interests, but as the stakes are increased in class struggle terms, increasingly those in power seek to influence the content and thereby public perception and opinion. Over the past few years we’ve seen the state form its Government Communications and Information Service (GCIS) which has as its primary role to disseminate government information and propaganda. The dominant group in government and the ANC has successfully managed to bring top newspaper and TV editors under its influence. Over the past few months there has been a major public scandal regarding the SABC’s head of news who prepared a blacklist of commentators who are to be excluded, effectively banned from SABC TV and radio. Increasingly as Workers’ World Media Productions we have succeeded in ensuring a labour challenge to the mainstream media and developing our own alternative, independent media. However, these advances whilst big in their own terms are not significant enough to mount a challenge to the mainstream media. But we are getting there and our real success will be propelled and as a consequence of a re-emerging mass movement that will have as its rallying cry, revolutionary socialism. Thank you.
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