There will be blood.
That’s the extreme scenario if a new trade union federation is born out of the EFF as it organises in major sectors — mining, metals and the public service — with the kind of tactics it has used at tertiary institutions under the banner of Fees Must Fall.
The formation of new unions will come with turf wars. It will bring fights over recognition with employers. It may even redraw the political landscape. It is no small development in already fractured SA politics.
Even if there is no blood, there will be disruption and angst on shop floors; there will be friction in communities, such as the Marikana informal settlement, which are built around one employer or industry; and there will be concern in the minds of investors when the labour market becomes fractured and does not speak with one voice.
Speaking at a May Day rally in Mpumalanga on Sunday, EFF leader Julius Malema said his party would launch a trade union federation that would rival the ANC-aligned Cosatu. “We are preparing to do a union, and not a Mickey Mouse union [which] is in cahoots and in bed with the employer … That union will never sell out. That union will always be on the side of the workers,” he said.
Malema was holding forth while President Cyril Ramaphosa, across the country in North West, was hastily removed from a May Day rally in Rustenburg after striking Sibanye-Stillwater workers disrupted proceedings and rushed the stage. Ramaphosa knows that region well.
On August 16 2012, police opened fire on mineworkers massed on a koppie near the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana. At least 112 of the mineworkers were injured and 34 died. The workers were divided between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the union Ramaphosa had founded back in the 1980s, and the smaller, more militant Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union (Amcu). Ramaphosa was a shareholder at Lonmin and had called for the police to stop the violence at the mine (10 people were killed in the days before the massacre).
Violence is, unfortunately, a normalised part of our democracy
The truth about that day and the violence of the previous few weeks is that those workers were rejecting their union, NUM, and throwing in their lot with the militant, new-on-site Amcu. NUM had become a “sweetheart union”, with most of its leaders drawn from an educated management class, and it had lost its militancy and empathy for labourers and semi-skilled workers. Amcu was displacing it across North West and Mpumalanga. The result was violence.
Violence is, unfortunately, a normalised part of our democracy. Just 10 months ago we had the July riots. Women are murdered in their thousands by their male partners every year. Violent crime is just part of what happens here — people are shot and killed even as they peacefully hand over their goods to thieves.
When Amcu muscled in on NUM, there was violence. In 1986 the IFP’s Mangosuthu Buthelezi launched the United Workers Union of SA (Uwusa, which was funded by the apartheid regime) to take on Cosatu. Violence ensued as Uwusa attacked Cosatu members, particularly in the coal mining sector.
The state of the economy lends itself perfectly to a challenge to Cosatu’s unions. Many workers are feeling the pinch because there is simply no growth in this economy. An outfit such as the EFF, which trades on grievance, will find ample support here. Remember, the EFF’s rise in 2014 was largely on the back of its support for the Marikana workers. Importantly, events in the 1980s, during which NUM and Cosatu were born, led to the formation of a strong pro-ANC political movement, the ouster of the National Party and a new political dispensation.
The EFF, should it gain a foothold in the labour market, will have a powerful financial contributor and organisational apparatus to lean on. The ANC has been powerful because of the financial and organisational muscle Cosatu has brought to it. The end of the ANC, which is now almost inevitable, may be hastened by an EFF labour federation.
But there will be pain, and there will be blood.
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