(File photo) Photo: Henk Kruger (File photo) Photo: Henk Kruger
The nationalisation Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) has thrown down the gauntlet to the ANC and the SACP, warning that only those leaders capable of fully implementing the Freedom Charter will get support at its Mangaung conference in December.
From Numsa’s point of view, that means leaders who will be prepared to carry out the nationalisation of the mines, banks (including the SA Reserve Bank) and other key sectors of the economy, and the expropriation of land without compensation.
It’s a clear message for the ANC leadership, but also an indication of the power struggle under way within the SACP – derided at Numsa’s ninth national congress in Durban this week as not acting true to its role as the workers’ vanguard.
Numsa is Cosatu’s second-largest affiliate, with more than 300 000 members. But it is at loggerheads with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which has 320 000 members.
While the ostensible source of the rift is differing positions on the nationalisation of the mines, with NUM calling for greater state intervention in the sector rather than wholesale expropriation, a less well publicised source of tension is that both unions are competing to recruit and organise Eskom employees.
More broadly, NUM’s leadership – in its general secretary, Frans Baleni and president, Senzeni Zokwana – is seen to be supportive of a second term for President Jacob Zuma, while Numsa’s is not.
Both Baleni and Zokwana are members of the central committee of the SACP, where Blade Nzimande, Higher Education Minister and a staunch ally of Zuma, is general secretary.
While only 12 percent of Numsa’s members are card-carrying members of the SACP, according to a recent membership survey, the union defines itself as a militantly Marxist-Leninist organisation and its positions in this regard define the tensions with SACP leaders such as Nzimande, his deputy Jeremy Cronin and chairman Gwede Mantashe.
Delegates this week returned to office – uncontested – most of Numsa’s current leadership: general secretary Irvin Jim, his deputy Karl Cloete and president Cedric Gina.
They will continue to drive the union’s political aims and programme through a series of crucial political gatherings that culminate in December with the ANC’s Mangaung elective conference.
While Cosatu affiliates come as observers, the federation’s policy for some time has been to swell the ranks of the ANC to determine policy and leadership choices. Around 62 percent of Numsa’s more than 300 000 members are politically active, mostly in the ANC.
Numsa is actively courting the ANC Youth League to forge an alliance that will help guide decisions in ANC branch, regional and provincial meetings in the run-up to the party’s elective conference in Mangaung at the end of the year.
Deputy ANCYL president Ronald Lamola got a rapturous reception from Numsa delegates this week when he said the ANC should never have to apologise for wanting to amend the constitution if it was an obstacle to expropriation of land without compensation, for example.
For Numsa, leadership change is necessary because the ANC-led government has failed to deliver on the Polokwane resolutions that were supposed to usher in the equality and prosperity promised in the Freedom Charter.
It is now playing hardball, insisting that re-election (or election) will depend on the extent to which leaders – particularly deployees – are seen to have backed workers’ interests, and their ability to carry out what Jim refers to as the ANC’s “revolutionary programme” – the Freedom Charter.
Sunday Independent