Although the public potentially had much sympathy for the low pay of public sector workers – particularly health professionals and teachers – there was no attempt to build alliances between striking workers and poor communities and, instead, poor communities bore the brunt of the strike action through neglected essential services in hospitals and schools (particularly in townships). Public sector workers often gave the impression that they were only interested in their own narrow wage and working conditions, and cared little about building a broader working-class unity. This was an opportunity lost for Cosatu to re-ignite its social movement unionism, and build broader solidarity. Eventually, after three weeks of bitter industrial action, a settlement was reached, but not all workers were satisfied (Bekker and Van der Walt, 2010; Hassen, 2010; Ceruti, 2011). While Cosatu’s South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) felt that it did not go far enough, the Treasury feared the fiscal consequences of the settlement and the government felt that above-inflation increases should be linked to performance improvements within a public service not known for its efficiency. New rounds of discord between public sector workers and government are pencilled in for the future (Hassen, 2011a).
Cosatu and the ANC were eager to calm things down before the crucial National General Council (NGC) of the ANC in September 2010. By all accounts, the NGC allowed diverse views to be aired, and the ANC came out of it relatively calm and focused (Turok, 2010a). The ANC once again showed skill at orchestrating a wide range of discordant voices into one palatable tune, only for the fragile unity to unravel soon afterwards. Of most concern to the ANC leadership is the issue of nationalisation, supported for different reasons and in different ways by both Cosatu and the ANC Youth League (ANCYL).11 The ANCYL was particularly irked by the manner in which nationalisation was deflected into a two-year research investigation, and has since ensured that the issue remains on the public agenda.
In September 2010, Cosatu published its own redistributive economic policy proposals, which urged greater state intervention in the economy in order to transform its industrial structure within the context of ‘sustainable development’ and regional integration (Cosatu, 2010b). These were meant to influence the final New Growth Path (NGP) eagerly awaited from the new ministry of Economic Development (amid fears that this department was being sidelined in government and preference given to the more conservative Treasury).
When the NGP was finally released in late October 2010, calling inter alia for an incomes pact between business and labour, and greater attention to increasing green jobs, its reception by Cosatu was lukewarm (although the SACP endorsed it as a good starting point, as it emphasised massive job creation and a greater seriousness about implementing an aggressive industrial policy (Cronin, 2011a))
Despite agreements between the ANC Alliance partners not to criticise each other in public, there has been little resolve within the ruling party to take decisive action against powerful dissenters, notably Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi. Indeed, Cosatu has won broad public support for its principled stance against corruption and the rise of a ‘predatory elite’ in the ANC, as well as to threats to the civil liberties protected under the constitution.
Unlike the SACP, Cosatu added its voice to that of the media and groups such as the Freedom of Expression Institute, the Right2Know campaign and SOS: Support Public Broadcasting when government was seen to be tampering with civil liberties: meddling in the affairs of the SABC; proposing a media appeals tribunal; and, most worryingly, proposing a Protection of Information Bill that threatened to restrict access to information deemed critical to the public interest. Ominous voices within the ANC, SACP and ANCYL seemed bent on muzzling the media and preventing ANC politicians from being publicly scrutinised; legitimate concerns raised by community media groups about media concentration and often poor reporting standards were consequently drowned out in a climate of acrimony.
Eventually, after much public criticism, Zuma dismissed Siphiwe Nyanda as Communications minister. His replacement, Roy Padayachie, calmed fears that the SABC was about to lose its status as a public broadcaster, and become a state broadcaster (see Skinner in this volume). Hopes rose that the ANC would back down on the Information Bill, and the ANC allowed the media to investigate how it could beef up its own self-regulatory mechanisms before considering the tribunal (see Duncan in this volume). Ominous voices within the ruling party that threaten media freedom, however, remain strong, and these issues remained unresolved at the time of writing.
Cosatu’s voice in all of this served to deflect accusations that it was only the white middle class that was opposed to the ANC’s proposals. It reaffirmed its reputation as a defender of public rights and democratic freedoms. The SACP’s Blade Nzimande, by contrast, spoke of the media as the ‘greatest threat to democracy’ (Grootes, 2010) and warned of journalists being imprisoned or heavily fined if found guilty by the proposed tribunal for incorrect reporting – although Cronin, his deputy, later reaffirmed the media’s independence, and pointed to the limited intentions of the tribunal proposal, which was not for a pre-publication but a post-publication appeals body. He stressed that it remained merely an ANC proposal, and not government policy (Cronin, 2011b).
INCREASING SACP-COSATU TENSIONS
Cosatu’s criticisms of the ANC and the SACP, and its explicit flirtation with organisations of civil society to the left of the ANC, suggested a return to a more robust, independent social movement unionism. This provoked an unprecedented backlash from its alliance partners, with the SACP openly criticising Cosatu for the first time.
During 2010, Cosatu increasingly raised the question of Nzimande’s being in government (as minister of Higher Education) and consequently neglecting his SACP duties. According to Vavi, this is not a personal issue but rather ‘a political difference between Cosatu and the SACP in relation to whether it is correct to have amended the constitution of the SACP to allow a general secretary to hold a full-time position in Cabinet’ (SABC News online, 1 May 2011). At the Wits University Ruth First memorial lecture on 17 August 2010, Vavi, reflecting on the social crisis facing the country, declared that Ruth First would have asked where her South African Communist Party was, and why it had not led ‘a united working class in a struggle to change the direction we seem to be taking’ (Vavi, 2010).
Later, Cosatu would more specifically call on Nzimande to leave government and focus on his SACP duties, even offering to pay him a minister’s salary. This angered the party, which felt it was an insult to suggest that Nzimande was in government for the money, a sensitive point, given the outcry in 2009 when Nzimande was one of the ministers who spent R1.2 million on a top-of-the range German car.
By late 2010, it was speculated that Vavi himself, who had withdrawn an earlier commitment to leave Cosatu and make himself available for a top position in the ANC at its 2012 national conference, would instead offer himself for the leadership of the SACP (even though he has no profile within the party, and has not himself indicated