10 Jan 2008 |
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The recent election of Jacob Zuma to the Presidency of the ANC and his continued conflict with State President Thabo Mbeki is being discussed as if this were only a personal struggle between the two men. This analysis ignores the long history of this confrontation and the roots of the battles between them. It has to do with the very nature of the ANC, its structure, and its profound failure to deal with the problems of poverty, opportunity, housing and jobs.
Hou Ry Die Boere The battle for the liberation of South Africa was contested between the Africans, Coloured and Indians against a Nationalist apartheid government led by Boers. This was the core of the struggle but it was only part of the kaleidoscope of internal and external politics. Under former President P.W. Botha, the "securocrats"—seconded personnel from the South African security establishment—exercised extensive influence over state decision-making and policy implementation. The key elements of the securocrat establishment were the State Security Council (SSC) and its implementation instrument, the National Security Management System (NSMS). The SSC had been established by the 1972 Security Intelligence and State Security Act, with responsibility to "advise the government on the formulation of national policy and strategy in relation to the security of the country", and for determining national intelligence priorities. Although it was the only cabinet-level committee created by statute, it was not referred to as such in the Act. Its standing membership was designated to include the Prime Minister (later State President) as chairman, the four Ministers of Defence, Foreign Affairs, Justice, and Police (Law and Order), the senior cabinet members if not already included in the above portfolios, the senior officials for the National Intelligence Service (NIS) ), South African Defence Force (SADF), the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Justice, and South African Police (SAP), and other cabinet ministers and department heads who "may from time to time be co-opted" by the chairman. Even when De Klerk replaced ‘Wappens Piet’ Botha the securocrat structure remained intact. The ministers, included the Defence Minister, General Magnus Malan (former SADF chief under then Defence Minister Botha), the Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok (responsible for the SAP and former Deputy Minister of Defence and of Law and Order), Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee (former Deputy Minister of Defence and a long-time special adviser to President Botha on intelligence and security matters, including the 1979 NIS reorganization) and Foreign Affairs Minister R.F. "Pik" Botha. However, the operative, as opposed to policy-making, section of the securocrats included Malan - defence minister 1980-91) former South African Defence Force chief General Jannie Geldenhuys, former army head General Kat Liebenberg, former navy head Admiral Dries Putter and former Military Intelligence director General Tienie Groenewald, aided by Military Intelligence Brigadier Cornelius van Niekerk. These have all been publicly interrogated about their acts. The reports of the Truth and Conciliation Commission spell out a detailed history of murder, mayhem and subversion. These men have not gone away or faded into the background. With the coming to power of the Mandela-Mbeki governments these Boere have regrouped into a number of political parties and groupings. Initially, under the leadership of four retired generals, almost all of South Africa's white separatist political parties, labour unions, farm organizations and paramilitary groups coalesced for a last-ditch resistance to black rule. In 1993 they came forward as the Afrikaner People's Front and demanded that an Afrikaner homeland be carved from the north-eastern province of Transvaal as an independent refuge for South Africans who share their language and conservative values. This was led by Maj. Gen. Tienie Groenewald. Since then they have continued to exercise their power in the shaping of South African policy, despite not holding political office. The key to their power lies with the legacy of South Africa’s response to international sanctions. The Nationalists responded to the international sanctions against their country by building a survival plan built on three pillars. The Nationalists took firm control of the military, police and intelligence establishments; they built a national and international banking and finance structure to hide currency and financial dealings; and they constructed Africa’s most sophisticated arms industry in association with Israel and France (including a nuclear weapon facility, ICBM missile production and a major field testing of chemical and biological weapons) plus creating an energy policy which both innovated the production of fuels domestically and fostered the illicit importation of petroleum through back channels. Despite the takeover of the political leadership of South Africa by the ANC and its allies, the Boers still control a great deal of power in the military and police establishments; the military intelligence agencies, the banks and the arms manufacturing industry. In these areas nothing much has changed, despite the new black ministers and permanent secretaries. This continuing strength has led to the recurring fantasy among the Groenewalds that one day they might “take back control” of their country if chaos breaks out or can be promoted. It has also led to a strange perception among Afrikaaners that Zuma will be a key factor in their renaissance. They draw that conclusion that because their experience has shown that the West, especially the US and France, has always demonstrated a willingness to help the Nationalists in their battles with the ‘communists’. The South Africans used to show a film across Europe and North America called “Bastion of the South”, showing that the Nationalist commitment to anti-communism was part and parcel of NATO’s battles against the ‘forces of evil’. They also remember that the USSR was very careful that in supporting the African uprising against apartheid that it didn’t disturb the orderly marketing arrangements between Moscow and Pretoria in the sales of gold and diamonds, or in the case of Rhodesia, chromate ore.
The ANC and the Zulus One of the most important elements of the battle for control of South Africa in the wake of the burgeoning strength of the ANC and its military wing Umkonto we Sizwe (‘MK’) was the use by the Nationalists of the Zulus in Natal to oppose the ANC for control of the independence movement. The Nationalists funded the Inkatha Freedom Party (‘IFP) of Buthulezi and provided the fighters of the IFP with weapons, explosives, communications equipment and training facilities. In ‘Operation Marion’ (well documented in the Truth and Reconciliation hearings) there is a detailed study of the training of 206 Zulus as assassins in ‘hit squads’ targeted at the ANC. By 1980 it had become clear that the open support of the South African Defence Forces to the opponents of the ANC risked exposure. So the securocrats decided that they would use their extensive facilities in the Caprivi Strip to train the Zulus of the IFP. In a submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: “The Caprivi Trainees 4 August 1997” it was shown that “since the mid 1980s KwaZulu Natal and areas on the Witwatersrand have been involved, in varying degrees, in a low intensity war. This war has claimed the lives of more than 20 000 persons”. The report states “The training and deployment of the Caprivi Trainees fell squarely within strategies adopted by the South African state in the mid-1980s. The state perceived itself to be facing an onslaught of 'total revolutionary war' from within and outside South Africa. To combat this threat the state employed counter revolutionary strategies which involved the taking of a wide range of actions.” These included political, psychological, economic and security or forceful measures. By the mid-1980s political and violent actions executed by anti-apartheid groups such as the ANC and their allied organisations reached unprecedented levels. The state adopted equally drastic measures to counter these threats, which included the use of acts of terrorism and guerrilla warfare. These were carried out by specific security organs and 'middle' or counter guerrilla groups, within and outside South Africa. The IFP's SADF-trained assassins were a case in point of such an operation within South Africa. The operation was codenamed 'Marion' and was executed by Intelligence Operation's Directorate of Special Tasks (DST). DST's support of groups such as Renamo in Mozambique and Unita in Angola are examples of such operations carried outside South Africa. Operation Marion was naturally accompanied by a program of deception and cover-ups. They still continue today. At that time the ANC was part of a broader federation of like-minded groups under the rubric United Democratic Front (‘UDF’). It was gaining a great deal of support from the international community as well as domestically. On or about 28 May 1984 at Ulundi, M G Buthelezi, President of Inkatha and Chief Minister of KwaZulu (‘Buthelezi') set out in an address to the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly his need for a paramilitary wing to carry out protective and offensive actions. Buthelezi identified the UDF/ANC as the organisations responsible for the attacks which threatened the KwaZulu ’homeland’. According to a top secret SSC document dealing with the unrest situation in Natal, produced during March 1989, Inkatha took a decision during 1985 to turn the whole of KwaZulu and Natal into a 'no go area' for the UDF. During November 1985 Buthelezi set out his needs to the then Director of Military Intelligence, Major-General T. Groenewald for military support, which included an offensive or attacking capacity. Buthelezi's requests were placed before an extra-ordinary meeting of the SSC at Tuynhuis on 20th December 1985. Minister of Defence, Magnus Malan, Minister of Law and Order, Louis Le Grange and Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning, Chris Heunis were tasked with establishing a "security force" for Buthelezi. Two hundred and six Inkatha men were recruited by M Z Khumalo. The 206 were taken to the Caprivi Strip in Namibia where they received training at Hippo Camp by the Special Operations component of Military Intelligence and Special Forces. The recruits were divided into operational groups, one of which was an offensive group of some 30 men. The trainees were instructed that their targets would be located within the UDF/ANC. The other groups trained included Contra-mobilisation, Defence and VIP Protection. The Defensive group was an intelligence group whose members were trained in collecting information, surveillance, target development and compiling target dossiers. Those in the Contra-mobilisation group were trained in the propagation and promotion of Inkatha politics. The training lasted for approximately 6 months. They began a campaign of murder and destruction of the UDF/ANC leadership. On 21 January 1988 Putter and Chief Director Intelligence Operations, Major General Neels Van Tonder met with Buthelezi. Van Niekerk, Colonel Mike Van den Berg (Senior Staff Officer for Operation Marion) and with M Z Khumalo. Putter sent a memorandum to Geldenhuys dated 28 January 1988. According to this document Buthelezi asked for further clandestine training. M Z Khumalo suggested a solution to the IFP in-fighting be solved by building a base from where Marion members could 'plan and take action'. A base for the offensive group was built at Port Durnford and a separate base for the rest of the group at Mkhuze was set up. A number of Inkatha fighters who were fugitives from justice were concealed at the Mkhuze base. Offensive actions of the Caprivi Trainees continued under the cover of the KwaZulu Police force in the early 1990s. In at least one police district, at Esikaweni, a hit squad cell was formed around individual trainees. They were controlled by a local committee comprising IFP leaders and senior KwaZulu Police officers. The Esikaweni hit squad carried out a large number of attacks on ANC and COSATU individuals resulting in many deaths. The KwaZulu Police commander, Brigadier C P Mzimela ensured that their activities were covered up. This permitted the hit squads to act with absolute impunity. They conducted an unhindered and systematic reign of terror over a period of more than two years. The few KwaZulu Policemen who attempted to investigate were either murdered or intimidated from acting. In the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings the admissions were, even to a jaded South African audience, devastating. The most dramatic revelations involved systematic brutality by the white-led police and military that extended into the smallest towns and rural areas. The commission has established, for example, that each of the eleven area branches of the security police had its own hit squad to deal with troublesome local activists. "You thought you knew the horrors of apartheid," said Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the commission's chairman, in an interview, "and then you are bowled over completely by the depth of depravity that has been surfacing." Partisans and victims in the fighting were mostly local residents. The bitter clashes, which divided villages, schools, churches and families, eventually spread to areas around Johannesburg, abating only with Buthelezi's last-minute agreement to participate in the 1994 poll. Although killing sharply declined thereafter, tensions between the ANC and Inkatha still ran high. Operation Marion predates previously publicized activities in which undercover police and military officers, in what came to be referred to as a "third force," provided logistical backing when Inkatha's battle with the ANC escalated after Mandela's release in 1990. With elections on the horizon, Caprivi trainees in late 1993 took part in training some 5,000 recruits for "Self Protection Units" Inkatha was creating throughout the province. As the voting neared, violence rose to new levels. More than half the number of fatalities occurred after 1990, that is: after the National Party had unbanned the liberation movements, and committed itself to negotiated political change; and after the ANC had suspended its armed struggle. The three-month period preceding the first democratic elections in April 1994 was especially tense; during this period around 1,000 people were killed. Since 1994, around 2,000 people have been killed in political violence in KZN. In the post-apartheid era, KwaZulu-Natal has been marked by a divided system of political authority, with - reflecting electoral support - provincial power vested in favour of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and national power with the ANC. A top level peace process was instituted, and by mid-1996 political leaders declared the political conflict over. Inkatha, led by Buthelezi, moved away from an ethnically couched confrontational style towards a more inclusive politics, and the ANC's view was that instead of conflict, there should be co-operation and reconciliation. Following the results of the 1999 general election, a coalition government involving both the IFP and ANC was formed at provincial level; Zuma played an active part in this reconciliation process. Some of the arms and support for Inkatha also came directly from the US. The Inkatha fighters engaged in vicious attacks against the township residents were the recipients of forty tonnes of grenades, shotguns, rifles and ammunition illegally shipped from the United States according to the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Three US arms companies were indicted in connection with shipments of arms to South Africa in violation of the United Nations arms embargo. The US Congress voted to donate US$2.5 million to Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party, choosing to disregard the “Inkathagate” scandal, which had exposed Buthelezi as little more than a puppet of the apartheid regime. Congress also ignored the organisation's murderous attacks, which have cost the lives of thousands of defenceless township residents, often in collusion with South African police and soldiers. The donation was part of the Bush administration's “Transition to Democracy” project. Following revelations that the South African government had secretly channelled millions of rends to Inkatha, the US actually doubled the original proposed donation. {mospagebreak} Operation Vula The timing of the training of the Zulus to fight the ANC by the Boers was not accidental. It coincided with the move by the ANC’s leadership in exile to return some of its key leaders to South Africa from Lusaka, Mbane, Mozambique, Russia and the Ukraine. These leaders who were re-infiltrated to South Africa were from both the political wing as well as from Umkonto we Sizwe (MK). This process was given the name Operation Vula. These leaders formed an important cadre of the ANC and were known as the ‘Vula Boys’. The Vula boys are the collection of communists and ANC intelligence operatives who formed the backbone of Operation Vula, the secret pre-1990 ANC programme to develop the necessary leadership and material networks inside South Africa to launch a revolution or mass armed uprising. Vula was controversial because it was secret even inside the ANC: a special operation, sanctioned by the ailing Oliver Tambo from Lusaka, which was not known to the wider ANC leadership - including Thabo Mbeki operating elsewhere. Vula was led by Mac Maharaj, the former Minister of Transport. It included Siphiwe Nyanda, Ronnie Kasrils, Mo Shaik and his brother Schabir. The then ANC intelligence chief, Jacob Zuma, was also within the network. This operation was supervised by the ANC leadership in Lusaka and was unknown to the ANC leadership in Luanda who were just then starting to establish links with the Nationalist Government in a search for a negotiated settlement. Vula coincided with a parallel and contrary initiative within the ANC, led by Mbeki - the beginning of dialogue with the apartheid state. Vula continued, even after the unbanning of the ANC in 1990, but there was increasing conflict between the Vula operatives and the ANC leadership about the strategy and direction of negotiations. Despite repeated criticism from Maharaj and others the views of the Vula comrades were largely ignored. By June 1990 Vula was blown, following the arrest in Natal of two Vula operatives, Charles Ndaba and Mbuso Shabalala. The two were later killed by the security police. In the midst of negotiations, Mbeki was confronted with evidence of a secret ANC unit he was unaware of - and which the de Klerk government claimed was still plotting a revolutionary insurrection, rather than a negotiated settlement. Mbeki was angry and allowed the Vula network to be sanctioned. Maharaj and others were arrested and only released on bail in November, after the Pretoria agreement with de Klerk had already been signed. Key ‘hawks’ within the ANC, especially the MK, were side-lined during that period of negotiation and held a deep resentment against Mbeki. With the coming of an ANC Government many of the ANC and MK leaders were installed in powerful positions in the government. The Vula boys were not excluded. They positioned themselves rather strategically. The hard-line communist Pravin Gordhan became head of the SA Revenue Service, and was joined by Vuso Shabalala (as general manager of customs); Ivan Pillay took over special investigations at SARS and Sirish Soni joined him. Solly Shoke became mission director for the SANDF; Raymond Lalla became a senior official in police intelligence and Mpho Scott was elected as an MP Perhaps the most successful has been Ronnie Kasrils. Ronnie Kasrils has been the South African Minister for Intelligence Services since 27 April 2004. He has been a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the African National Congress (ANC) since 1987 as well as a member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party (SACP) since December 1986. He was a founding member of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) as member of Natal Regional Command during the same year. He became the commander of Natal Regional Command in 1963. He underwent military training in 1964 in Odessa, USSR and at the end of 1965 was sent to London to work for the movement there. Kasrils eventually became a member of MK's High Command and was appointed as Chief of MK Intelligence. Kasrils also served on the ANC's Politico-Military Council from 1985 to 1989 and worked underground for the ANC in South Africa during Operation Vula from 1990 to 1991. He was appointed as Deputy Minister of Defence on 24 June 1994, a post which he held until 16 June 1999. He remains a powerful, if Stalinist, figure in South African intelligence. Equally as powerful was his comrade in the Luthuli Brigade, famous for the brigade’s attack on Wankie in Rhodesia in 1967 in support of Nkomo’s ZAPU; Chris Hani (born Martin Thembisile Hani). Chris Hani, after graduating from Rhodes University with a B.A. degree in Latin and English, received instructions from the high command of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC's newly formed military wing, to leave the country for military training. In 1967 he was political commissar for the Luthuli brigade. He was elected to the ANC's national executive council in 1975 and appointed MK deputy commander in 1982. He continued to rise through the ranks to become MK chief of staff in 1987, the number two post in the commando organization, a position he relinquished only in 1992. He remained the Secretary General of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the most popular political personality in South Africa after Nelson Mandela until his assassination at Boksburg on April 9, 1993. While the Vula boys progressed in their roles, the Mbeki boys rose to dizzying heights of power and wealth in the new South Africa. When the ANC moved into the control of the Government it found a country with immense wealth, well-developed industries; a thriving banking system; and a nexus of secretive relationships between government and the private sector. These ANC loyalists were appointed to high posts in all levels of the South African government and were also spurred on in their invasion of the private sector by a program of Black Empowerment. This Black Empowerment made many African millionaires and put key ANC supporters at the heads of many indigenous industries. However this was an upwards enrichment of the African leadership. For many of the ANC supporters, their leaders’ lifestyles and economic opportunities did not live up to their expectations in the wake of the ANC takeover from the Nationalists. There were now African plutocrats as well as white plutocrats but poor people tended to stay poor. This has been the key area of disenchantment with the Mbeki government. Internationally, however, the reaction to the ANC takeover had little to do with the escape from poverty of the African poor. It had more to do with the remnants of the Cold War.
Die Rooiegevaar The ‘Red Danger’, the danger of communism, has been a key preoccupation of the South African defence establishment and its overseas supporters. The ANC and the fighters of MK were often trained by the Soviets and East Germans. Many were taken to Russia and the Ukraine for military training and most of the military equipment was supplied by the Soviet Union. Many of the leaders of the ANC were members or supporters of the South African Communist Party (‘SACP’). The SACP started as a communist party for White workers. In the 1922 strike on the Rand the SACP marched on Pretoria under the banner “White Workers of the World Unite”. By 1928 the visit to the Soviet Union of J.T. Gumede (ANC President) and Cape President La Guma cemented a link between the Soviet party and the ANC. The vehicle was the SACP which was told that the party line was to identify with the revolutionary masses. The links between the SACP and the ANC were strong and overlapping. The SACP was told by the Soviet party, through the Zambian embassy which co-ordinated Soviet activity in Africa that the communists should engage in mass movements, like the ANC. In 1977 the Russians installed Vassily Grogoriyevich Solodovnikov, the KGB'S ranking expert on southern Africa, as Ambassador to Zambia. Solodovnikov used the embassy in Lusaka to direct arms aid to Rhodesian nationalist Joshua Nkomo, to Neto’s MPLA in Angola and to the ANC through the SACP. Solodovnikov was subsequently awarded the Order of the Companions of OR Tambo in Silver by the ANC South African Presidency. Many of the current ‘siloviki’ in power in Russia today served in Southern Africa. There was, in fact, a tight control of the ANC by the SACP, especially among the prisoners at Robben Island. It was the SACP which controlled the ANC policy there. It was impossible for De Klerk to negotiate a peaceful transition with Mandela as long as Mandela was kept with the stalwarts of the SACP in Robben Island. They exercised a veto on Mandela’s actions. This is why the government released some of the hardliners from Robben Island before they released Mandela and then moved Mandela out of Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison in Capetown and then to Victor Verster, near Paarl. This removed the automatic SACP veto on Mandela and opened the door to compromise. Many of the others were scattered outside South Africa for training and mobilisation which kept them out of the policy-making business. It’s not really surprising that the SACP and the ANC exhibited loyalty to the Soviet party. That was where their equipment; their money; their travel funds and their equipment came from They were feted by the whole panoply of world communist front organisations and given international status by their associations. A revolutionary fighter without money or equipment is a virtual revolutionary; a hero in his own mind. Fighting apartheid was expensive and the only one to fill the begging bowl was Moscow. The Chinese had a relationship with Potlako Leballo’s Pan-African Congress of Azania (and its military arm Poqo) after its break from the ANC in 1958, but the organisation never really took off as freedom fighters. Mandela referred to the PAC as “they were a leadership in search of followers, and they had yet to initiate any action that put them on the political map." At its height in the period 1962-3, PAC/Poqo violence assumed several forms. In Langa and Paarl, Poqo cells executed suspected informers. In some rural towns in the Cape there were more or less random and indiscriminate killings of whites. In the calculations of the PAC leadership, these acts of localised violence would culminate in a countrywide violent insurrection. Preparations for this uprising were in the hands of the Maseru-based exile leadership around Potlako Leballo. It never happened. After some initial Chinese support their interest died and the PAC had no major source of funds; so it withered. The ties between the ANC and the SACP continue. The ANC and the SACP are part of the Tripartite Alliance, uniting the ANC, the SACP and the Confederation of South African Trades Unions (‘COSATU’). The South African military intelligence people used to say that the SACP was the brains of the alliance; the ANC the mouth; and the COSATU the hands. It is the third element, the COSATU which is currently the most important as, when Chris Hani died, the SACP lost a great deal of its power in the ANC Tripartite Alliance. However, the SACP is still strong and well-organised despite its battles with the ANC over privatisation. The main battle is the struggle for control of the labour movement.
The Power of the Labour Movement The strongest and most consistently powerful organisation in the Tri-Partite Alliance has been the SACP. The South African Communist Party was founded in 1921 and was, initially a party of White workers. The conflict between racial groups within the South African labour movement presaged much of the subsequent social history of South Africa. The Indian nationalist leader, Mohandas Gandhi, helped create some of South Africa's first Indian political and labour organisations through his Natal Indian Congress, and was a testing ground for his technique of passive disobedience. The Africans' indigenous unions formed primarily in the Rand and in the service industries supplying the Rand. Their efforts, notably in the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU), were assisted by organisers and tacticians from overseas, especially the (US) Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) who set up a South African, multi-racial branch. As African and Indian unionism grew stronger, unions of white workers, both Nationalist and communist, joined together in the Rand in a racist General Strike in 1922; a strike which almost led to a full-scale uprising. This strange coalition of Boer Nationalists and white communists marched under the banners of `White Workers of the World Unite' and `Workers of the World Unite and Fight for a White South Africa'. In March 1922, Smuts had to call out the army. They attacked the strikers leaving 230 dead and many wounded. By then, however, although the white workers' strike was ended, the handwriting was on the wall for non-white unionism. Although the ICU was recognised as having 100,000 paid up African members at its zenith, the pressures of racism soon destroyed it. Following the Rand Strike the poor whites effected a political coalition between the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party in 1924 and formed a government. This government dedicated itself to the reduction in opportunities for non-whites, especially in the trades union movements. By 1930, non-white trades unionism was virtually dead or underground. Non-white trades unionism became, as in most colonial areas, the spearhead of national independence movements. There are many misconceptions about the role of trades unions and their political role. In the Third World, in particular, they are only marginally involved in collective bargaining, grievance procedures or representational elections. These are the attributes of an economy with a large private sector. In most of the Third World unions are government employees. A principal reason behind the importance of the trades union movement in the political process has been the weakness of political parties. In most nations political parties are not strong. They frequently lack funds, manpower and organisation. They are capable of generating interest and support from their constituencies during the electoral campaigns but soon after, their continuity and direction is left in the hands of their parliamentary parties. The maintenance of their continued interaction with their membership is most often left to the activities of the voluntary organisations with whom they are associated. These voluntary organisations (trades unions, corporate groups, civic associations or religious groups) maintain the continuity of contact at national level between the members and the parties between elections. Most often the trades unions have been linked with Labour, Socialist, Social Democratic, Communist or Christian Democratic parties. Indeed, for many years, membership in most of the parties of the left was based on affiliation to the party through the trades union or co-operative movements. These parties only rarely permitted direct personal affiliation. The trades union movement acted as a surrogate for a national party structure between elections. Because of this close relationship between the political parties and the trades union movement, the work of the national labour confederations has been almost exclusively political. Trades union leadership at the national level has been deeply involved in sustained interaction with the processes and offices of government. There has been a flow of trades union leaders away from-the national centres into high political posts, especially when their party has assumed the responsibility of office. This centralisation of political power in the hands of the national unions has not precluded a strong political role played by lower-level union `barons', but the day- to-day liaison with the political forces of the state has been conducted largely through the medium of the national organisations. It is precisely because the trades unionism practised by the national centres is so intimately involved with the political forces of the state that there has been such an interest in the growth of international trades unionism. The strategic role of the trades union movement within the political and economic life of the nation has proved to be a tempting target for outside interests seeking to intervene in or influence the party and state with whom the national centre interacts. There are few nations which have not sought to influence the policies of their neighbours and still fewer which have not feared the effects of such intervention in their own affairs. The area of intervention in the domestic political and economic relations of nation states through the vehicle of the trades union movement is one of increasing concern and attention. In addition to the political links which exist between trades unions and parties, there are other compelling reasons for a nation to use the vehicle of trades union intervention as a method of extending its outreach. There is probably no better source of commercial intelligence than the workers employed in the plants and offices of a company. The trades unions have a legitimate 'need to know' vital information such as sales, markets, suppliers, types of products, production processes and similar matters often regarded as confidential by management. With the growth of increased participation by the representatives of the workforce in the management of commercial enterprises, this problem has become more acute. Access to this fund of critical knowledge by external powers can often be crucial in economic, political and military planning. Access to trades unionists at shop floor level, in industry and in governmental agencies, can often provide a form of insurance for those seeking to alter the system in which these unionists operate. Throughout the industries and government departments of the world there exist 'sleepers'; agents waiting to carry out vital tasks in the event of conflict. These sleepers and their contacts stand ready to disrupt war supplies, halt energy production, cut transport and communication links and generally assist in disrupting the defence apparatus. It is hardly surprising then that the subject of international trades union activity-has been a matter of active concern for the intelligence and security arms of national governments. There is probably no area of concern, outside of military intelligence, which is more vital to the security of a nation than the activities within and through the international trades union movements. Importantly, the very obscurity in which this international union interchange takes place makes it more attractive to governments. For a very long time, and most vitally since 1949 the international trades union movement has been the arena of the most open Cold War struggles. First in Europe, and later in the Third World. this competition and conflict between the Cold War protagonists was a major factor in the development of the nations. This was especially true in South Africa. {mospagebreak} The creation and maintenance of a SACP was the result of direct intervention by the agents of the Soviet Union, and later its satellites. Money, travel and support was sent to African communists to assist them in their efforts. However, for a long period of its existence, the SACP was banned, especially after the Suppression of Communism Act 1950. The party went underground. It leaders joined the South African labour movement. While it was not possible to transfer money and support to banned organisations, the ‘unions’ of the Soviet Union or Czechoslovakia could legally assist their ‘brothers’ in South Africa with cash, travel programs and training. Labour solidarity was a broad fig leaf which covered many sins. Between 1960 and 1990, there was a great deal of overlap between the ANC and SACP, especially at the level of the national executive committee. A substantial number were members of the SACP. In the exile period, party membership was membership of an elite core. This often resulted in opportunities for party members to study at the Lenin school and get promotions in Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) as well as in the liberation movement's political hierarchy. Politically, over the entire period of exile, there was a great deal of ideological convergence between the ANC and SACP. Many of the formulations in ANC documents were similar to those of the SACP. Indeed, the SACP in exile had a massive influence on the ANC. There were difficult times for the liberation movement, after the smashing of its internal structures following the Rivonia trial in 1964 when it was banned and its members jailed or driven into exile. In many ways, the SACP Party was in a better position to weather the storm since it had already been operating underground for some years, having reconstituted itself a few years after its banning in 1950. Prior to the period of exile in the 1950s, the SACP and ANC had been instrumental in the formation of SACTU, a trade union federation with an initial membership of 20,000, which grew to almost 50,000 at the end of the 1950s. SACTU immediately entered into the then Congress Alliance with the ANC, SA Indian Congress, SA Coloured People's Congress and the Congress of Democrats. Many of its leaders were drawn from the ranks of these organisations and from the SACP which had already been banned. They were instrumental in the growth of SACTU, but when the ANC was also banned in 1960, many were imprisoned or forced into exile or underground. For most of this century South Africa had a two-track system of industrial relations: a legalistic set of bargaining rights for non-black workers (whites, coloureds, and Indians) while black workers were excluded from the system and subjected to varieties of formal and informal repression. This system received its most fundamental challenge in the 1970s with the emergence of independent shop-floor based industrial unions of black workers based largely in the import-substituting industries stimulated by South Africa’s 1960s economic expansion. These unions concentrated on winning recognition at plant level, which entailed both organisational rights (election of and time off for shop stewards, access for union officials) and substantive rights (bargaining on wages and working conditions, defence of workers in dismissals and retrenchments). Part of the unions’ demands stressed amendment of the then-existing Labour Relations Act which excluded African workers from the category of employee, thus preventing them from participating in industry-based collective bargaining. The two-track system began breaking down in the 1970s, under pressure from the growing union movement and its international trade union allies, and from many sections of South African capital which feared increasing and unregulated conflict on the shop floor. In 1977 - in the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto uprising and a system-wide challenge it posed to apartheid - the government set up the Wiehahn Commission of enquiry to investigate the industrial relations system. Two years later, in an attempt to control the emerging unions, the Wiehahn Commission recommended that the Labour Relations Act be amended to incorporate black workers by encouraging their unions to register, but only if they would confine themselves to collective bargaining issues. After the mass political resistance of the mid-1980s had been suppressed in successive states of emergency, both capital and the state sought to reverse labour’s gains by amending the Labour Relations Act. However their efforts provoked widespread union resistance at workplace and national levels. Faced by growing disorder on the shop floor many companies began searching for common interests with organised labour, yielding a series of bilateral negotiations between labour and business that culminated in a tripartite agreement - the Laboria Minute - on the basic contours of a new labour relations system. The three parties agreed that: all labour laws would in future be considered by employers’ bodies and the trade union movement prior to being put before parliament; that the unions would participate in a reconstructed National Manpower Commission (a statutory consultative body on labour relations and labour market issues set up by the Wiehahn Commission and boycotted by the new labour movement); and that labour rights would be extended to those previously excluded from the industrial relations system, including farm workers, domestic workers and public servants. The Laboria Minute was a crucial moment in the transition to democracy as a whole. In part the agreement was itself made possible by the transition: by the late 1980s labour repression was not an option for the National Party government, which was already talking secretly to the African National Congress (ANC). The ANC, South Africa’s strongest and oldest liberation movement, had been banned in 1960 and was operating in exile. In 1989 the National Party government had taken the first tentative steps towards regularising politics by unbanning key opposition leaders, and the following year had legalised the ANC, which in 1994 became the leading party in South Africa’s first democratically elected government. With the unbanning of the ANC and its emergence as a national government the role of the SACP was dramatically changed. After 1990, the ANC and SACP no longer operated as illegal organisations, hunted down inside the country and beyond. They entered a period of negotiation where different skills were required and different forms of organisation became necessary. The skills of the underground and MK became less and less relevant. At the same time, the Soviet Union and most of its allied states collapsed. This caused widespread demoralisation and confusion among communist supporters. In a period of capitalist triumphalism, many of the set pieces of the ANC in its liberation struggle came under critical questioning. The Freedom Charter appeared to support nationalisation of key industries and the ANC had at times indicated sympathy for socialism. This was now no longer in vogue. Many left-wing policies were abandoned. The imperatives of the time were to win the support and confidence of possible investors. Membership of the Communist Party was no longer considered advantageous. Indeed, it may have formed a barrier in establishing relationships with business. Half of the central committee of the Communist Party allowed their membership to lapse in 1990; more lapses followed. This rise and growth of the SACP was not allowed to take place unchecked. The international labour movement was initially reconstituted as a united body, the World Federation of Trades Unions (WFTU) in 1947. Soon, however, the communist takeovers in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany caused the unions of the West to split the WFTU into an anti-communist federation, the International Confederation of Free Trades Unions (ICFTU). A federation of Christian Democratic unions (International Federation of Christian Trades Unions) existed but played no major role. The Cold War battles between East and West were fought out between the unionists of the WFTU and the ICFTU. The Soviets used their control of the labour movements of Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland to install communist governments. The US used the Italian, French and Greek labour movements to fight communist efforts to undermine their anti-communist allies. The battle for control of the European heartland was fought by the Mediterranean Committee who beat up communist thugs seeking to interdict Marshall Plan Aid. These struggles were mirrored in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In South Africa the close ties of the SACP to the Soviet Union was enough to stall any major pressure by the US and Britain against the Nationalists battle against the ANC, despite their constant lectures against apartheid. The US funded anti-communist liberation movements in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique to name but a few. A lot of this support came through the transfer of funds, equipment and travel delivered by the AFL-CIO as conscious agents of US policies and as a junior partner with the US Government, using US Government money. The AFL-CIO policies were directed by Jay Lovestone, former General Secretary of the US Communist Party (a Bukharinite who was purged with Bukharin) and a virulent ant-communist. Irving Brown, his right-hand man, was his main operations person; responsible for splitting the French labour movement; the Greek labour movement; the German labour movement, inter alia, into rival anti-communist and pro-communist labour organisations. As the Soviets delivered air, cash and training to their affiliates, the U.S. use the cover of the AFL-CIO to deliver cash and training to the ‘free trades union movement’. The money and rewards tendered to the free trades unionists was not money from US workers; it was US government money delivered through a special office of the State Department and co-ordinated through the CIA to the AFL-CIO. This bizarre arrangement often irritated European unions whose anti-communist fervour was less intense than the AFL-CIO and split the US labour movement as well over supporting corporations overseas who were poor employers within the U.S. One of the people supported by the AFL-CIO was Buthulezi and his Inkatha Freedom Party. In 1978 Buthulezi was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Cape Town. Other awards include Newsmaker of the Year by the South African Society of Journalists, French National Order of Merit and the George Meany Human Rights Award by the AFL-CIO. Inkatha received generous support from the pathologically anticommunist of the AFL-CIO over many years, including the murderous years of Operation Marion. The AFL-CIO has often provided a secret conduit for CIA funds to other anticommunist groups operating inside the labour movements of the world as well. The AFL-CIO was especially supportive of Inkatha's trade union front, the United Workers' Union of South Africa (UWUSA). UWUSA also received millions from the de Klerk regime. Documents leaked to the South African Weekly Mail showed that UWUSA was virtually a joint creation of the state security police and the authorities of the Inkatha-ruled KwaZulu Bantustan. UWUSA was created to counter the powerful anti-apartheid Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which is allied to the ANC and had a membership of around 1.2 million. Immediately after UWUSA's formation in 1986, it launched attacks against COSATU's membership, killing and injuring hundreds in attacks. Not surprisingly South African employers consistently favoured UWUSA –largely because it never took industrial action to secure pay rises or defend workers' conditions. Its executive was dominated by business people and managers. After Buthelezi was given the AFL-CIO George Meany human rights award, Irving Brown, then head of the federation's international department, visited South Africa. He offered funds to unions opposed to the liberation movement's strategy of calling on the international community to impose economic sanctions to fight apartheid. The vast majority of unions rejected his advances. Buthelezi sought out Brown in Geneva in 1983, looking for money to allow Inkatha to involve itself with the trade unions. In 1986 UWUSA again approached the AFL-CIO, asking for “large-scale assistance” which, according the UWUSA's general secretary (and prominent KwaZulu businessman) S.Z. Conco, were provided. Funds were also advanced from Israel and West Germany, he said. Funds were also provided by the Nationalists for the all-white Miners Union led by Arie Paulus and white unions in other industries. The passage of a new Labour Relations Act in 1994 marked a significant change in South Africa’s labour activities. Since 1994 South Africa’s largest trade union federation COSATU, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, has been in a tripartite alliance with the African National Congress Party (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). With the ANC commanding a majority of seats in the national government and most provincial and municipal governments in South Africa, this alliance has mainly served to help legitimize the current government as being the champion of the poor and working class. Yet even with the involvement of these leftist organizations, over the last decade the government has dogmatically implemented the neo-liberal policies of structural reform, privatization and cuts to social services. Since 1996, under the pretext of making South Africa more globally competitive in attracting investment capital, the industrial and public sectors have seen large layoffs stemming from government downsizing and increased international competition. Instead of improving the levels of employment, as proponents of these policies projected, there has been a continuing loss of jobs and a widening of the gap between the poor and rich throughout South Africa. Over the last 10 years thousands of union jobs have been lost especially in the public service and textile sectors. Instead of becoming more powerful unions have actually become meeker while in power. COSATU has not taken any real sustained action against the implementation of neo-liberal policies in South Africa. The actions that COSATU have taken, including strikes and public denouncements, have always been conducted within a strict framework of unwavering government support. In their defence, COSATU’s official reasons for continuing allegiance to the tripartite agreement stem from an appeal to loyalty to the ANC. It argues that abandoning the alliance would mean abandoning the ANC, making it become a party solely for anti-labour "bourgeois" interests. Another reason for the lack of militancy, internally, arises from the lack of employment opportunities in South Africa. Unemployment in South Africa is conservatively estimated at 40% causing a growing economic disparity between the employed and the unemployed. Many employers eagerly want to exploit this labour surplus as a means to lower wages and working standards. COSATU feels that a continued alliance with the ANC may help shelter them, as well as offering them comparatively well paying union positions. In 2002 COSATU leaders began striking against leftist elements within their own organization. A discussion paper, put forward by a group of union organizers raising the issue of the COSATU/ANC alliance, resulted in the forced dismissal of the originators of the paper. For John Appolis, one of the dismissed union organizers and chairperson of the Anti-Privatization Forum, the increasingly top down structure of the union body stifles questioning within the labour movement of the value of the continuing alliance with the ANC, an even the SACP. In a recent COSATU national congress, the Central Executive Committee of COSATU unveiled the working framework for the next decade called the 2015 plan. This plan, which never was debated, re-affirmed and strengthened COSATU’s role in the alliance until 2015. Voices within and outside of COSATU have come forward denouncing this out right capitulation to ANC policies. The leadership of COSATU is firmly in the hands of the SACP. However, this has not made COSATU a militant, confrontational power. It has become an adjunct of the liberal ANC government whose creation of black oligarchs and empowered black businessman has restricted the delivery of programs of aid to South Africa’s poor and deprived. Jay Lovestone and Irving Brown should not have worried. The SACP and the COSATU have become part of the careerist movement of the black elite in the country. Poor people don’t get a look in. The Future: The current competition between Mbeki and Zuma is not about
ideology. It is not about the Vula Boys against the Luanda exiles. There is no
great vision of a New South Africa at the end of anyone’s policies. It is about
who gets to control a rich country, growing richer. For some reason the Boers
seem to have cast their lot with Zuma; the right-wing fantasists see this as a
step to provoking chaos out of which they can emerge as victors. Zuma is no
leftist. In the past five weeks, Zuma has addressed business leaders in
Johannesburg, London, India and Texas, USA. These meetings were facilitated by
companies including Merrill Lynch, Citibank and Goldman Sachs. Helpful
individuals included Mo Shaik, one of Zuma's key strategists, and Paul Ekon, a
Southern African businessman. Meetings in Asia were facilitated by Vivian
Reddy, a Durban businessman who flourished during the apartheid era. Zuma's
visit to the United States was arranged by a private intelligence firm,
Strategic Forecasting Incorporated (Stratfor), whose clients are said to
include the US Central Intelligence Agency. However, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the charges against him, of corruption will stick. In 2004, Zuma’s financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, became the subject of an investigation in relation to possible fraud and corrupt activities. During these investigations, information about Zuma’s alleged acceptance of an US$80,000 bribe from the French arms manufacturer Thales was made public. Shaik was eventually found guilty in June 2005 on two counts of corruption and one of fraud. In his verdict, Judge Hilary Squires also stated that there was “overwhelming evidence” of a corrupt relationship between Zuma and Shaik. Shaik was sentenced to an effective 15 years in prison. Two weeks later, Zuma was dismissed as deputy president. Following Zuma’s dismissal as deputy president, the National Prosecuting Authority announced that he would be charged with corruption. A trial date was set for June 31, 2006. However, the case was struck off the roll by Judge Herbert Msimang, who ruled that the prosecution’s case depended on the outcome of appeals against controversial warrants used to permit the seizure of documents from Zuma’s lawyers and from Zuma personally by the Scorpions—an elite investigative unit attached to the National Prosecuting Authority. Despite this setback to the prosecution’s case, the NPA obtained court orders that enabled them to extend the investigation to the UK and Mauritius. In November 2007, the prosecution’s team went to the Supreme Court of Appeal and successfully appealed against Judge Msimang’s setting aside of the search warrants. During the Scorpion’s August 2005 raid on the homes of Zuma and his lawyer, Michael Hulley, some 93,000 pages of documents were seized. These are expected to form the basis of a new charge sheet. The main charge is that Zuma accepted an $80,000 bribe from Alain Thetard, the representative of Thint, the local arm of French arms giant Thales, in return for protection from potentially damaging investigations into a South African arms deal. One of the 14 documents being requested from Mauritian authorities is Thetard’s diary, which records the appointment with Zuma. The day after Zuma’s election victory, the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Mokotedi Mpshe, stated in a radio interview that new charges against Zuma were imminent. Besides the existing charges of fraud and corruption, charges of tax evasion, money laundering and racketeering would be added to the charge sheet. In addition, there was new evidence detailing the extent of the corrupt relationship between Zuma and Shaik, including evidence of approximately R4 million (US$600 000) in payments from Shaik to Zuma that continued until mid-2005. This is far more extensive than previously thought. In a detailed study by Andred Jurgens in the Sunday Times of January 6, 2006, Jurgens points out that Schabir Shaik ran almost every aspect of Jacob Zuma’s financial affairs for almost a decade. A 16-page KPMG report that forms the cornerstone of the state’s case against Zuma for fraud and racketeering, paints a staggering picture of the complete financial hold Shaik had over the newly elected president of the ANC. Zuma will in August face a battery of charges in the Pietermaritzburg High Court, including fraud, corruption, racketeering and money- laundering, for allegedly using his high position in government to further the business interests of Shaik and the French arms firm Thint — in exchange for money. “The damning document shows Shaik’s astonishing generosity. He funnelled a total of R4072499 to Zuma, according to the indictment in his looming criminal trial, in 783 separate payments between October 25 1995 and July 1 2005. The Durban businessman continued to pay Zuma during his own fraud and corruption trial, with the last payment going through in July 2005, two months after Shaik’s conviction.” This damning evidence, when it comes out in court, will further embarrass Zuma. As a quick act of retaliation in advance, Gerrie Nels, the head of the Scorpions, was arrested at his house by a mob of twenty policemen. This conflict between Mbeki and Zuma will severely embarrass the ANC and will expose to the rest of the world what has always been known in South Africa; that the ANC leadership has abandoned national liberation for personal advancement.
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