In this Edition

This edition of the journal is dedicated to the debate around the formation of the ‘new UDF’ in August of this year. Although nothing further has been heard from the front of organizations that was launched in Cape Town on 22 August, the debate nevertheless remains important. The central issue that has emerged from it is how the social movements should relate to Cosatu. This remains a burning political question, regardless of the fate of the ‘new UDF’.

For some time now, the question of the social movements’ attitude to Cosatu has lurked in organizations such as the Johannesburg APF, for example. The issue initially emerged because of the need for communities fighting under the banner of the APF to link up with organized workers in order to strengthen their struggles. In the course of this search for unity, there emerged a position that argued that Cosatu, as an organization of organized labour, is the premier working class organisation in the country. Some variants of this position argued that that the social movements that have emerged in the last period are of far less significance. Since the social movements do not organise workers at the point of production, they have far less social weight. By extension, these organizations are deemed incapable of fundamentally challenging neo-liberalism. The primary political task was to win Cosatu and ensure that it is placed at the head of the struggles against neoliberalism, what some referred to as the a ‘united front against neoliberalism’.

The launch of the ‘new UDF’ has thrown the question of how the social movements relate to Cosatu in this period into much sharper relief.

Oupa Lehulere kicked off the debate with his paper, The new social movements, Cosatu and the UDF. In it, Lehulere takes issue with the position that argues what he regards as an orientation to Cosatu. He takes as examples of this call for an orientation to Cosatu two papers, one by Brian Ashley and the other by Ashwin Desai. By ‘orientation’, Lehulere means ‘…the overall political direction of an organisation. This direction, according to Lehulere, determines a movement’s strategies and tactics, its organizational priorities, the way it deploys its resources and its cadre…’ Lehulere argues that Cosatu has embraced key neo-liberal tenets, that in the absence of a new wave of struggle, its members are ‘drifting into the position of a labour aristocrat’, and that the organisation has shifted from being a source of class power to a lobby group! Consequently, Lehulere argues that the task for militants is to orientate towards the spontaneous struggles in communities, because it is out of such struggles that a new layer of working class militants able to lead the struggle for socialism will be formed.

Ashley and Desai’s papers are reproduced here. Neither deals explicitly with the issue of the ‘new UDF’, as they were written well before the launch of that organisation. However, their significance lies in the fact that they do grapple with the key question of how to relate to Cosatu. Heinrich Bohmke in his rejoinder to Lehulere, disputes that Desai calls for an orientation to Cosatu. We leave the reader to decide if this indeed the case or not.

Most of the subsequent responses to Lehulere’s critique, both for and against, center around his characterisation of Cosatu. This is captured in Ighsaan Schroeder’s notes of a discussion on Lehulere’s paper, hosted by the Khanya Journal Editorial Collective. In the discussion, Weizman Hamilton, Claire Ceruti and Rob Rees reject the notion of the Cosatu member as labour aristocrat. Hamilton and Rees also accuse Lehulere of making no distinction between the organisation’s leadership and the membership.

In their written critiques, Ebrahim Harvey and Trevor Ngwane also pick up on this distinction between leaders and members. Harvey also takes issue with the labour aristocracy thesis. As for an attitude to the ‘new UDF’, Ceruti, Harvey and Stephen Greenberg are all in favour of the social movements entering into such a front with Cosatu. Some of them see such a front as the way to break the Cosatu alliance with the ANC. Ngwane supports the idea of greater working class unity, although he does not directly address the question of his attitude to the ‘new UDF’. Harvey goes further; he sees the growth of the social movements as critically dependent on such a united front with Cosatu.

Eddie Cottle and Prishani Naidoo share Lehulere’s characterization of Cosatu, and for this reason oppose the social movements going into a front with it. Lehulere, on the other hand, does see situations or conditions under which social movements can enter into a front with Cosatu. Both Cottle and Naidoo view such a front as one more means to bring the new social movements under the political sway and control of the Congress movement. Naidoo goes further and questions the continued centrality of the ‘wage labour/industrial worker nexus’, an issue Ahmed Veriawa raises in the discussion of Lehulere’s paper referred to above. Lehulere and Desai also make reference to it in their respective papers, albeit in a different form. The issue here is whether neo-liberal capitalism has so fundamentally reorganized the working class that its ‘vanguard’ can no longer be assumed to be the industrial worker, if such an assumption was indeed ever valid, as Lehulere questions in his paper. This is a critical question, since it determines who we identify as the fighting sections of the working class, and consequently, our political orientation, in the way Lehulere defines it.

In the hosted discussion, Dinga Sikwebu and Richard Mokolo also support Lehulere’s characterization of Cosatu. Sikwebu gives further evidence of the relatively privileged position of the Cosatu worker compared to other sections of the working class. He also points to the reactionary role played by Cosatu historically in the development of many of the ANC government’s current economic policies. John Appolis and Shaheen Khan agree that the question of a political orientation is the key one, and that it is communities who are in the forefront of the struggle against neo-liberalism, not Cosatu.

In his rejoinder to the critiques, Lehulere again places the question of a political orientation at the center of the debate. For him, what is central to the working class’s ability to struggle for socialism is a layer of militants that will lead such a project. According to Lehulere, at present no such layer exists. The question then amounts to this: where best will such a layer be built, in Cosatu or in the struggles bursting out in the working class communities?

This edition of the journal, dedicated to the ‘new UDF’ takes a slightly different format to previous editions. Because of the importance of the debate on orientation, and the form this debate has taken, we have reproduced all the articles in full. Because of the length of some of these, we have decided to dispense with pictures. This gives the edition a denser feel than previous ones but keeps it to a more manageable size. For this reason we have also omitted regulars such as The Barometer of Struggle. We have, however, included one document signed by 23 community organizations in Cape Town, most of them affiliates of the Anti Eviction Campaign, outlining their approach to participation in the ‘new UDF’.

Ighsaan Schroeder

Convening Editor