A UDF for Co-option and Job Losses!

Eddie Cottle argues that the new UDF will only strengthen the ANC government.

The new UDF or coalition against job losses and poverty spearheaded by COSATU and NGOs such as the Alternative Information and Development Centre is a coalition aimed at strengthening the ANC government in power to drive a radical transformation. But what is this radical transformation, and what are the social forces driving the formation of this new coalition?

Over the past few years we have witnessed not only a bloodbath of job losses, privatisation and increased social inequality, but widespread defensive resistance by the working class. Communities are increasingly marching independently of old established structures. And new political movements have been formed, the most organised of which is the Social Movement Indaba, a united front of urban working class community organisations, the Landless Peoples’ Movement, and the unemployed and progressive NGOs. This movement emerged during the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) on an anti-capitalist platform, against the WSSD and the policies of the ANC. During the WSSD, the movement countered the Alliance’s march of

5000, with a march of 20 000! For the first time, the dominance of the Congress Alliance was clearly challenged. The SMI is now organised in the major urban centres of Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban and new support will be quantified in its national meeting in October, where there will be an attempt to invite all the struggling communities of South Africa to participate. It continues to challenge the dominance of the Congress Alliance.

The COSATU leadership have recently quelled any rumours that the new UDF is an attempt to build an alternative movement to the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance. This is no surprise when, over the years we have seen COSATU abandon socialism to embrace capitalism, and adopting a mix of social democratic and neo-liberal policies. In its Social Equity and Job Creation paper of 1996 it decides the source of South Africa’s problems is not capitalism but weak competition polices. In line with this, the trade union movement has seen a dramatic decline in militancy and membership accompanied by an increase in business unionism. This ideological retreat has meant it has been unable to deal with unemployment and the casualisation of labour. Its favouring of an “open economy” and a “pragmatic programme to lower tariffs carefully on terms required by the WTO” are policies, which, far from tackling unemployment, produce job losses! While COSATU seeks cooperation with the WTO, the new anti-globalisation movements have called for the WTO’s dissolution. A new political division in civil society has been born.

This is why we find the Alliance partners hijacking the struggles of social movements. COSATU has been “managing” the TAC, effectively having called off its civil disobedience campaign, and the SACP has been claiming the victories of the Landless Peoples Movement. The new UDF is essentially a means to co-opt the new community organisations and unemployed movements through the guise of the Freedom Charter. It is a means to ensure that the new movements do not consolidate their independent anti-capitalist political platforms but are driven back into the hegemony of Congress i.e class collaboration. The new UDF is simply the oppositionist shadow of the bourgeois ANC.

Cottle is a member of the SMI secretariat. He writes in his personal capacity.