South African unionists back Freedom Charter

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COSATU president Elijah Barayi addresses delegates to the 2nd National Congress in July.

At its second national congress held in Johannesburg on July 14-18, 1987, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) voted to endorse the Freedom Charter as its "guiding document." The Charter has been most often identified with the banned African National Congress (ANC).

In the interest of providing our readers with the clearest possible assessment of this conference decision, we are reprinting two viewpoints from activists in the anti-apartheid struggle.

The first article, by Anne Mack, is reprinted A discussion from the July 23, 1987, issue of Socialist Organizer, a socialist weekly published in England. It has been edited slightly for space.

Mack puts forward the view that a workers' party based on the unions is needed in South Africa. This view was advanced in 1983 by Joe Foster, secretary general of FOSATU, one of the trade-union federations that merged with other union federations in December 1985 to form COSATU.

The second piece consists of excerpts from an interview with Sath Cooper, a major leader of the Azanian People's Organization (AZAPO) and of the National Forum of South Africa.

Both AZAPO and the National Forum call for socialism in South Africa and argue for the formation of a "united front of workers' organiations in direct opposition to any popular-front strategy."

The interview with Cooper was conducted by Informations Ouvrieres, a French socialist weekly, and was published in its Aug. 12-19, 1987, issue. The translation from the French is by Socialist Action.

The second national congress of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) ended last weekend.

Nearly 1500 delegates, representing 712,000 workers, voted to adopt the Freedom Charter as a "guiding document." The Charter calls for a society in which:

"The people shall govern.

"All national groups shall enjoy equal rights.

"The people shall share in the country's wealth.

• "The land shall be shared among those who work it.

"All shall be equal before the law.

"All shall enjoy human rights.

"There shall be work and security.

"The doors of learning and culture shall be opened.

"There shall be houses, security, and comfort.

"There shall be peace and friendship.' The adoption by COSATU of the Charter marks a very close identification between the independent Black trade union and the ANC. However, it leaves many political questions unanswered.

The Freedom Charter can be and has been interpreted in many different ways. Some see it as a socialist document, or at least as a document that could only be implemented by a workers' government.

Others view it as a vision compatible with a kind of welfare capitalism. That was certainly Nelson Mandela's view when he stated:

"It is true that in demanding the nationalization of the banks, the gold mines, and the land, the Charter strikes a fatal blow at the financial and gold-mining monopolies and farming interests...

"But such a step is absolutely imperative and necessary because the realization of the Charter is inconceivable...until the monopolies are first smashed up and the national wealth of the country turned over to the people.

"The breaking up of these monopolies will open up fresh fields for the development of a nonEuropean bourgeois class. For the first time in the history of the country, the non-European bourgeoisie will have the opportunity to own its own home and right mills and factories, and trade and private enterprise will boom and flourish as never before...

"The workers are the principal force upon which the democratic movement should rely, but to repel savage onslaught of the national government and to develop the fight for democratic rights it is necessary that other classes and groupings be joined. Non-European traders and businessmen are also potential allies."

This sums up Mandela's strategy: A broad, multi-class alliance against apartheid, with the working class as a stage army rather than the leading class, and a model of post-apartheid South Africa which is explicitly capitalist.

Oliver Tambo of the ANC reiterated on several occasions recently that this is still the basic strategy of the ANC.

Talks last week [in Senegal] between the ANC and prominent Afrikaaners have underlined this.

Mandela's, which is the dominant interpretation of the charter, fits uneasily with the commitment of many trade unions to a socialist solution to the crisis of apartheid.

What appears to be happening is that COSATU is being drawn into a long-term strategic alliance with the ANC without there actually being any real agreement on long-term strategic goals.

Need for workers' party This points to a second problem with COSATU's basic political position as expounded by miners' leader Cyril Ramaphosa. The NUM [National Union of Mineworkers] leader talks of a time when working-class politics "eventually become the politics of all the oppressed in this country."

The question is how best to pursue the struggle for working-class leadership of the liberation movement.

One of the alternatives to a "convergence" of the popular movement and the trade unions, which is the most popular option in COSATU at the moment, is to build a mass workers' party based on a significant section of the trade unions.

The workers' party idea draws out the political logic of positions such as that of the metal union, NUMSA, which said at its founding congress:

"The lack of initiatives and the confusion that exists within the community itself arise from the lack of a working-class program...

"The organized working class can only take the lead in the struggle if it has a clear program and aims which clarify exactly what is wanted by the working class and what is meant by their demands."

A working-class program, however, needs an organization to embody it and fight for it; otherwise it is simply something suspended in mid air. A party is needed to do the job...

The decisions of COSATU's congress should therefore not be seen as closing down the option of building a workers' party. Rather, it has made the task more urgent.

Sric Millerimpact Visual:

Eric There was, in fact, widespread opposition