From Worker Mobilisation to Policy Engagement: NALEDI and the Remaking of COSATU in the 1990s

Abstract

In response to a shifting political environment characterised by political and policy negotiations, South Africa’s largest and most influential trade union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), incorporated policy research, analysis and engagement into its core activities beginning in the 1990s. This article analyses some of the challenges COSATU faced in this new role by critically examining the contributions of the National Labour and Economic Development Institute (NALEDI), which represented COSATU’s first attempt to establish a dedicated technical research body to support its policy goals. I argue that COSATU’s mixed experiences with NALEDI reflected some of the challenges when a mass-based trade union movement develops and utilises policy expertise, as well as COSATU’s ambivalence about its policy role. Nevertheless, the lessons COSATU leaders learned from working with NALEDI were important in signalling how to redesign the federation in order to engage in policy deliberations over the next decade.