Congress Of South African Trade Unions Research Articles

PROTEST ACTION WITHIN THE AMBIT OF THE LABOUR RELATIONS ACT 66 OF 1995 COSATU v Business Unity of South Africa (2021) 42 ILJ 490 (LAC)

Protest action is not a new phenomenon in democratic South Africa. In the 1980s and 1990s, many stay-aways were used by workers to demonstrate opposition to government policy. However, the Industrial Court was disinclined to grant such actions protection and, as a result, they were deemed unlawful under the Labour Relations Act 28 of 1956 (1956 LRA). Unlike protest action, strike action was regulated and defined under the 1956 LRA. Nonetheless, the International Labour Organisation (ILO)’s Fact-Finding and Conciliation Commission on Freedom of Association criticised the narrow definition of “strike” in the 1956 LRA, stating that employees should be permitted to strike in protest against the government’s economic and social policies.Under the democratic dispensation, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (the Constitution) clearly provides that everyone has the right, peacefully and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket and to present petitions (s 17) and that employees have the right to strike (s 23(2)(c)). The term “assemble” in section 17 of the Constitution has been interpreted to cover meetings, pickets, protest marches and demonstrations that are aimed at expressing a common opinion. Based on these constitutional provisions, employees can therefore use economic power to support their various demands. In terms of section 1 of the Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 (LRA), one of the aims of this Act is “to advance economic development, social justice, labour peace and the democratization of the workplace”. Among other measures, this is done through allowing employees and their organisations the right to engage in protest action. While a strike is focused on “matters of mutual interest” between employees and their employer, protest action is focused on the “socio-economic interests” of employees (s 213 of the LRA). Strike action is the most common and better understood of the two actions, while protest action is often misconstrued. Protest action assists employees, their trade unions and federations to play an important wider role in society. Through protest action, employees can influence policy decisions in society. Section 77 of the LRA gives effect to and regulates the right to engage in protest action.South Africa has experienced many protests and as a result, the country has been referred to as “the protest capital of the world”. Federations of trade unions such as the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) have over the years organised a number of protests, including those against labour broking and high tolls. Protests are used for various reasons, including those related to service delivery. However, the focus in this discussion is on protests regulated by the LRA. Given the number of protests that take place in South Africa, it is important that the concept of protest action, and the nature and scope of the right to engage in protest action as regulated by section 77 of the LRA, be properly understood. The discussion focuses on COSATU v Business Unity of South Africa ((2021) 42 ILJ 490 (LAC)), which deals with the interpretation of section 77 of the LRA.

ON THE PITFALLS OF A DEVELOPMENTAL STATE

1. Introduction Economic transformation has always been the cornerstone of the governing party since it assumed power in 1994. The notion of a developmental state has since the early 1990s been used as a catch-all phrase for the African National Congress (ANC) thinking on economic and social policies. There is even a subcommittee within the ANC called the Economic Transformation sub-committee, which is seen as the custodian of the ruling party's vision for socio-economic change, as well as offering broad guidelines for a range of policies that have to do with the economy. Over the years since the ANC came into power in 1994, the idea of building a developmental state has continued to serve as an organising principle to frame the nature of change desired by the government. It is a notion that is conceptually ambiguous and lacking in precision with respect to policy application. According to Pempel (1997: 139), developmental states define their missions primarily in terms of long-term national economic enhancement, and they actively and regularly intervene in economic activities with the goal of improving the international competitiveness of their domestic economies. According to this definition, the imperative for managing structural change domestically, for example, improving the growth profile of the economy, diversifying the production base, and generating employment is pursued alongside strategies to promote the country as an investment destination to foreign capital. In many instances, the emphasis placed by the governing party on the notion of the developmental state stresses a more teleological thrust expressed in a certain state of completeness, and usually in reference to the typology of East Asian countries. Beyond rhetoric, it is worth probing what exactly does 'developmental state' mean in the post1990 South African context, a period characterised by increasing global integration and emergence of 'footloose' capital favouring locations where the state is seen as less interventionist. 2. Conceptual map By the time that South Africa started its transition from apartheid to democracy in the early 1990s, the pendulum of economic thinking had shifted globally and strongly towards neoliberal restructuring as an article of faith for economic policy making. This came in the wake of the oil crisis of the early 1970s and the attendant recession of the 1980s. In much of the developing world the state was in retreat, and giving way to a deregulation and liberalising agenda that would presumably stem the crisis. To prove its credentials as a responsible international citizen, South Africa drew heavily on the major themes of the Washington Consensus, in both its pure (laissez faire) and augmented versions (a blending of regulatory features and free markets). Given the centrality, though, of the trade unions in the struggle for liberation, and their closeness to the new governing party in South Africa, measures such as flexible labour markets were ignored in favour of a much tighter legislative regime that included the Labour Regulation Act of 1995 and a welter of worker-friendly measures that followed, including the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and Employment Equity Act, amongst others. Trade unions, especially through the association of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) with the governing party, were deeply embedded in the post-apartheid economic policy formulation. This was facilitated by the informally structured tripartite alliance summit that also included the South African Communist Party (SACP) as well as through the more formally structured National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) that came into existence in 1995. While the broader macro-economic policy framework was crafted in a way that was sensitive to international capital, the more specific and sectoral policy arrangements were oriented more closely to trade unions as a powerful political constituency of the governing party. …

Between Monarchy and Demands for Political Change: Regionalisation and internationalisation of trade union activism in Swaziland

This article examines how the trade unions in Swaziland have shifted their activism from local to regional and international arenas, crystallising their positions around new demands that attracted the ban of their activities. The reasons for such a shift are critically discussed in the light of contemporary political and economic crises affecting the kingdom of Swaziland. Using the social movement theory and interviews collected from union leaders, the article focuses particularly on the cross-border alliances which are built between, on the one hand, the federations of trade unions in Swaziland and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) around political changes and on the other hand between the Swazi unions and international union confederations.

Revolutionary Ideals, Mass Action, Concrete Realities, and Transition to Democracy: Theoretical Notes on the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) During the Last Phase of the Struggle for Liberation in South Africa

This exploratory contribution presents but one angle of the transfer of power in South Africa following the banning of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). The Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) in South Africa played a short-lived but important role in political mobilisation before the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy through drawn-out negotiations (1991–1994). The MDM may be seen as the last phase of defiance against apartheid that forced the National Party (NP) to the negotiating table towards a new democratic order. This contribution argues that MDM activities reflected numerous strategies to achieve its objectives. Insights gained from transition theory that gained prominence as a theoretical tool during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and Maoist and other revolutionary theories explore the role of the MDM within the contemporary political context. Insights from transition theory in this article are used as a heuristic tool and not as political prescription in contrast to revolutionary theories that are built on programmes of sociopolitical action aimed at instating a new order.

Campaigning for social security rights: Women in the informal economy and maternity benefits

abstractThis article captures and analyses how women in organised labour structures in South Africa mobilised around the need for a legislative response to a critical gender justice issue, namely access to maternity benefits for self-employed women, and women in the informal economy. Currently, only workers recognised as ‘employees’ by South Africa’s labour law framework qualify for social security benefits such as Unemployment Insurance and maternity benefits (Unemployment Insurance Act 63 of 2001, Unemployment Insurance Contributions Act 4 of 2002, and Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995), resulting in discrimination against and hardship for informal economy and self-employed workers.Following a complaint received in this regard, the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE), one of South Africa’s Constitutional Institutions Supporting Democracy, undertook legal and consultative research among members of the South African Self-Employed Women’s Association (SASEWA), and examined the impact of this gap on their sexual and reproductive health rights, labour rights and Constitutional rights to social security. The CGE formed a strategic alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), through its national gender structure, resulting in the adoption of a recommendation at its National Gender Policy Conference, for South Africa’s ratification of International Labour Organisation Maternity Convention 183 and Recommendation 191 on Maternity Protection, and necessary reforms to existing labour law.Buttressed by the oversight mandate and policy advocacy interventions of the CGE, and the political weight of COSATU’s policy recommendations as a member of the ruling party’s Tripartite Alliance, campaign partners on this issue were able to secure the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development’s support for such reform, resulting in creation of the South African Law Reform Commission (SALRC) Project Committee 143: Investigation into Maternity and Paternity Benefits for Self-Employed Workers (SALRC 2017a, 2017b). Through the SALRC further research was conducted with women informal traders, through the support network Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO), and other informal trader networks. This article captures the rights considerations and aspirations relating to women in the informal economy, and how such workers successfully navigated and generated the law reform initiative currently under way.

Building Labor Solidarity in Precarious Times: The Danger of Union Paternalism

In a global context of union decline and widening economic insecurity, unions must decide how to relate to extra-workplace struggles and those without stable or unionized employment. One possibility is that unions will adopt a paternalistic view, in which they attempt to serve the interests of nonunion individuals and groups by disciplining them or speaking for them. Drawing on seventy-five brief interviews with participants in a protest led by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), I examine how union activists understood their relationship to the unemployed and local protests within residential areas. Revealing support for union involvement in extra-workplace struggles, the results show that South Africa’s legacy of social movement unionism remains strong. Yet, some union activists also wanted to discipline or substitute for community struggles, and felt the need to educate or speak for the unemployed. Such paternalistic views may become an obstacle to broad working-class solidarity, in South Africa or elsewhere.

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

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.

Contracting out of the Constitution: Labour Brokers, Post Office Casual Workers and the Failure of South Africa’s Industrial Relations Framework

There is widespread concern over the continued viability of South Africa’s post-apartheid constitutional settlement and the increasingly violent axes of social tension. This article outlines the mobilisation of casual workers, employed by labour brokers but working in the South African Post Office (SAPO), who were excluded from the constitutionally sanctioned industrial relations system, despite the presence of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)-affiliated Communications Workers Union (CWU). Drawing on interviews, ethnographic research, court documents and other material, the article analyses the casuals’ mobilisation strategies that succeeded in removing labour brokers from SAPO. Initially the key conflict introduced by the use of labour broking was between the labour brokers and their employees: a tension, it is argued, moulded by South Africa’s constitutional settlement, which has largely frozen inequality in place, combined with neo-liberal pressures. In maintaining discipline over a parallel but unequal workforce within SAPO, labour brokers departed from the constitutionally framed industrial relations system. After extensive, but unsuccessful, attempts to resolve matters though constitutional means, casual workers prosecuted alternative, violent forms of industrial action. They also re-aligned conflict from labour brokers to SAPO as they negated the ‘contractual move’ on which labour broking, and other forms of externalised employment, relies. The article reflects on this ‘contracting out of the Constitution’, particularly in regard to the role of unions struggling to remain relevant within a changing employment terrain, the crisis of the South African industrial relations system, and the increasingly violent nature of the country’s democracy.

New South African Federation Prioritises Marginalised

22 | International Union Rights | 24/2 REPORT | SOUTH AFRICA Militant Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) unionists in the 1980s swore the federation would never become a transmission belt for party politics. But like other post-independence African unions COSATU succumbed to temptation. Sucked into crippling ANC politics it expelled its largest and most independent union, the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA) in 2014 and its general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, the following year. These expulsions followed years of poor servicing, infighting, lack of recruitment and failure to organise millions of workers in atypical jobs. This breakdown was dramatically highlighted when COSATU’s then largest union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), lost 50,000 members on the Rustenburg platinum belt to the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU). This followed a police massacre of 34 mine workers (78 injured) in 2012 during an illegal strike, which the NUM failed to support. The once mighty COSATU - which played a critical role in the downfall of apartheid - now wobbles in a dangerously weakened state. Launch of New Federation On 21 April this year, a new federation arose – South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU). At the founding congress a constitution, name and logo were adopted by 1400 delegates from 24 unions with 700,000 members. SAFTU emerges after two years of discussion on trade union unity. Initially talks were held between NACTU (National Council of Trade Unions), FEDUSA (Federation of Unions of South Africa) and Vavi on the basis that unions should be independent from employers and political parties, worker-controlled and democratic. However both of the former later withdrew from talks. Negotiations nonetheless continued and in September 2015, 26 unions resolved to search for unity. A Workers’ Summit convened in April 2016 and was attended by 1500 delegates, representing 52 unions. Signalling the new federation’s rootedness in working class communities, 22 civil society organisations were invited as observers. At the Summit the launch of a new federation was endorsed. SAFTU’s Membership & Leadership Many SAFTU members come from NUMSA but some independent unions have also brought in substantial membership. Some splinters from exCOSATU affiliates, formed after factional struggles often in response to corruption and lack of servicing, have also joined SAFTU. Ex-COSATU affiliate, the Food & Allied Workers Union, came over in its entirety whilst other unions joined as independents. A further 16 union observers at the Congress may enter the federation at a later stage. In a departure from COSATU’s single sector union style of organising, SAFTU embraces both industrial and general unions. This raises the sticky question of how to build power in a particular sector and also the temptation for single sector unions to poach members from general, or smaller unions to build their power. As a number of SAFTU unions operate in the same sectors the congress strongly discouraged membership poaching. Mergers, co-operation and support for smaller affiliates were encouraged. The popular Vavi emerged as the general secretary. Leadership came from a range of sectors including the public service, metal and food. Regrettably however, despite the federations’ commitment to empowering women, none are present in the leadership. SAFTU is independent from political parties. It is a socialist inflected federation with a Pan-African outlook. It will set up a political and ideological commission to establish how to engage on the question of political influence and power. Some delegates supported NUMSA’s intention to establish a workers’ party. The federation aims to foster worker-controlled structures with high levels of leadership accountability to members. This democratic focus extends into the membership it aims to recruit, which will include workers from the informal sector as well as the unemployed. Organisation & Servicing is King SAFTU’s aspirations are lofty and inspired by the organisational power of COSATU in its days under apartheid. But it will not have the impetus that antiapartheid struggles gave the union movement in those times. Its first National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in May showed an awareness of the need to distinguish itself from COSATU. Its deliberations recognised the necessity for a strong organisational backbone and a focus on servicing members. Guided by Congress resolutions it fleshed...

South Africa\u2019s Economic Transformation Since 1994: What Influence has the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) Had?

When the African National Congress (ANC) became the democratic government of South Africa in 1994, it faced the challenge of transforming the economy. How this was to be done, however, revolved around two divergent views of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) which forms the underlying ideology or glue that binds together the Tripartite Alliance comprising the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the largest workers’ union in the country. Transformation could be achieved either radically through measures such as nationalisation where political control would be transposed into economic power, or via a more liberal route involving the promotion of macro-economic development and the growth of company earnings. This article investigates how the ANC government has sought to bring about the much-needed transformation by providing summary analyses of the following macro-economic policies: the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy, the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative - South Africa (ASGISA), the New Growth Path (NGP) and the National Development Plan (NDP). Evidence suggests that while the NDR promised radical results, the economic transformation that has been taking place in South Africa since 1994 has been driven largely by neo-liberal principles. This is in contrast to what the ANC claims in various policy documents and what various scholars, such as Jeffery (2010:5) and Venter (2012), have also claimed. As South Africa’s economic fortunes have declined in recent years in the face of mounting external pressures and internal policy uncertainty, this deviation from the original ideology and plan is causing significant discord in the country.

The 2009+ South African Protest Wave

South Africa is not typically mentioned in studies of recent global protest. But popular resistance surged in South Africa from 2009, reaching a peak of more than one protest per day in 2012. We examine the 2009+ South African protest wave, highlighting its sources, antecedents, primary features, and key consequences. Marked by an explosion of popular resistance in both communities and workplaces, we argue that the protest wave shares key features with recent protests elsewhere. Most importantly, they are propelled by forces of marketization and critique the failures of democracy. The protest wave had a major impact on South African politics, instigating the emergence of new challenges to the dominance of the Alliance between the African National Congress (ANC)—the ruling party—the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). But the current political trajectory is far from stable, and the future is remarkably uncertain.

The Treatment Action Campaign's Quest for Equality in HIV and Health: Learning from and Lessons for the Trade Union Movement

<p>The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has been recognised as one of the most effective social movements in post-apartheid South Africa. Among other things, it is responsible for the world’s largest programme to provide anti-retroviral treatment to people with HIV through the public health system. This article looks at the lessons TAC learned from the trade union movement as it sought to build a mass movement of the poor around the human right to access essential medicines for millions of people infected with HIV. It explores how TAC sought to build an alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and its affiliates, and the vital role that an independent COSATU played in supporting AIDS activism and using its social weight to support campaigns for AIDS treatment. Finally it looks at what trade unions can learn from social movements and explains why an effective alliance between unions and social movements is so essential for pro-poor reform in the twenty-first century.</p>

Social Movement Trade Unionism: Case of the Congress of South African Trade Unions

This paper discusses the utilisation of social movement trade unionism by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in seeking to influence the government to pursue policies that improve the lives of workers in South Africa. Social movement unionism involves trade union movement struggles characterised by shop-floor participatory processes, broader socio-political struggles and trade union alliances with community and political organisations. This perspective transcends economistic trade union struggles that are limited to the workplace. As a social movement union, COSATU played a critical role in contributing to social change by demanding the abolition of apartheid; rolling back of neoliberal economic policies in post-apartheid South Africa and, today, continues to be a key player in representing workers. However, COSATU social movement influence in the post-apartheid era has been affected by its adoption of alliance politics, utilisation of formal structures of incorporation such as the National Economic Development and Labour Council, intra-union conflicts and the reduction of its historical militant approach, among other challenges.

RECOGNITION OF PRIOR LEARNING (RPL) AND SUPPORT: ARE THE LEARNING NEEDS OF RPL FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS DIFFERENT?

RPL was first established in the United States during the late 1960s and was initially used in their formal education and training sector (Dyson & Keating, 2005). Certain international higher education institutions (HEIs) have been using Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) for more than 30 years, particularly in the USA, Canada, Northern Ireland, Britain and Australia (Gawe cited in Moore & Van Rooyen, 2002; Geyser, 2001). The origins of RPL in South Africa can be traced to several projects and policy-making structures established by the trade union movement and the ANC in the struggle for liberation in the late 1980s (SAQA, 2002:9). RPL was placed on the South African educational agenda in the early 1990s prior to the birth of South Africa’s new democracy (Breier, 2007). Its establishment was strongly motivated by the trade union movement, for example, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), to recognise the knowledge and skills of millions of previously disadvantaged workers and the movement fought for the rights of workers to gain access to HEIs to improve their chances of promotion and employment. In this context RPL was seen as a mechanism to redress sociopolitical imbalances of the past (Cretchley & Castle, 2001). The proliferation of RPL into HEIs, globally and locally, suggests that using only traditional access as the indicator for access to HEIs and success is “inadequate and outdated” (Kistan, 2002:171).

The Congress of South African Trade Unions and Free Trade: Obstacles to Transnational Solidarity

This article considers the response of the largest trade union federation in South Africa, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), to an extended free trade agenda, which has formed a key part of neoliberal restructuring during recent decades. It focuses in particular on South Africa's position in multilateral trade talks and its negotiation of three Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). COSATU's critique of these FTAs is considered and in particular the analysis focuses on its attempts at building transnational solidarity with other national labour movements. It argues that despite COSATU's opposition to trade liberalisation there are a number of obstacles to developing effective international links.

Briefing: The politics of Marikana and South Africa's changing labour relations

MORE THAN A YEAR AFTER the South African police killed 34 strikers in Marikana, labour unrest continues across the country’s mining sector. Industrial actions have targeted platinum giants like Amplats, the world’s largest producer, where an 11-day strike over planned retrenchments has just ended and another is looming amid fresh wage talks. Rivalry between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) – aligned with the African National Congress (ANC) – and the more recent and militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) has also plagued the industry. On 17 October, an NUM branch chairperson at Lonmin – the third largest platinum producer in the world – was shot dead. Another Lonmin NUM shaft steward died in a similar situation on 3 November. A few months ago a former NUM leader who had become the AMCU regional representative in Rustenburg was ambushed – one of several from both sides assassinated since the Marikana massacre. In other words, the ‘Framework Agreement for a Sustainable Mining Industry’, promoted by South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe and signed by parties to the industry on 3 July 2013, has so far failed to restore peace to the mining sector in Africa’s largest economy. Beyond the economic uncertainty created by the continued industrial unrest, its political consequences ahead of the next general election should not be underestimated. The NUM is affiliated to the ANC-aligned Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), and was until recently South Africa’s largest trade union, partly thanks to its membership in the platinum sector, where it is now outnumbered by the AMCU. The rapid decline of the dominant trade union and the model of party–labour relations associated with it is unlikely to pose a serious challenge to South

The limits of transnational solidarity: the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the Swaziland and Zimbabwean crises

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the main union federation in South Africa, was instrumental in ending apartheid. This paper evaluates COSATU's post-apartheid role in working for democracy elsewhere in Southern Africa through deepening transnational solidarity, focusing on its role in Zimbabwe and Swaziland. Although the federation successfully mobilised trade union members to oppose the contravention of human and labor rights, its ability to affect lasting change was limited by contradictory messages and actions by the South African government, the dualistic nature of institutional formation in these countries, strategic miscalculations and structural limitations on union power.

Liberalism vs. Marxism-Leninism and the Future of Education in South Africa

This paper debates the ideological tension in South Africa between, one the one hand, liberalism, and, on the one hand both the radical Africanist Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) of the 1970s, and the hard-line Marxism-Leninism inclined South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). The paper’s central argument is, on the one hand, that the BCM’s criticisms of liberalism were specific to South Africa’s white liberals and to specific historical moment on the 1970s. On the other hand the SACP and COSATU’s hard-line Marxism-Leninism is pitted against the African National Congress’s (ANC), which is more community oriented and less attuned to the aspirations of organised labour like its partners. And given that the ANC is in the majority and has more or less hegemonised the alliance the threat to liberalism posed by both the radical Africanist BCM and the hard-line Marxism-Leninism of both the SACP and COSATU has been nullified. It can therefore be reasonably argued that South Africa’s project of a liberal conception of education will be sustained in compliance with the country’s liberal and egalitarian Constitution. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n3p67

Post-Liberation South Africa: Sorting Out the Pieces

The written history and narratives of the anti-apartheid liberation struggle in South Africa has been cast, albeit erroneously, as if it was waged and won solely by the African National Congress (ANC), its ally the South African Communist Party (SACP), and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the three alliance partners that have held the reins of state power since the first multi-racial democratic elections in 1994. The truth is that the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) of Azania, the Azania People’s Organization (AZAPO), the New Unity Movement (NUMO), and several other liberation movements played significantly vital roles in that struggle. The ensuing discourse puts this state of affairs on the PAC’s diminished status in the politics of post-liberation South Africa, which derives partly from its radical antecedents from its inception that placed it apart from the ANC from which it split in 1959, earned it immediate proscription from the apartheid stage before it could root itself properly as well as notoriety in the West. The discourse argues and concludes that a more comprehensive narrative and written history of that struggle will benefit the on-going quest for the transformation of South Africa’s multi-racial democracy and the course of democracy in the rest of Africa.

Public-Union Sector Politics and the Crisis of Education in South Africa

This paper reflects on public-sector unions in South Africa with a view to highlighting teacher unionization’s contribution to South Africa’s education crisis. South Africa’s teaching profession is highly unionized. The largest teacher union, the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) is affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). The latter is a partner in the ruling tripartite alliance that includes the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Worldwide most public-sector unions are known to prop up left-wing political organizations. SADTU is no exception. But this paper shows that SADTU organizes teachers at the expense of teaching and learning in a country whose education system has been described as “a crisis” and “a national disaster” whose schools are “dysfunctional”. The paper contemplates on the possibility of borrowing from business models to “redesign” or “reengineer” the country’s ailing education system into an efficient system.