Amandla! magazine | Issue 84

Amandla! Issue NO.84 11 OCTOBER 2022

The Working Class Summit

bounces back

L

AST MONTH, 600 ACTIVISTS

packed into a Johannesburg hall

for the first meeting in several

years of the Working Class

Summit. It was a welcome sight for the

many sore eyes on the South African Left.

The WCS’s main convener is the South

African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu).

Saftu has been going through a bitter

internecine struggle pretty much

since its formation in 2017, centred

around its largest affiliate, the

National Union of Metalworkers of

South Africa (Numsa).

In an attempt to impose its own

derelict “vanguard” party on the

federation, Numsa leader Irvin Jim

has been sabotaging the WCS. But

this project hit a snag when Jim’s

faction failed to secure a leadership

majority at Saftu’s congress last May.

WCS organisers then pulled off

an impressive feat, using this brief

reprieve to rapidly put together a

highly successful meeting. Attendees

represented dozens of movements

from all parts of the country,

revealing welcome signs of life on the

South African Left after a decade of

setbacks.

But the WCS’s opening gambit

• the decision to call for a national
  shutdown just a few weeks after the
  meeting concluded - was a serious
  blunder. It reflects deeper seated problems,
  which must be addressed if the mistakes of
  the past are not to be repeated.

A false start

The shutdown was meant to be an

opportunity for working class people

to show their anger at rising inflation,

spiralling crime and ongoing blackouts.

But probably not more than 5,000 people,

across all of South Africa’s major cities,

heeded the call to demonstrate. That’s

around 0.001 percent of the combined

membership of Saftu and Cosatu, which

called for a parallel shutdown the same

day. Compare that to recent actions by

the EFF, a party with a 10 percent vote

share. They have frequently drawn

upwards of 50,000 people onto the

streets.

These numbers look even more

diminutive alongside the imagery of a

general strike used in the call to action.

Almost nothing was actually shut down.

The material cost imposed on elites -

presumably one of the main objectives

here - was therefore negligible.

Roger Etkind has keenly analysed

the problems underlying this poor

outcome. Years of corruption scandals,

internal squabbling and a persisting

failure to represent the general interests

of working class people have depleted

public sympathy for the union movement

• the backbone of the WCS. The paltry
  turnout served only to broadcast these
  problems to the world. It demonstrated
  weakness rather than strength.
  Even if there had been ten times
  as many people on the street, it’s hard
  to see how the shutdown would have
  contributed to developing the WCS
  process. It wasn’t embedded in any
  longer-term campaign of ongoing,
  cumulative actions that could build
  popular momentum behind key demands.
  And even if it had been, it’s not likely
  that the WCS would’ve been able to
  use such a campaign effectively as a
  tool of organisation building, because it
  presently lacks structures, programme
  and centralised leadership.

The mobilising model

This is symptomatic of a deeper problem

in the South African Left which can be

summarised as a hyper-focus on mobilising

at the expense of organising.

This distinction has been popularised

in recent years by the US movement

guru, Jane McAlevey. Mobilising is when a

movement activates and energises its base.

It turns out supporters to visible actions that

exercise leverage or demonstrate popular

support. Organising, on the other hand, is

fundamentally about expanding that base.

Organising typically happens in

“bounded constituencies” – workplaces,

places of worship, neighbourhoods.

Organisers seek to implant the movement

in these constituencies by steadily growing

its ranks: finding people who aren’t current

supporters, listening attentively to their

grievances and persuading them that

collective action offers the only real solution.

The most effective way to do this

is by identifying and winning over the

organic leaders that already exist within the

constituency. It’s these people who have the

capacity to really anchor the movement, by

becoming its standard bearers on the ground

and by using their personal networks to

scale up and solidify its support.

Any successful movement employs

a judicious combination of these two

11

The South African Left needs

to go back to its roots

Cosatu members marching to Union Buildings during the National

Day of Action. The paltry turnout served only to broadcast these

problems to the world. It demonstrated weakness rather than strength.

By Niall Reddy

Amandla! Issue NO.84Amandla! Issue NO.84 OCTOBER 2022OCTOBER 2022

Perspectives for the left