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South Africa: Largest labor union, NUMSA looking to break way from ANC – may form political party
(Reuters) – South Africa’s biggest union is considering pulling out of the African National Congress (ANC)-aligned Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) labor federation to form its own political entity, a split that could hurt the ruling party in next year’s elections, senior union sources said on Tuesday.
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) is increasingly at odds with the ANC and COSATU over labor policies it says are too pro-business.
Coupled with anger at a perceived increase in corruption under President Jacob Zuma, the 350,000-strong union is now on the brink of walking out on a 25-year relationship forged in the common struggle against brutal and segregationist white-minority rule.
If the NUMSA took some smaller unions with it, COSATU – the ANC’s most effective ‘get-out-the-vote’ machine – could lose half a million members who would normally have campaigned faithfully for Nelson Mandela’s former liberation movement – the ANC.
NUMSA officials told reporters that union bosses were circulating a document ahead of a key December meeting asking whether it should form a labor party, civic movement or a worker federation to go head-to-head with COSATU.
The crisis in the movement claimed its first high-profile casualty this week when NUMSA President Cedric Gina quit, saying he was unhappy with the anti-ANC stance being adopted.
“All is not well in NUMSA,” he told reporters. “I hope that the union will allow members to take their own decision on who to support in the elections.”
A NUMSA political force would be likely to appeal to the disaffected youth also being courted by arch anti Zuma baiter Julius Malema, an expelled ANC youth leader who launched the radical leftist Economic Freedom Fighters party earlier this year.
Although there is no chance of the ANC losing its majority next year – it won nearly 66 percent of the vote in 2009 – both entities would erode its support on the left, and increase the chances of a sub-60 percent result, an outcome that would heap pressure on the Zuma administration.
As with Malema, NUMSA General Secretary Irvin Jim, a firebrand advocate of large-scale nationalization, helped Zuma become ANC leader in 2007 but is furious that the unions have since been relegated to an alliance “labor desk” and excluded from big decisions.
In a sign of its concern, the ANC has sent in its top enforcer, Secretary General Gwede Mantashe, to restore order although in reality it may be more like damage limitation and control to ensure the defectors are as few as possible, analysts say.
It is only a matter of time before a split is formalized, but the ANC is not just going to roll over.”