largely from the ranks of Inose now occupying posts and thus secure the careers of some union bureaucrats.
While the media concentrates on the soap-opera like leadership squabbles 1n COSATU, the following question hardly gets mentioned: on war oasis saouo workers elect their leadership?
A trade union leadership ought to be made up of militants indefatigably fighting term demands of workers. These militants understand the necessity to mobilise and organise fellow workers around an anti-capitalist platform. They build confidence and awareness among workers in every shop-floor and pollical DaLUe worker interests
In the build up to the congress, COSATU unveiled in its 'political discussion document' the major planks that will form the platform for the incoming leadership. Roughly a third of this 20-odd page document surveys the socio-economic and political landscape in South Africa and the world today.
On the socio-economic front it reiterates how neo-liberal policies (GEAR and ASGISA) lower the floor of working and living standards of the working class to deeper levels of misery. There has been no real reversal in job losses and casualisation, the paper observes, especially in retail and cleaning services where strikes have been ongoing for several weeks.
It rightly exposes black economic empowerment for what it is worth yet makes only scant reference to the controversial trade union investment companies that bankroll start-up capitalists with union dues.
These multi-pronged attacks on workers are set to intensifv because sustaining the profitability of capital in the world nowadays can only be done by forcing workers to pay a heavier price.
To counter this offensive, COSATU, according to the discussion document, needs to re-examine and sharpen its political strategies and action. The document Icocals COSATU's commitment to 'radical transformation and socialism'.
In this context, delegates will inspect deeply the longstanding question of the balance of forces and direction in the tripartite alliance.
Thinkers in COSATU are of the opinion that while a black elite has hijacked the ANC, this party remains the political home for workers.
What COSATU and its other ally, the SACK, must do in this situation is to rescue the ANC from the clutches of the black bourgeoisie.
Only a political ignoramus or opportunist will try to deny the well-known fact that the ANC is pursuing a bourgeois political programme while
When COSATU celebrated
20th anniversary December 2005, NACTU and FEDUSA made public their agreement to unite and work out the next steps in this process.
The political discussion paper views this unity process as 'an indictment of COSATU and the democratic moveCOSATU trailing instead of leading its 'rivals' in wider trade union unity talks, due to a lack of resoluteness and urgency on the part of its leadership
What, aside from competing politics subscribed to by their leaderships can be holding trade unions back from 'unity talks'?
COSATU knows that it can no longer ignore the 'new social movements' and has to healthcare and education.
Indeed, through the 'end job losses and poverty campaign' it was possible for COSATU to forge a 'united front with social movements. But once again the 'politics of the alliance' proved to be an insurmountable obstacle to such a development.
During and after the 9th COSATU national congress worker militants in trade unions must advocate an anticapitalist platform consisting of these mınimum planks. workers' democracy in the trade unions; promote selforganization and forging principled unity between trade unions and social movemcIls. construct a broad political movement based on the political and economic aspirations of the working masses