South Africa’s Workers Protest ‘Fat-Cat’ Elite

At first glance, the new government of President Thabo Mbeki looks like a workers’ paradise.

Six Cabinet members belong to the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party. At least two others are Communist Party members.

The premier of Gauteng, the country’s richest and most powerful province, was until recently leader of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, a partner with the Communists and the African National Congress in the country’s ruling alliance.

Even Mbeki, whose Communist Party membership lapsed long ago, is commonly referred to as Comrade Thabo.

But for all its political connections, South Africa’s working class is not singing the government’s praises. Tens of thousands of workers walked off the job this week to protest poor wages and threatened layoffs; unions representing 800,000 public service employees, including many police officers, have called for mass demonstrations and more strikes next week.

“Our members are tired of being made to pay for transformation while a few fat cats continue to live in luxury and well beyond the means of what our economy can afford,” said Peter Malepe, newly elected vice president of the trade union congress. “The irony is that these fat cats turn around and accuse workers who are fighting for a decent wage of being a lucky elite whose wages must be put down.”

In the days of white-minority rule, trade unionists railing against “fat cats” was standard fare as blacks struggled against a racist system that denied them political and economic rights.

Now, however, those holding the line against the restive rank and file are not apartheid’s boogeymen but labor’s own revolutionary comrades.

Chief among them is Geraldine Fraser- Moleketi, minister of public service and administration, who is also a top official with the Communist Party. In the 1980s, she received military training in Angola and the former Soviet Union. Later, she served as personal assistant to Communist leaders Joe Slovo and Chris Hani.

Today, Fraser-Moleketi looks more the union basher than the keeper of the proletariat. Insisting that the government’s conservative economic program will not be knocked off course, she has refused demands by public employees for wage increases above the inflation rate, about 8%.

This week, fed up with drawn-out negotiations, she unilaterally imposed a 6.3% increase for most workers; those who join next week’s protest action, she warned, will not be paid for time missed.

“The right of unions to withdraw labor is matched by an equal right of the employer to withdraw wages,” Fraser-Moleketi told Parliament. “A narrow form of trade unionism is not in the tradition of the South African working class or in their long-term interest.”

Friction between workers and government is not new to South Africa, even since the advent of black-majority rule in 1994. Last year, then-President Nelson Mandela issued a harsh attack on his Communist allies for their resistance to the government’s economic reforms, which focus on cutting the civil service, reducing state spending and selling state-owned enterprises to private investors.

The trade unions also have taken a lashing for challenging the economic program. This week, ANC Chairman Patrick Lekota told leaders of the trade union congress that their “criticizing or agitating against the movement . . . smell of a lack of revolutionary discipline.”

He advised them to take up differences with the ANC in private, not in fiery speeches or marches in the streets.

Most political analysts say the divisions between the ANC and its left-wing allies aren’t great enough to threaten the ruling alliance, especially since it just won elections in June.

The unknown, analysts say, is how long the three partners can bridge their differences in an economy with little growth, increasing unemployment and a bumpy transformation ahead.

“We are going through a difficult period now,” said Essop Pahad, a Cabinet minister and Communist Party official. “Historically, what we have found was that whatever the differences on some issues, we have been able to find each other.”