SACP gains more power at union congress

The medium-term vision of the SA Communist Party (SACP) advanced another step towards its goal last week at the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) congress in Vanderbijlpark.

The SACP and its supporters now dominate the leadership of all of the big four unions in the Cosatu federation. The SACP’s medium-term vision, adopted in 2005, calls on all members to work towards gaining control of community groups, trade unions, the ANC and parliament – all seen as “terrains of struggle”.As such, the SACP has been compared to the Afrikaner Broederbond of the apartheid era, which, with never more than 20 000 members, in effect controlled all the apartheid state’s leading institutions.However, unlike the Broederbond, the SACP – referred to cynically in some quarters as the “pale pink Brotherhood” – is neither monolithic nor totally secretive.Divisions exist within the SACP, which operates as a member of the ANC-led alliance where the secretary general is now Gwede Mantashe, who also serves as chair of the SACP.Such developments in the past would have caused anxiety among foreign investors and local business.Today they do not because the positions enunciated by the SACP amount only to how best to manage the current system.Ideas of worker control have given way to proposals for closer collaboration between state and capital.Business ReportThe SACP’s medium-term vision, adopted in 2005, calls on all members to work towards gaining control of community groups, trade unions, the ANC and parliament – all seen as “terrains of struggle”.As such, the SACP has been compared to the Afrikaner Broederbond of the apartheid era, which, with never more than 20 000 members, in effect controlled all the apartheid state’s leading institutions.However, unlike the Broederbond, the SACP – referred to cynically in some quarters as the “pale pink Brotherhood” – is neither monolithic nor totally secretive.Divisions exist within the SACP, which operates as a member of the ANC-led alliance where the secretary general is now Gwede Mantashe, who also serves as chair of the SACP.Such developments in the past would have caused anxiety among foreign investors and local business.Today they do not because the positions enunciated by the SACP amount only to how best to manage the current system.Ideas of worker control have given way to proposals for closer collaboration between state and capital.Business Report