BY GREG ROSENBERG
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -"These past two years, the government has come up with a body of legislation that goes a long way toward removing apartheid's constraints. But that legislation is just a framework to begin the transformation of South Africa," said Kgalema Motlanthe in an interview here June 4. Motlanthe is the general secretary of the 350,000-member National Union of Mineworkers.

"Actually, the transformation has not begun in earnest. That's why at the moment, big business, which believed that the transformation already happened, is upset that their approaches are being challenged. The transformation can't be painless. The fact that there's been no pain means that it has not yet begun.

"The fact of the 1994 elections," South Africa's first-ever democratic, nonracial poll, Motlanthe said, "gave the impression that that was it. But they were just an aspect of what we need to transform South African society and its economy as a whole. The real process has yet to happen. Whether you are looking at the banks or the schools."

Motlanthe pointed out that the policy that the ANC has advanced to eradicate apartheid's legacy - the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP), now adopted as government policy - is just getting started.

The RDP outlines a massive effort to provide land, water, education, healthcare, housing, and other basic social needs to the tens of millions of black South Africans previously denied these basic needs under apartheid.

RDP won't be `delivered'
"There is an ill-founded notion that the RDP will be `delivered' by the government," the NUM leader said. "That is disempowering. It means that communities are recipients, not actors. The government has to give backup to communities and other social forces. Labor as a social force must think very creatively. Working people can benefit in the process and become empowered.

"There must be a national debate in order for people to understand this clearly. It is hidden away today. That's why big business is so confident, and why some of our own people who are part of the liberation forces now seem to be forgetting about the disadvantaged sections of the population," Mothlanthe said.

"The overall thrust of the old regime was to look over a small section of South African society. The ravages of apartheid on our country are comparable to economies emerging from a war situation. We did not emerge from a normal past. We need an extraordinary approach to rebuild. There is no way you can get co-determination on a voluntary basis with the employers." To this end, Motlanthe said, it would be in the interests of the labor movement for the government to intervene more in disputes between capital and labor.

Victory against `lockout clause'
Motlanthe described the victory achieved by working people in the fight over the content of the bill of rights in South Africa's new constitution, adopted May 8 by the Constitutional Assembly. During the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) negotiations - all-party talks begun in 1991 that were forced on the old regime by the rising mass revolutionary democratic movement - the labor movement made certain demands in relation to the employers' "right" to lockout, Motlanthe said.

"We said it was wrong to elevate a `lockout clause' to the same level as workers right to strike. This right is really the only right that organized workers have. The employers have other rights.

"When the new constitution was being drafted, the employers wanted to enshrine their `right to lockout' in the bill of rights. Our view was that the right to strike is a basic working-class right and must be enshrined. In talks with the ANC, we got them to agree to this."

The provision of lockout rights to employers in the highest law in South Africa was dealt a death blow by an April 30 strike called by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), in which NUM members participated. Several million workers stayed off the job, and hundreds of thousands marched to prevent such a clause from being incorporated into the constitution. A week later, the bill of rights was adopted. It specifies that workers have the right to form trade unions and to strike. It grants employers the right to form their own associations, and to bargain collectively. There is no lockout clause.

"An employer can initiate a lockout, under the provisions of the new Labor Relations Act," said Motlanthe. "But under the Act, a deadlock has to be declared. They have to take it to court before they can close the doors to a factory." Millions of workers were adamant that a democratic constitution should not put the employers' rights on the same level as those of the working class, the union leader said.

Privatization debate
A growing subject of debate today in South Africa is whether the government should privatize industries currently administered by the state. These include the telephone company, railroads, public transportation, South African Airways, and the electrical utility.

In May, returning from a state visit to Germany aimed at winning foreign investment in South African industry, South African president Nelson Mandela declared that "privatization is the fundamental policy of the ANC and it is going to be implemented. The responsibility for creating an investor and trade-friendly environment is for us to take."

The statement was given front-page coverage by virtually every major daily newspaper in South Africa, and the business press applauded Mandela's comment. International finance capital is pressing the Mandela government to move ahead as quickly as possible with privatizations.

In response, leaders of several major trade unions immediately threatened strike action against any moves to sell off shares of state-owned industries.

"The present debates are charged with lots of emotion and are a bit irrational as a result," Motlanthe remarked, emphasizing that in his opinion any decisions on the matter will be taken after talks between the government and the unions.

"One problem is that the government does not have a consolidated inventory of what it owns. What immediately comes to workers' minds is the major parastatals that were used by the National Party government," such as railroads, transportation, electricity, and telecommunications.

"From labor's side, government would be doing a hell of a disservice if it were getting rid of these kind of assets. They are not only efficiently run, but have the training capacity, the technical training capacity, that the mass of our people have been denied and desperately need because they were denied this training in the past," the NUM leader stated.

"If there is widespread privatization, the state bureaucrats will make sure they have positioned themselves well to benefit" from such moves, Motlanthe said. "The state would thus be stripped of assets, and the cash raised would go toward paying off the huge debt" inherited from the apartheid regime.

"Some of these industries -not all - are key to the economy. The post office for instance. The same applies to mass transport. We would face an explosion of minibus taxis," the prevalent form of transport for blacks who live in townships, whether they need to go to the cities or to factories. "These taxis are not only unreliable, but also dangerous. In my view, the state must take responsibility for making mass transport efficient and safe.

"From international experience, privatization is known to result in job cuts. There can be no argument that such cutbacks would not visit us. These occupations would be stripped."

Motlanthe stated that "the government is not coming out clearly as to which assets it wants privatized. It is also holding onto useless assets, such as some property formerly owned by the South African Defense Force and the `homeland' regimes."

`Develop our own proposals'
Motlanthe spent some time to state his point of view in this debate, in which union and ANC leaders as well as workers express varying opinions.

"The major concern from labor's side is the threat of job cuts," he said. "But the stance that labor has adopted of simply a big `No' is a disservice to labor that doesn't allow us to think creatively. We have to develop our own counterproposals.

"What kind of safety net do we suggest?" he asked. " What kind of proposals do we need to ensure that workers - and South African society - don't come out the losers? We need time to develop our own proposals. Rather than hope it doesn't happen. When it does happen we'll be vulnerable unless we're prepared.

"Business calls for privatization simply because they stand to benefit. Their obligations are to shareholders rather than to society. Maximize profits is the watchword. To me it's very important that unions think this through very carefully.

"As long as labor's response is a simple `No' it is not persuading anybody. It will not help Madiba (Nelson Mandela) defend that position from big business and from potential investors abroad. Our proposals are key to strengthening Mandela's resolve."

Motlanthe said his own approach to this subject was informed by practical questions that hit the Mineworkers union in 1989, when it was faced with massive layoffs in the mining industry.

"COSATU said at the time there should be a moratorium on retrenchments [layoffs]," he stated. "There was no thought as to what else could be done. But we had to think beyond moratorium. That's why the NUM developed retrenchment packages and retraining programs. It was only three years later, when retrenchments started visiting our COSATU affiliates," that this course hit home.

"By just then embarking on strike action, that allowed the employers to simply dismiss them. It sounded quite militant - `moratorium on retrenchments!' But it didn't work. Unless we have proposals that we can bring to working people and the nation as a whole we'll be doing a disservice."  
 
 
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