Rethinking "Workerism: and the Fosatu Tradition, 1979-1985 (original) (raw)

This paper is concerned with unpacking key aspects of the politics of the influential “workerist” current that emerged within the trade union movement, notably in the Federation of South African Trade Unions (Fosatu), the largest independent union federation in South Africa from 19179-1985. This current dominated the main black and non-racial trade unions, played a central role in the anti-apartheid struggle, and was notable for its scepticism about the ANC and SACP , preferring instead to building an independent working class movement. Examination of “workerism” is not a new area of focus within left and labour circles, since workerism was highly controversial and featured, most notably, centrally in the “workerist-populist” debate in the 1980s. Yet it remains strikingly under-examined, with its core project obscured in key accounts. This is partly a reflection of the non-primary and often polemical nature of many previous reports, which too often rely unduly on vague claims by secondary interlocutors. This paper addresses these shortfalls through primary research, centring on in-depth interviews with key FOSATU “workerists” as well as an extensive examination of FOSATU documents. This enables me to present a picture of the politics of “workerism” that overturns large swathes of conventional wisdom on the subject. In doing so, several unexpected conclusions about the history and historiography of the 1970s and 1980s are unearthed, many of which hold important implications for labour scholars and activists today. I demonstrate that “workerism” was a distinctive, mass-based and coherent multiracial current in the black trade unions, played an important role in the larger anti-apartheid movement, and stressed class-struggle, non-racialism, anti-capitalism, worker self-activity and union democracy. It was also, contrary to certain accounts, fundamentally concerned with the national liberation of the oppressed black majority; with a mass base amongst black workers, it can also not be reduced to the views of a small coterie of radical white intellectuals. Strikingly,“workerism” also distanced itself from the established traditions of mainstream SACP Marxism and of Congress nationalism, fashioning a radical approach to national liberation that combined anti-capitalism with anti-nationalism. On the other hand, it was weakened by tensions within its project between a quasi-syndicalist and a left social democratic approach, as well as related contradictions in its tactical, strategic and theoretical positions. This paved the way for the victory of ANC/ SACP “populists” when FOSATU merged into the new COSATU.