Maximum Working Class Unity? Challenges to Local ... - CiteSeerX

Maximum Working Class Unity? Challenges to Local Social Movement Unionism in Cape Town David Christoffer Lier Geography, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK; [email protected]

Kristian Stokke Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway; [email protected]

Joint political mobilisation between trade unions and community groups, often referred to as ‘social movement unionism’, has been upheld as a way forward for organised labour in a neoliberal world economy. Analysing the interaction between unions and communities is critical for understanding the potential and actual roles played by trade unions in voicing the concerns of marginalized workers and poor communities. This article examines the efforts of organised municipal workers and urban social movements trying to unite their forces in post-apartheid South Africa, by looking at the politics of the Cape Town Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF). While the participants of the APF have in common their opposition to commercialisation and privatisation of service delivery, their political unity is fragile. By contrasting the ‘ideal-type’ social movement unionism depicted in the contemporary literature on labour and globalisation with the findings of this particular case, we uncover some main dimensions along which this organisational cooperation is challenged. In contrast to the political unity experienced during the anti-apartheid struggle, the APF initiative operates in a restructuring post-apartheid economy where bridging internal organisational differences and confronting the hegemonic position of the African National Congress (ANC) in civil society have proved particularly challenging.

Introduction It is commonly observed that organised labour has been put on the defensive through contemporary processes of state deregulation, informalisation and flexibilisation of labour and increased labour market competition, all in the context of neoliberal globalisation (Munck 2002). This has led some observers to call for organised labour to forge alliances with progressive forces in civil society in order to increase  C

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their bargaining power vis-`a-vis employers and political actors. Such a counterstrategy to the impacts of neoliberal globalisation requires that trade unions reach beyond the realm of production to include a wider set of issues in their agenda. This approach has been described as “new social unionism” or “Global Social Movement Unionism” (Lambert and Webster 2001; Moody 1997; Waterman 2001). We prefer the term social movement unionism, as it captures the mutuality between social movements and trade unions while leaving the question of newness and scale open. This union strategy is familiar to workers in South Africa. Black trade unions can proudly look back to the anti-apartheid struggle in the 1970s and 1980s, when they joined forces with civics, churches and political parties in a united liberation front (Webster 1994). In the new context of a consolidated liberal democracy combined with entrenched and widespread unemployment, poverty and inequality, unionists and academics have raised the question whether elements of these successful tactics can be translated into the post-apartheid situation (Baleni 1996; Barchiesi 2001; Buhlungu 2003; von Holdt 2003; Waterman 1995). South Africa’s democratic transition has radically altered the preconditions for trade unionism. During the apartheid era, South Africa developed industrially through import substitution, and a harsh industrial regime that socially excluded the working class through racial discrimination and repression. This created a basis for a united political resistance at the national level which brought together worker organisations, nationalist movements and other social forces against a common adversary (von Holdt 2003; Webster 1994). Against this background, the political democratisation in the 1990s meant a radical transformation and widening of the political space for trade unionism. However, parallel economic liberalisation processes have yielded a fragmented labour market, a culture of individualism and an erosion of the state’s monopoly of power. Moreover, union leadership is tempted by the upward mobility offered by black economic empowerment policies and by positions in the political system (Buhlungu 2003). This post-apartheid political–economic context challenges the unity of social movement unionism, while also producing new occasions for this union strategy. This is especially visible in the municipal service sector, where neoliberal reforms have triggered new political activism from trade unions and social movements. One prominent manifestation of the shift to neoliberalism in South Africa has been the introduction of cost-recovery principles in the public sector. This does not simply refer to wholesale privatisation of state assets, but to a wider political and economic process of outsourcing service delivery and introducing private sector principles of full cost recovery and corporatisation (McDonald and Smith 2002). Access and affordability of basic services, as well as the work conditions and job security in the public sector, have been seriously affected by these  C

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reforms. Thus, workers defending their jobs and poor people fighting for their rights to water and adequate shelter, who are sometimes the same individuals, have mobilised to counteract the adverse effects of cost recovery policies. Transforming this potential for social movement unionism into effective alliances between trade unions and social movements is, however, not a straightforward task. One obstacle to new social movement unionism in South Africa lies in the political relations between the state, trade unions and civil society. Many observers have pointed to the transformation of civil society since apartheid, and the growing gap between those aligned to the African National Congress (ANC) on the one hand, and oppositional groups on the other (Bond 2000; Habib 2003; Habib and Kotz´e 2002; Oldfield and Stokke forthcoming). Post-apartheid social movements that mobilise around the impacts of cost recovery policies commonly find themselves in the latter category of new adversarial struggles. A majority of the labour movement, on the other hand, is politically aligned to the government party. This political tie was formally recognised already in 1991 through the Tripartite Alliance between the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the largest trade union federation in the country, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). During the more than 10 years of democratic rule the ANC has increasingly made a distinction between constructive and collaborationist unions and civics and disruptive “ultra-left” forces. Current attempts to forge alliances between trade unions and social movements can be seen as an attempt to bridge this political gap, while addressing their concrete differences in terms of interests, organisational characteristics and political tactics. This article examines an attempt at building local social movement unionism through an institutionalised collaboration between a public sector union and community organisations. We present a case study of the relationship between the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) and social movements as participants in the Cape Town AntiPrivatisation Forum (the Forum1 ). Establishing union–community links can be seen as a local defensive strategy against neoliberal attacks on the local state and people’s livelihoods (Desai 2003; Lumsden and Loftus 2003; Xali forthcoming). We examine the concrete dynamics and challenges that are encountered by organised workers and poor communities trying to unite their forces in post-apartheid South Africa. Although challenges to cooperation manifest themselves in a local context, we will argue that to fully understand the complex politics of this case, attention must also be paid to dynamics at the level of the nation-state. Our analysis is based on interviews with representatives from SAMWU and the Cape Town Anti-Privatisation Forum, participation in Forum meetings and a national conference of social movements (the 2004 Social Movement Indaba) as well as textual analyses of relevant  C

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SAMWU, COSATU and Forum documents (Lier 2005). The article is also informed by our previous research on the Western Cape AntiEviction Campaign (Oldfield and Stokke forthcoming). In the research process, we have spent considerable time with activists and unionists, and participated in their political activities, thereby gaining a vivid experience of their daily struggles. While this methodology constructs our work as a balancing act between research and activism, it also makes the work more socially relevant and grants access to points of view deeply rooted in local political practices.

Transcending Borders: Social Movement Unionism In his book Workers in a Lean World, Moody (1997) analyses the world economy from the standpoint of organised labour. Working his way through the rise of neoliberalism and the North–South divide, he arrives at the conclusion that an “international social-movement unionism” is the proper response of labour to the offensive directed against workers by capital interests and corporate power. Supporting this view Munck (2002:174) observes that a “new, more internationalist, as well as objectively ‘globalised’, labour movement is emerging with a strong social movement or community orientation”. This new interest in social movement unionism reflects the global situation facing labour. Casualising labour regimes, feminisation of the workforce and the increased economic competition of the post-Fordist era do not only represent a fundamental challenge to the traditional labour movement, they have transformed the character of the working class itself: This very class was in the midst of change: its composition was becoming more diverse in most places, as women and immigrants composed a larger proportion of the workforce, and its organizations were in flux— somewhere still declining, somewhere growing, everywhere changing (Moody 1997:270).

Within human geography, Castree et al (2004) connect the question of scale to the issue of difference, providing social movement unionism with a geographical rationale (see also the July 2001 theme issue of Antipode). In fact, the frequent use of the concept “new internationalism” among labour scholars could suggest that geographical “up-scaling” represents the essence of this new approach. But such “up-scaling” is only one of many strategies employed by contemporary trade unions. A more overarching principle of social movement unionism is one of transcending borders. As trade unions build alliances across national borders, they simultaneously seek to avoid containing themselves within the limits of their traditional social base: the white, male industrial workers. Working people worldwide have become an increasingly heterogeneous group without an unquestioned allegiance to socialist ideology  C

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and global worker solidarity. To reach these constituencies the trade union movement must actively construct an inter-place solidarity that unites the multitude of worker identities (Castree et al 2004). The need to transcend borders does not end at the brink of formal labour. One of the most characteristic effects of the globalised world economy has been a high degree of informalisation, and the brunt of this informalisation has found place among working women in the global South. A traditional union membership model reserved for formally employed workers effectively excludes a huge proportion of the working population, and will consolidate an unrepresentative gender and ethnic composition. In the words of Munck (2002:116), taking on the challenge of informal labour represents “the litmus test of the continued relevance of the trade unions to the world’s workers today”. The remedy then seems to be a dual and interrelated transgression of borders: going global and going social: GSMU [Global social movement unionism] may be said to exist when unions move beyond their traditional workplace boundaries to form alliances with other civil society movements within the nation state, whilst at the same time creating a new global union form. (Lambert and Webster 2001:350)

Although references to social movement unionism in the labour literature do not represent a consistent picture, they all seem to envision an idealtype social movement unionism. We will focus specifically on the aspects of social movement unionism that relate to cooperation between unions and other actors in civil society. This leaves out issues such as collective bargaining, internal union procedures and international labour action, although they also belong to a movement-oriented union strategy. For the sake of our analysis, we will conceptualise social movement unionism on a threefold basis. To begin with, certain aims and objectives are central to this union strategy. According to Moody (1997:290), the scope is in itself one of the focal characteristics of social movement unionism: “What this current shares is not a single organization or a central leadership, but a view of what unionism can be in today’s globalizing world”. Social movement unions reach beyond the realm of production and outside the factory gates. Their agenda thus includes issues of consumption and transport, but also gender issues, environmental issues and rights-based approaches. They do so through forging links with other actors in civil society, organising around common interests. The relations built through this process are strategic and transformative, as opposed to merely tactical and instrumental, and while these networks comprise multiple identities, they are united by a class vision (Lipsig-Mumme 2003; Munck 2002). Recent union experiences have shown that potential allies can be found in many camps: communitybased organisations, women groups, youth groups, churches,  C

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non-governmental organisations (NGOs), environmental groups, lesbian and gay groups and other social movements. In some cases this will materialise through single-issue campaigns, although it ultimately could bring the union towards an extensive social agenda. Social movement unionism is based on the assumption that the interests of the organised working class harmonise with the interests of the broader working-class public. Joint action between unions and communities is seen as a way of further harmonising these interests in places and on issues where solidarity is not yet strong (Moody 1997; Waterman 2001). This recognises the complexity of the working class as discussed above, and the multiple identities that social movement unionism must aspire to embrace within its potential constituency (Munck 2002). Secondly, social movement unionism, as the name suggests, pivots on the cooperation between organisations. An interesting question in this regard is what role the trade unions are granted in this broader fight. Moody puts the union movement in the forefront of this alliance, justifying it through the ideological argument of working class allegiance and the strategic argument of the union movement’s relative strength: Unions take an active lead in the streets, as well as in politics. They ally with other social movements, but provide a class vision and content that make for a stronger glue than that which usually holds electoral or temporary coalitions together . . . Social-movement unionism implies an active strategic orientation that uses the strongest of society’s oppressed and exploited, generally organized workers, to mobilize those who are less able to sustain self-mobilization: the poor, the unemployed, the casualized workers, the neighborhood organizations. (Moody 1997:276, italics added)

This leadership role of trade unions is coupled with a rationale of mutual exchange: unions provide economic leverage and organisational resources, whereas social movements and community organisations provide direct links to communities and mass mobilisation. Waterman takes a different approach to the role of the trade unions, advocating a labour movement that is not “claiming to be nor subordinating itself to a ‘vanguard’ or ‘sovereign’ organisation” (Waterman 2001:316). He warns against trade unions, or political parties, taking on a vanguard role in a broader movement, emphasising horizontal networking rather than traditional hierarchical structures. Waterman acknowledges that his perspective challenges the position of the traditional trade unions, and takes a head-on approach towards this criticism: For unions or socialists to condemn, or even criticise, NGOs as lacking in “democracy” or “representativity” is to misunderstand the new principles, forms and practices of radical-democratic social movements . . . [N]etworking or, indeed, NGOs, they represent a major source of, or resource for, renovation and movement within civil society, in  C

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relation to capital and state and within or between such organisations as trade unions. An international unionism concerned with being radicaldemocratic and internationalist will learn this, or it will stagnate. (Waterman 2001:327)

Wanting to steer away from a conception of cooperation based on a traditional “aid model”, he advocates a two-way solidarity where, in addition to direct financial assistance, flows of political support and joint creative work benefit all parties involved in cooperation. The third tenet of social movement unionism pertains to an active trade union involvement in civil society. The social movement union is perceived as driven by bottom-up democratic practices and a commitment by the union organisation as a whole. Observers have stressed how the members of these unions are not blind followers of their professional officials, instead they engage actively in defining the union’s agenda (Moody 1997). Political mobilisation and action is therefore driven by the rank-and-file of the union. The contours of a distinct organisational view can be discerned where unions are “favouring shop floor democracy and encouraging direct horizontal relations between workers and between the workers and other popular/democratic social forces” (Waterman 2001:317). At this stage, however, it becomes important to move the discussion away from the level of global model. By failing to take local agency into consideration, the sweeping accounts above end up as abstract, even structuralist, depictions. On the other hand, we do not advocate romanticised local solutions. Rejecting “regressive localism” while at the same time presenting a local case study draws inspiration from Hart’s (2002) study of places of power at the local scale in post-apartheid South Africa. Although she relates micro-level political dynamics to processes of globalisation, she consciously surpasses a determinist account of local actors following global capitalism’s every dictate. Through a Lefebvrian conception of spatiality she conceives local cases as actively constructed social spaces where “room to manoeuvre is always present but never unconstrained” (Hart 2002:36). This article uses a local case in a similar vein, not to atomise agency, but to examine the interaction of political, economic and cultural processes at different spatial scales. There are several general points to be made on the importance of the local sphere in this regard. In our view, any prospects of global social movement unionism will depend on an organic and dynamic local social movement unionism. Manifestations of global unity, be it in Seattle or Johannesburg, will achieve little without corresponding alliances being forged at the level of the community, the workplace and the local state. In other words, aspirations of bottom-up democracy, active member base and transformative links all fall short if they are not materialised in the daily lives and communities of workers.  C

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Scholars such as Lopez (2004) have shown the need for case studies of workers organising in specific regions and sectors to understand how unionism adjusts to and takes on these challenges. Analysing these structural shifts does not conflict with focusing on local agency and place-bound unionism. Case studies have shown how local trade union initiatives might have profound effects on globalised systems, insofar as they strategically make use of and understand the interconnectedness of the global economy (Herod 2001). Likewise, the effects of social movement unionism could also be more substantial through coordinated inter-place actions. The local scale is also important in relation to political systems and cultures, as they reveal how union–community links are conditioned by their local political context as well as politics on a national scale. According to Lopez (2004), studying local social movement union should also address issues of organisation. The relative strength and the resource base of community organisations and local trade union branches are not necessarily proportionate to their national or global counterparts (Castree et al 2004). As will be shown, the case of the Cape Town Anti-Privatisation Forum illustrates how a local initiative has met structural, political and organisational challenges, and how these challenges are connected to different spatial scales. Such contextualised research on social movement unionism contributes to an understanding of union strategies that neither reduces them to historical peculiarities nor advocates a universal model.

New Occasions for Social Movement Unionism The South African union experience has been brought up as a model of social movement unionism, together with other semi-peripheral countries, notably South Korea and Brazil (Moody 1997; Munck 2002; Xali forthcoming). Seidman (1994) observes that these late industrialisers have focused on production for export in a competitive international context and that this has reduced the impetus to soften their repressive labour regimes. But as economic growth failed and the consensus between state and capital became more fragile, industrial workers exploited this weakness not only to establish militant labour unions, but also to engage with the broader working class in anti-authoritarian social movements. Lopez (2004) shows that recent union developments in Canada and the US indicate that community-oriented unionism is an emerging phenomenon even in core countries. Once-industrial regions and union strongholds now face deindustrialisation and retrenchments in a context of deteriorating legal protection for labour rights. The service industry that gradually replaces the old industrial economy offers minimal wages and job security, and union organisation of workers in this sector has, until recently, been marginal. In this situation, traditional business unionism  C

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is bound to lose and disruptive tactics, public protest and links to communities are seen as more effective strategies. In South Africa, social movement unionism traditionally pertains to the specific role played by trade unions in the anti-apartheid struggle. In a situation where the major political parties were banned and in exile, black trade unions took advantage of their formal recognition and spearheaded a resistance movement in the 1980s that toppled the apartheid regime in the early 1990s. In the post-apartheid context, COSATU’s alliance with the ANC government has put constraints on the autonomy of the union movement. Labour organisations are now expected to partake in constructively building the South African democracy. Previous tactics of rebellion and ungovernability are considered pass´e and inappropriate. Present-day social movement unionism is therefore not a matter of revitalising an old repertoire. Rather, it refers to the challenge faced by the unions in creating new links with movements and organisations in civil society to tackle shared political problems. Since the fall of apartheid, South Africa has been described as the “[World Bank’s] showcase for the greater efficiencies that could be achieved through privatization and liberalization of the market” (Harvey 2003:159). Despite a pronounced commitment to redistribution and redress before the first democratic elections in 1994, the ANC came on increasingly familiar terms with growth-centred macroeconomic policies as they swept into office. The 1996 Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) plan most vividly demonstrated this macroeconomic reorientation. Insofar as the GEAR plan identified service delivery as a key task, its emphasis on fiscal control led to reduced overall social spending through the public sector, making it hard to redress inequalities and facilitate opportunities for the country’s poor. As the racialised institutions making up the apartheid state were in need of profound reforms, the South African municipal sector has been in a state of transition since 1994. However, processes of deracialisation and development at a local level have been circumscribed by the unfavourable effects of the neoliberal model of growth (Atkinson 2003). The move from a “statist” delivery model to a neoliberal one reduced and changed the role of the local state (McDonald and Smith 2002). As services are put out to tender or subjected to cost recovery policies, job insecurity, worsened work conditions and service disconnections have followed. These adverse effects are most directly experienced by workers and poor (Hart 2002). The public sector unions have participated in the local state restructuring, but have also been the starkest critic of these processes when they have been followed by job losses, reduced job security and aggravated working conditions. In the wake of GEAR, popular resistance outside the Tripartite Alliance has been articulated more clearly. As a response to the cut-offs and to related grievances such as evictions or lack of land distribution,  C

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poor people in townships and rural areas around the country have organised in community groups employing defensive strategies to resist what they perceive as attacks on their livelihoods. Central to their struggle are the cost and quality of basic services such as water and electricity, as well as evictions and forced removals from their houses. These new social movements are not using elections or strikes as their means of influence, but rather mass mobilisation and direct action (Desai 2003). The grassroot support of these movements should not be underestimated and their existence has created repercussions in the leadership of COSATU and the ANC. Although they remain under-resourced and fragmented, their constituency, politics and methods of action justify characterising them as “the most relevant post-1994 social force from the point of view of challenging the prevailing political economy” (Desai 2003:25). The turn of the century saw a revival of community mobilisation and protest in Cape Town, as it did elsewhere in South Africa. While these organisations fight over specifically local issues, many of them have started to collaborate and enter alliances. They are all facing similar challenges and share the experience of poverty, corrupt local bureaucracies and state repression (Desai 2003). The most profiled of these social movements in the Cape region is the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign. The Campaign consists of a number of community-based organisations struggling against service disconnections and evictions. Although they have a formal structure, participant organisations continue to fight their own local struggles in various ways with various means (Oldfield and Stokke forthcoming). The vigilant character of the social movements blends uneasily with the responsible image of the government-aligned labour movement. However, battles over service delivery at the level of the local state suggest that unions organising municipal workers have political interests in common with the emerging movements. Union members are concerned with these issues as producers; their job security, work conditions and wage level are suffering from the neoliberal shift. But as most public sector workers reside in areas dealing with these issues on a day-to-day basis, they are also concerned with delivery as users of public services (Xali forthcoming). The need to join forces with the social movements has been voiced in public sector unions since the late 1990s, suggesting that the post-apartheid experience has lain open new occasions for social movement unionism.

The Cape Town Anti-Privatisation Forum The Cape Town Anti-Privatisation Forum is a network of community groupings, NGOs, activists and trade unions opposed to privatisation. The trade union that initiated the forum, and has shown the most consistent commitment to it, is the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU). SAMWU organises at present 122,000 workers in local  C

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government and is affiliated to COSATU. The Cape Metropolitan branch (the Metro branch) is one of SAMWU’s most powerful local structures, boasting a membership of 18,000. SAMWU’s National Office is, unlike those of most South African unions, located in Cape Town, sharing a building with the Metro branch in the suburb of Athlone. SAMWU passed a Central Executive Committee resolution in 1996 stating that the union should initiate forums to facilitate collaboration with communities on privatisation-related issues. As the municipal trade union most vocally opposed to privatisation, SAMWU, together with township activists, residents’ groups and certain NGOs, initiated anti-privatisation forums in Cape Town and Johannesburg in 1999– 2000. This was a reaction to the city authorities’ restructuring plans and their perceived neoliberal agenda. Initially known as the Local Government Transformation Forum, the Cape Town Anti-Privatisation Forum emerged as a direct response to the Unicity Commission’s restructuring plan for the city. Nearly 40 organisations have, in some way or another, been involved in the Forum, but the participant base has not been very stable. The supreme decision-making body of the Forum organisation is the plenary meeting, held on a regular basis and open to all activists of the affiliated organisations. The plenary meeting appoints a working committee to maintain the regular operation and coordination of the Forum. The Cape Town Anti-Privatisation Forum has stimulated social movement activity in Cape Town. The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign was, for instance, born out of their early meetings. However, the social movements’ involvement in the Forum has varied. While some social movements have joined the Forum, there are also those who have abstained or gradually withdrawn. Lately, the Campaign’s presence and engagement in the Forum has become increasingly tense and sparse to the point where it is no longer formally participating (although individual activists and community committees do).

Sketching out a Mandate: From Union Strategy to Political Arena The aims and objectives of the Cape Town Anti-Privatisation Forum have been continuously shaped and contested since its inception. The visions of the Forum are not identical with SAMWU’s initial motivation, although the politics of the trade union inarguably has influenced the programme of the Forum to a large extent. From the union’s point of view, three related motives can be identified. Firstly, SAMWU had been running a national anti-privatisation campaign during the late 1990s, empowered with staff and organisational resources. The importance of mobilising communities to support the campaign was acknowledged as pivotal to its success. This campaign  C

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had already waned by the time of the Forum’s inception, but the initiative must nevertheless be seen in light of this. Secondly, the trade union saw a harmony of interest with communities that suffered from problems related to service delivery. Located in the aforementioned producer– user squeeze, SAMWU members are not only depot workers whose working conditions and job security were under attack, but also community members threatened by service cut-offs and poor delivery. The trade union and the social movements draw their membership from the same working class communities, paving the way for organising on the basis of common interests, geographical proximity and an “awareness of a common adversary” (Xali forthcoming:27). Thirdly, SAMWU’s invitation was sent out at a time when the union faced a very specific political context, namely the Unicity Commission and their recommendations on the restructuring of the Cape Town Metropolitan Area. This process was formally open to community involvement and participation, and the local union officials wanted to make use of this while simultaneously lobbying support from communities for their anti-privatisation policies. As the Forum was conceived as a single-issue forum, it was initially not seen as particularly ideological. The union officials were eager to keep other issues from creating divisions. Privatisation is a politically loaded issue, however, encouraging a range of political actors to get involved, and the Forum gradually took on a leftwing ideological profile. But while they could all agree on condemning capitalism, imperialism, globalisation and privatisation, identifying what they were for proved to be an intractable task. Consequently, political debate took up considerable time in the formative phase. Attempts to include gender, unemployment and environmental issues into this political agenda have failed to result in action. In spite of the participation of environmental organisations, environmental issues have not been targeted specifically, nor has the Forum managed to effectively incorporate a gender perspective. In terms of their political agenda this is particularly regrettable as it is documented that women suffer disproportionately from the adverse effects of service privatisation (Samson 2004). Although neither the Campaign nor the Forum have politicised housing and public services as gender issues, these issues have been acknowledged as critical for cooperation between SAMWU members and the various anti-eviction committees in Cape Town. While the bulk of the active members of the Campaign are women, this is not the case with the trade union. Therefore, SAMWU and Forum practice must be sensitive to the female base of the social movements, not to undermine these linkages. Politics around unemployment does also highlight differences between unions and social movements. This has particularly been the case in instances where community members, driven by poverty and unemployment, have participated in community  C

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projects such as meter reading for private companies. Needless to say, participation in these projects does not go down well with SAMWU members, who view it as self-exploitation and categorically reject the outsourcing of municipal responsibilities to private contractors (Xali forthcoming). The Forum tried to operationalise their anti-privatisation stance by identifying two main purposes: to unify the struggles of the workers and communities and to assist participant organisations through various support functions. Thus far, however, it has not achieved the organisational capacity, popular support and political strength allowing effective political mobilisation to materialise under a Forum umbrella. The idea of an “umbrella body” itself triggers mixed reactions amongst the social movements, as it implies a hierarchy in which the social movements are to be subordinated. Nor has the Forum been particularly successful in forging links between the Capetonian organisations and nationwide networks. True, they have participated in the events surrounding the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 and at national meetings and workshops, such as the Social Movement Indaba, but their success in bringing together union and community forces in these forums has been limited. While falling short of effectively uniting local progressive forces, the Forum’s success has been on a more modest scale as an arena for dialogue. Providing a regular meeting place and a certain level of communication has created an environment wherein organisations can cooperate and assist each other. The supporter role has also proved a tough challenge for the Forum. Educational programmes, information sharing and consciousness building have been suggested as ways in which the Forum could contribute. The rationale has been to raise political consciousness on anti-privatisation issues by giving organisational support to community organisations. Forum initiatives to run workshops and meetings in communities have been limited to isolated events organised by individual working committee members. Unionists and activists have so far initiated most joint initiatives without any direct relation to the Forum. An example in this regard is when SAMWU members taught community members to fix water leakages and reconnect disconnected water supply (Xali forthcoming).

Claims to Legitimacy: Bridging Organisational Difference References to social movement unionism in labour literature, and in particular Waterman’s (1995) model of “new social unionism”, outline a scenario where autonomous organisations cooperate on an equal basis, guided by democratic principles. These virtues have a strong intuitive appeal, and unionists and community activists alike employ these terms to express their view on organisational issues. But what these terms mean represents a matter of debate.  C

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The “mass base” concept has argumentative force in local South African politics. The extent to which the Forum is perceived to represent the masses determines its legitimacy. Groups directly linked to worker and community struggles, such as the University of Cape Town Workers’ Support Committee, are, together with SAMWU and the social movements, seen to represent the mass base of the Forum. It is to these organisations the Forum owes its mandate. But the trade union has not managed to mobilise their mass base behind the activities of the Forum. Moreover, the actual mass base of the social movements remains a contested issue. While their leaders claim to represent an extensive popular constituency, voices in the union have questioned the veracity of this claim. Although activists might exaggerate the size of their organisations, these doubts also reveal prejudice on the unionists’ behalf. Trade unions have formalised membership and information about their size is public and verifiable, which may lead unionists to dismiss organisations with a different constitution. Identifying the mass base of the Forum, or the lack of it, easily becomes a rhetorical exercise, and Forum representatives strive to accommodate differing views on constituency and mass base into their activity. Accompanying the “mass base” discussion is the question of what role organisations without a popular constituency should play. The make-up of the Forum has been characterised by a strong presence of NGOs and political groupings. Some of these are organisations with employed staff and funding, others are not. Ideologically they represent a continuum of left positions from social democratic to revolutionary Marxist; some work on a mandate trying to formulate government policies for communities, others view themselves as the embryo of a revolutionary vanguard party. While they often stress the importance of helping to “build organisation” and offer educational programmes, some activists have experienced that political dictates and ambitions have gone hand in hand with NGO assistance. The NGOs’ access to funding has nonetheless benefited the social movements, and certain social movement organisations have on occasion invited NGOs and political groupings to hold workshops on political issues. As the NGO presence has been debated since the Forum’s inception, the different parties seem to have gradually reached a consensus that organisations without a popular base do have a role to play. However, in opposition to Waterman’s call for organisations to cooperate on an equal footing, the Cape Town Anti-Privatisation Forum has made a distinction between supportive and active roles to secure its commitment to workers and poor. The procedures of representation in Forum meetings reflect this distinction. As the organisation was confronted with different organisational dynamics, the question of representation gradually came to the fore. Given the strong NGO presence, the Forum could easily become a think-tank for intellectuals and NGO professionals. The Forum  C

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has therefore taken active measures to accommodate its allegiance to communities and workers. Although the plenary meetings are open to all, only a few representatives of each organisation tend to attend these meetings, usually selected according to their own internal democracy. At the time of writing, all attendants enjoy equal voting rights, but a proposition to let constituency size determine voting rights is under way (Cape Town Anti-Privatisation Forum 2005). In the working committee, on the other hand, social movement activists have occupied few positions, and even SAMWU officials have given way to NGO professionals. By professionalising the working committee their ability to handle correspondence, summoning and paperwork can be improved. Still, calls for a more worker- and community-driven coordination have been voiced in the Forum. Diverse modes of organisational democracy put the interaction between organisations to the test, but also the dynamics within each organisation. Here, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign provides the most illustrative case. Firstly, the various anti-eviction committees display great diversity in their organisational form (Oldfield and Stokke forthcoming). Some community organisations within the Campaign rely on an executive committee with a mandate from the community, others make decisions exclusively on the basis of community meetings; some summon their constituency on a monthly basis, others have mass meeting twice a week (Xali forthcoming). Their diversity notwithstanding, these community organisations share certain organisational characteristics that set them apart from other Forum participants. Although they have a mass base, theirs is loosely networked in contrast to the bureaucracy of a trade union. Many activists share ideological points of view with many NGO intellectuals and left groupings, but they come from a different class background and lack their resources. In general, these movements are more flexible in form than trade unions and NGOs. From the point of view of other organisations, this may threaten their organisational democracy. Lack of formalised leadership coupled with strained communication channels challenge the accountability of the organisations. This has led some NGO professionals and unionists to characterise their internal affairs as undemocratic, and their mandates as vague. Secondly, as the committees are rooted in different political cultures and face different immediate challenges, they also differ in their choice of strategies: re-instatement of families into houses from which they have been evicted; marches and pickets; reconnecting water fittings that have been cut off; barricading areas that face “invasion by the sheriffs”; as well as direct confrontations with the police and the army when they accompany the sheriffs (Xali forthcoming). While actions in certain areas suggest that they have adopted an increasingly militant line, other committees have chosen a more technical and juridical approach. Even  C

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activists that on occasion have clashed with the police have a day-to-day agenda that is characterised by legal aid to community members and lowprofile organisational work (Oldfield and Stokke forthcoming). Still, a handful of controversial episodes have contributed to stigmatise all anti-eviction committees as destructive. This has served as an impetus for many SAMWU members to refrain from participating in social movement activity, regardless of their opposition to evictions (Xali forthcoming). From the social movements’ point of view, however, the reluctance of unionists and NGO representatives to take militant action reflects a lack of commitment. These divisions demonstrate how the Campaign accommodates a range of political strategies. While some community organisations seek political consultations and negotiations, others perceive any engagement with local state structures as futile. SAMWU does not share this general suspicion towards formal authority engagement, as their activity is based on negotiations with the local state as an employer. Reflecting these divisions, the Forum has made few or no inroads into the formal structures of power, although they have attempted to do so.

Trade Union Involvement: Engaging Both Ends of the Hierarchy The trade union represents a potentially unique ally for social movements, most notably in the form of organisational resources, political capacity and their capacity to go on strike. SAMWU has demonstrated political will to act on privatisation matters through participation in several nationwide anti-privatisation strikes, but has yet to display this strength in relation to the social movement agenda in Cape Town. SAMWU officials involved in the Forum have instead pursued a more modest target, confining themselves to encouraging ordinary members, shopstewards and National Office bearers to attend their meetings and other activities. For the union–community links to sustain and matter in the everyday lives of workers and communities, involving the rank-and-file of SAMWU members and shopstewards is of vital importance. Municipal workers in general have a strong consciousness about the problems of service delivery along with a committed responsibility towards their communities. They are virtually by definition opposed to privatisation, but few of them are informed of the activities of the Forum. Some SAMWU members were involved during the formative stages of the anti-eviction committees, although most of them have subsequently withdrawn. Municipal workers and social movement activists express solidarity for each other’s struggles and have suggested that they should work together on various issues: resource and skills exchange, water and electricity reconnections, strike action, empowerment and political  C

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education (Xali forthcoming). At present, however, there are almost no examples of joint activities at local or city level. If engaging the rank-and-file has proven troublesome, the upper layers of the union hierarchy have not been easier to mobilise. The co-existence of local and national SAMWU structures in the same building could presumptively facilitate communication and cooperation. Several National Office bearers participated in the early Forum meetings in 2000–2001, but the political development of the Forum has been watched with growing concern and their participation has waned. The national union leadership’s reluctance to engage with social movement organisations might also help explain why SAMWU’s intention to participate in a global social movement and international action addressing these issues has remained largely unexplored (Barchiesi 2001). Due to this reluctance to engage with social movement organisations as a national union, the Forum remains wholly dependent on the office bearers at the Metro branch and their personal commitment. Several trade unionists have actively assisted social movement activism, but they have clearly not been able to fully meet their expectations. Hamstrung by time constraints, they must juggle their activist commitment, their professional schedule and other obligations. Practical resource assistance is the most direct and visible union– community link. There is a strong need for channels of information and report among the social movements. Community activists usually lack phones or money to pay for transport, and this may prevent people from attending meetings and maintaining good communication with their constituencies. Furthermore, the costs of pamphlet production and other basic means of political action are hard to bear for unemployed and poor people. Even though SAMWU is a blue-collar union with limited resources, it has a paid-up membership that enables full-time staff and office facilities in the service of workers. Compared to the resource-poor social movements, a trade union like SAMWU is a rich organisation that can assist through basic means such as photocopying, phones and e-mails. Minor material contributions can make a major difference in solving judicial problems, facilitating political mobilisation and improving communication. SAMWU offices have on several occasions been placed at the disposal of social movement activity and Forum meetings. In 2002 the union even opened up a permanent office space for community activism. Here, community activists were granted access to Internet, telephone and photocopying facilities. This office was closed a year later. The circumstances around this decision have been subject to different interpretations, but regardless of whether it was lack of office space, misuse of resources or a political dictate that prompted the closure of this office, it marks the failure of SAMWU’s most direct and formalised attempt at assisting social movements in Cape Town.  C

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Hegemony Armoured by Coercion: Politics of Loyalty and Dissent The Cape Town Anti-Privatisation Forum operates in a local context and involves a relatively limited number of individuals and organisations, but cannot be fully understood without consideration of national political dynamics. Most important in this regard is SAMWU’s commitment to the Tripartite Alliance of ANC, SACP and COSATU. The Metro branch entered a contested political terrain when they initiated the Cape Town Anti-Privatisation Forum. While civil society involvement might have been union policy a few years ago, civil society is no longer an unproblematic ally after the emergence of adversarial post-apartheid social movements. SAMWU’s commitment to the Forum has therefore been circumscribed by the union’s political allegiances, demonstrating the difficult balancing act between political loyalty and contestation faced by trade unions (Tørres 2005). Loyalty to the Tripartite Alliance means loyalty to the ANC. The relationship between the new social movements and the ANC is marked by ambivalence, reflecting the continuities and changes between the anti-apartheid struggle of the past and the anti-privatisation mobilisation of the present (Ballard 2005). Several social movements have gradually developed an antagonistic relationship to the party in government, yet employing combined political strategies of engagement and adversarial confrontation. Some movement activists remain ANC members while others have broken with the organisations or even been expelled (Ngwane 2003). The Forum emphasises that their target is the ANC’s neoliberal policies, not the ANC organisation. However, the ANC, mass media and the public have generally failed to appreciate this distinction. Consequently, social movements such as the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee and the Landless People’s Movement have a deterrent “anti-ANC” stigma attached to them. Although substantial parts of the South African population have experienced worsened livelihood conditions under the shift to neoliberalism and municipal cost recovery policies, they remain politically loyal to the ANC and somewhat sceptical towards the outspoken critique of the ruling party by new social movements. Many SAMWU members are actively involved in the local branches of ANC, the ANC Women League, the ANC Youth League and the Communist Party. The union member base is therefore unlikely to engage in head-on confrontation with the government party. Municipal workers are certainly intimidated by the threat of privatisation imminent in government policies, but they also see the ANC as the only viable vehicle for advancing the workers’ struggle. To SAMWU, this represents a perplexing dilemma. The union feels almost forced to choose, but in most instances the union has not been able to rise to this challenge (personal communication, Roger Ronnie, general secretary, SAMWU).  C

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Several scholars have pointed to the relevance of the Gramscian notion of hegemony for the understanding of these political dynamics (Hart 2002; Marais 2001). Hegemony refers to a ruling bloc’s capacity and multiple strategies for seizing and consolidating power. It is not merely based on economic concessions, but also on political discourses that offer cultural direction and moral leadership. While the state has the capacity to suppress its enemies by force, the backbone of hegemonic rule consists of winning the active consent of the people. This is done through an ongoing hegemonic struggle in civil society, and hence organisations in civil society are continuously evolving as political subjects (Sassoon 1980). Hegemony in post-apartheid South Africa revolves around claims to represent the interests of “people in struggle”. The hegemonic bloc of the Tripartite Alliance, on the one hand, possesses extensive symbolic capital rooted in and maintained through representations of the anti-apartheid struggle and post-apartheid political achievements. New post-apartheid social movements, on the other hand, mobilise communities in a continued struggle for socio-economic justice in the context of liberal democracy and neoliberalism. The ANC’s unrivalled position in South African politics can be traced back to its role in the anti-apartheid struggle, the strategic position it acquired in the transitional phase, and its ability to manufacture popular consent and build multi-class alliances throughout the post-apartheid era. The Tripartite Alliance has granted further legitimacy to the hegemonic position of the ANC in civil society (Marais 2001). However, this places the labour movement in an ambivalent position, as they try to juggle their allegiance to the party in power, their political opposition to neoliberal policies and their sympathy with oppositional community formations (Tørres 2005). Organised labour’s loyalty to the ANC is not only explained by their participation in Alliance structures, but is also based on political inclusion through cultural means. By making active use of symbolic resources that range from the role of the ANC in the liberation struggle and the transition to democracy to the charisma of key persons such as Nelson Mandela (the “Madiba factor”), the ruling party manages to manufacture a very high degree of consent and loyalty among South Africans, strikingly manifested in ANC’s large popular support in national elections. While the ruling bloc has proved effective in building consent in South African society, this process has been escorted by the exercise of coercion (Desai 2003). Police and civic authorities have recently met social movement activists with harsh treatment all over the country, with Cape Town being no exception. Harassment, arrests and court proceedings have countered popular resistance against forced removals, re-instatement of evicted households and service reconnections (Oldfield and Stokke forthcoming; Xali forthcoming). Court procedures  C

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add a dimension to the struggle of these activists that is time-consuming, discouraging and expensive. Thus, state repression has become a serious political obstacle for new community struggles. While the assistance of trade unions could play an important role in this situation, such support has largely depended on a few individuals at the trade union office trying to find lawyers and attract news coverage. The Forum has arranged a seminar for activists on how to deal with state repression and tried to build a network of lawyers to support activists in need of legal aid, but collaboration in this field has been limited and unsystematic. Through the various modes of state repression, social movements are branded as politically controversial and even criminal, thereby marginalising them from democratic politics and governance. This further weakens their organisational ability, and hence reduces the impetus of trade unions to seek their collaboration. In the post-apartheid context, dissenting social movements and their activists are increasingly facing what Gramsci described as “hegemony armoured by coercion” (Sassoon 1980:110).

Conclusion Working class unity faces structural constraints in a country where income inequality remains as unfair as during apartheid, workers are threatened by retrenchments and job insecurity, and substantial parts of the working class fail to see real improvement in living standards, social security and employment. Prospects of individual upward mobility, political ties to the party in power and an increasingly fragmented labour market have challenged class solidarity. In this situation, viable alliances of workers and poor must be rooted firmly in place-specific and case-specific struggles directly addressing the livelihoods of those involved. The struggle of SAMWU workers and communities against the commercialisation of services represents such a case. SAMWU’s ambiguous approach to its own initiative reveals that obstacles to unity are also found in the South African political system. The trade union’s allegiance to its political partners has prevented it from taking on a more active and leading role in the Forum. This means that social movement unionism in a local setting, or alternatively on the global scale, is contingent on political dynamics at the level of the nation-state. This has bearings for the nomination of South Africa as a role model of social movement unionism. The historical circumstances under which the union strategies of the 1980s originated are qualitatively different from those of today. This study also shows that local social movement unionism is a question of organisation. In this particular case, the challenges to cooperation are many: defining and meeting shared objectives, sustaining active union involvement, coming to terms with divergent  C

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organisational characteristics, and establishing a reciprocal exchange of resources to the benefit of all parties. Cooperation between trade unions and civil society actors is as much about encompassing different organisational forms and political tactics, as it is about reconciling political positions. In conclusion, the neoliberal world economy has transformed work and changed the premises for unionism, but at the same time opened up for new alliances in civil society. The need for community alliances has been recognised within the South African labour movement during and after apartheid, and suggests that social movement unionism might be a promising strategy for labour in the present world order. However, SAMWU’s community orientation remains a tale of unrealised potential. The way this local union initiative has been hamstrung by national political arrangements and ANC hegemony highlights how unionism still is conditioned by the politics of the nation-state and can only be understood on this basis. But for trade unions to successfully engage with the social movements of the poor they must also bridge organisational differences and overcome the resource scarcity that seems endemic to those marginalized in today’s world of work.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to express their gratitude to Archie Hearne, Sandra van Niekerk, Jeff Rudin and Roger Ronnie at the South African Municipal Workers Union; Mthetho Xali, Bobby Wilcox and Ronald Wesso at the Cape Town Anti-Privatisation Forum; and to Jonathan Grossman and Sophie Oldfield at the University of Cape Town.

Endnote 1 Although activists in Cape Town normally refer to the Cape Town Anti-Privatisation Forum and the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign by using their abbreviations, APF and AEC, we opt to refer to them as the Forum and the Campaign to make them easier to tell apart.

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