Remaking the South African Left
A revived South African trade union movement could challenge the ANC from its left.
In the early hours of Saturday, November 8, after a sixteen-hour meeting of South Africa’s largest trade union federation, the central-executive committee of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) voted to expel their largest, most powerful, and most radical affiliate, the National Union of the Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA).
NUMSA has a membership of around 350,000, but when the seven affiliates who dropped out of COSATU in protest are included, the federation stands to lose 750,000 members. These unions are demanding that COSATU hold a special national congress through which the pro-African National Congress (ANC) leadership of COSATU can be removed.
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