This thesis examines the processes that have led to the fracturing of the
Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), South Africa’s largest trade
union federation, in the wake of the federations largest affiliate, the National Union of
Metalworkers of South Africa, (NUMSA), resolving to break with the Tripartite
Alliance at its December 2013 Congress. The Alliance between COSATU, the
African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party has been
in power in South Africa since the end of Apartheid in 1994, and the split that has
taken place within COSATU is closely related to the political dynamics of this
partnership. Furthermore, the thesis considers the implications for the labour
movement, and for labour relations in general, in South Africa. The thesis represents
an examination of competing traditions and political agencies of labour unionism in
South Africa that predate the formation of both COSATU and the Tripartite Alliance.
This is done to provide a fresh perspective on debates around the relationship
between COSATU in the ANC, which have generally focused on the durability and
desirability of this Alliance between organised labour and the ruling party, rather than
on the heterogenous political and organisational tendencies that exist within the
COSATU itself. In doing so, while acknowledging the role that the ANC’s record in
government and the response of the state towards labour mobilisations has played in
the split that has taken place, the thesis argues that the political dynamics of
competing traditions and agencies within COSATU itself must be understood in order
to develop a complete analysis of what has taken place. The thesis is informed by
qualitative fieldwork conducted in the form of semi-structured interviews and
participant observations, carried out within NUMSA grassroots structures and among
grassroots NUMSA representatives. The contribution to knowledge made by this
thesis is two-fold. Firstly, the thesis draws upon fieldwork to provide an account of
the Tripartite Alliance as it has been understood by NUMSA activists, and an
understanding of what led the union to resolve to break with the Alliance and begin
the process of exploring new working-class political formations such as the United
Front and the establishment of a worker’s socialist party. Secondly, while the thesis
situates its understanding of the South African labour movement in both the pre- and
post-Apartheid contexts in the theoretical framework provided by John Kelly’s (1998)
Mobilisation Theory, the thesis proposes an adaptation to this theory in the form of
the concept of Permanent Contention, in order to allow for the development of an
account that considers both the dynamic interaction of contention between labour
movements and the state, but also the dynamic interaction of competing political and
organisational tendencies, traditions and models of unionism within labour
movements themselves. Through this process, the conflict that exists within the
South African labour movement is conceptualised as primarily representing a conflict
between populist and shopfloor traditions of labour unionism, and it is argued that
the split that has taken place within COSATU, and even the new labour federation
that has been formed in the wake of this split, the South African Federation of Trade
Unions (SAFTU) represents the re-emergence of a historically contingent tradition of
labour unionism; the tradition of the shopfloor.
