Politics makes an appalling farce of unity in diversity
April 17, 2009
 By Terry Bell
What happened brought to mind an oft quoted remark by Karl Marx: History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. And farce - "a ludicrous situation or action" - certainly seems to apply to Erwin and some of the former icons of the labour movement.
It applied to the once reviled Moses Mayekiso, an early general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) who was a guest of honour at his union's congress in October.
Sixteen days later, the newly elected Numsa executive deemed him to be a "sellout" and ordered that his name be obliterated from the union.
The executive was told that Mayekiso would "go to hell" for the "sin" of having resigned from the ANC and for having attended the "national convention" in Johannesburg that led to the launch of the Congress of the People (Cope).
Alec Erwin, who walked out of his ministerial post in protest at the controversial "redeployment" of former president Thabo Mbeki, brought the wrath of Cosatu down on his head by stating that, in protest against the current ANC leadership, he also planned to vote for Cope in next week's elections.
He was characterised as an opportunist by Cosatu president S'dumo Dlamini.
Speaking at the funeral of Cosatu second deputy president Violet Seboni, Dlamini claimed that Erwin "used to hate and distrust the (exiled) ANC"; that he had joined the SA Communist Party (SACP) as a supporter of Chris Hani, but switched loyalty to the winning Mbeki faction when Hani was assassinated in 1993.
Not only does this promote the politically charged rumour of a Hani/Mbeki feud, it is also factually incorrect.
A plethora of documentary evidence makes it clear that Erwin, if anything, bent over backwards to work with the exiled ANC. He only stopped being a full member of the SACP in 2007, when he stopped paying his monthly subscription.
It was Mayekiso who left the SACP after Hani's death, stating that, with Hani gone, there was no hope of the SACP being salvaged from its distorted "Stalinist" past.
Mayekiso and Erwin were recruited into the SACP in Harare in 1990 by Hani and former SACP chairman Joe Slovo.
Like Mayekiso, Erwin was one of the "workerist" trade unionists who helped to build the modern union movement. But he and other students who had turned their backs on their backgrounds and joined the anti-apartheid union struggle were denigrated as "political hoboes" throughout those early years. They were part of a trade union movement the SACP had decreed could not be "progressive".
It was only when reality finally overwhelmed the ideological nonsense of the SACP that Cosatu, with all its diverse ideological strands, was accepted.
In the absence of an alternative to the ANC and SACP, most workerists joined the ANC as a broad, anti-apartheid front. It was their right to do so, as it is now their right to choose whom they wish to support.
The International Labour Organisation and unions stress that unity in diversity is an essential principle of trade unionism.
This week's example of historical revisionism - whether out of ignorance or malice - undermines this principle.
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