Unions do well in defending Godsell inside labour
November 20, 2009
 By Terry Bell
Genuine trade unionists and their organisations hold no brief for bosses and for capitalists of whatever colour or stripe. But they are also aware that there are times when it is perfectly feasible to be on the same side as an employer on a particular issue.
Apartheid was a classic example, where the principle of majority rights happened to coincide with the interests of modern - and modernising - capital. It was, as the more ideologically inclined might note, a case of the revolutionaries being prepared to steady their aim by resting their rifles on the shoulders of tomorrow's foes as together they faced a common, racist, enemy.
For unionists, it was a matter of seizing the chances offered, while never forgetting that bosses remain bosses; that, for many employers, an anti-apartheid orientation had more to do with profit than principle.
But when capitalists - for their own purposes - agree that certain laws are unjust, they will at least tacitly support the moral right of unions and other democratic forces to be no respecters of those laws: in the face of injustice, morality trumps legality. So there are times when unions, as part of the broader democratic movement, and capitalists can find common ground.
This was the situation during the transition from our racially exclusive past to the present, non-racial parliamentary democracy. In that transition period, Bobby Godsell, the recently departed chairman of Eskom, was the president of the Chamber of Mines and one of Anglo American's younger stars.
He was then - and remains - a free marketeer, but one who opposed the concept of an ethnic state as much as he opposed the idea of a classless society. He was and is, as National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) general secretary Frans Baleni agreed this week, an anti-racist capitalist.
This was something Godsell made clear in a 1993 interview in which he referred to what was then happening as the "rapid retreat from commandist notions" that had given rise to the centralised racist tyranny of apartheid.
He welcomed the demise of that system and, as Baleni stresses, worked with the likes of Cyril Ramaphosa to help bring about a negotiated settlement.
Ramaphosa was the general secretary of the NUM. Before that, as a lawyer, he had worked with Anglo American where he had dealings with Godsell - and holds him in high esteem.
The NUM has 11 000 members working for Eskom and there is no record of them raising any questions about Godsell as chairman. However, many of them were far from complimentary about now departed chief executive Jacob Maroga.
These were all reasons why Baleni came to the defence of Godsell when Godsell was accused by the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) and the Black Management Forum (BMF), among others, of being a racist. This certainly did not indicate, as the ANCYL claimed, that Baleni had become a "spokesperson for white monopoly capital".
Baleni has again pointed out that, apart from anything else, such accusations make examples of real racism more difficult to counter. It was a point also taken up by Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi. Both union leaders diplomatically refer to "outsiders" who had no right, morally or legally, to interfere in the Eskom debacle. Some unionists, anonymously, but less diplomatically, feel that self-interest lay behind much of the interference.
As one noted: "BMF people support this thing (Godsell is a racist) because they think, if we do so, tenders will come; for the Youth League, they think: 'This is a ticket upstairs'."
Whatever the motivation behind the allegations of racism, they have thrown into sharp relief the role of trade unions and the state, as well as exposing worrying attitudes towards corporate governance and the manner in which Eskom, in particular, has been run.
What many within the labour movement are now realising is that much of the furore surrounding Godsell, Maroga and Eskom exposed an attitude that sees party political demands as more important than law based on the egalitarian principles of the constitution; that narrow, sectarian interests are being advanced in the name of transformation.
The responsibility for this must be shared by all parties. Ignorance of constitutional provisions may have motivated elements such as the BMF and the ANCYL. A similar accusation can be laid at the door of the government. And it is successive governments, shareholder proxies for all citizens, that must accept most of the blame for the mess at Eskom. The labour movement also bears responsibility for not campaigning more loudly and more vigorously against what has been a disaster in the making for more than the past decade.
The roots of the problem go back 25 years to when the apartheid state scrapped Eskom's capital fund. That was followed in the new dispensation by its commercialisation, turning it from a public service into a putative cash cow for the government.
This concentration on the bottom line provided R15 billion for government coffers, but at great cost. Coal stocks were sold, capital expenditure cut to a minimum and short-term planning meant Eskom was caught short by the coal price boom.
According to one NUM official: "We should have made more noise, but at least it's now all out in the open."
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