Cosatu’s shutdown flop should give ANC sleepless nights ahead of 2024

When the first strikes were recorded, they happened on ships, with the crews “striking” at the masts of their vessels in protest.

It was either symbolic or, sometimes, with the intention to do damage. Either way, the origin of the modern-day strike was a show of the economic and political power that the workforce had.

That’s what made strikes effective. When bosses saw the damage that could be done by the workforce, or were made to properly understand the economic value of the workforce, they knew they had to appease their employees.

Today, however, strikes are habitual. Sadly, those who strike are often in the context of the work that they do, dispensable and replaceable.

This is why it was a good idea to protect strikers and create a basket of rights that allow them to indicate their displeasure while displacing the employer’s ability to replace them.

Of course, this created a whole set of legal complications, but this past week’s strikes showed something innovative that should have our political leadership trembling with fear.

But wasn’t it a flop?

You’ll be forgiven for having a little laugh at Cosatu’s attempt to galvanise its membership into a national protest against a variety of national issues involving costs of living. After all, those who are in positions to dislike unions often like to see them fail.

Also Read: National shutdown: ‘It’s not about the numbers’

Weirdly, being unable to get enough feet on the street for this protest might have been a little scary for Cosatu, but if you’re thinking about the endgame, this failure highlighted something far scarier to their tripartite alliance partners: If Cosatu can’t get people on the streets to protest legitimate issues, how are they going to get people to the ballot box in 2024?

Much like a symbolic strike at the mast of a ship without actually doing any damage to it, Cosatu has shown the nation that its members are no longer as politically invested as they once were.

Either that or they’re unable to mobilise like they used to.

Take “mobilisation” out of any South African politician’s lexicon and you’ll probably render them politically useless. Take the ability to mobilise away from any political player’s toolkit and you’ll render them politically irrelevant.

This week, we were shown the increasing inability of Cosatu to mobilise.

Failure should give ANC sleepless nights

If I were relying on the support of Cosatu’s membership in two years’ time, I may be happy in the short term that their protest was less painful than a bee sting.

In the long term, I’d be terrified that I’m allergic to bees, have no adrenaline shot nearby, and the closest hospital is an underfunded state hospital that I can only get to on an Eastern Cape tricycle ambulance on 100km of holey, previously advantaged, tarred road.

Mixed metaphors aside, if the goal was to tell the ruling party that their leadership sucks, perhaps this was a failed mission. If the goal was to get the ruling party to get their game into GEAR, this failed protest may actually just do that.

And if you got the reference to the Mbeki era economic policy there, you’ll probably be reminded of just how far we’ve fallen.

Laugh at Cosatu or don’t. Political showing of force is a direct way of sending a message. A political showing of no force is also a message, and one that the ruling elite must be petrified of having seen the events of this week.

Also Read: Shutdown flop shows unions must head back to drawing board, or become even more irrelevant

You gotta hand it to Cosatu. It took a lot of courage to stick their neck out like they did. Even more so to do it knowing that they probably wouldn’t be able to mobilise in the ways of their forerunners.

Compare these protests to those of old and these probably look like a walk in the park.

So, even if few people showed up to do the walk, we may find ourselves thanking Cosatu for trying and failing, because that is more likely to light a fire under the feet of our leadership who are otherwise numb to the habitual traditional protest action.

If you asked me, and if it ends up working, this could be the most successful protest since 1976.