Remember the Jacobins led by Maximillien Robespierre during the French Revolution? Well, they are alive and well in COSATU led by Zwelinzima Vavi and that craven Dr Craven. The latter crowed: "In the event the DA ...beat an ignominious retreat when confronted by the massed ranks of the workers." Ignominious retreat when protestors are viciously attacked? This is the language of the Jacobins, the gate-keepers, who justify violence when they lose the argument.
The statement goes further: "COSATU, as it always does, condemns these acts of violence unreservedly, but stresses that the vast majority of its members conducted themselves with exemplary discipline and restraint, despite the provocative nature of the demands being made by the DA. We recognise the DA's right to demonstrate, but insist that COSATU members have an equal right to counter-demonstrate."
Who is the provocateur here? COSATU's half-hearted apology stinks. It is still blaming the DA for the violence on the grounds that its demands were "provocative." Does this not remind us of abusive husbands who beat their wives for daring to challenge them? "I beat her up because she dared to contradict me."
COSATU's apology is everything but unreserved and their support for this kind of behavior is shameful. Claiming that violence was due to frustrations of both organised workers who are "extremely angry and frustrated by poverty wages" and their counterparts, the "largely unemployed African youth...mobilised by a right-wing party" is to blame the poor for COSATU's lack of leadership.
In this instance, the right-wingers are COSATU, a labour aristocracy which enjoys its place in the African sun unperturbed by the high rates of unemployment. With public sector salaries 40% higher than those of the private sector and a labour regime that protects this aristocracy, Vavi is wrong to call it poverty wages.
Compared to the low levels of productivity, wages are relatively high. Raving that the DA is appealing to the unemployed "born frees", he indirectly admits that this is a constituency they have neglected since their formation.
Yet COSATU, and only COSATU, claims the right to monopolise the fight for the poor and unemployed denying that freedom of association and freedom to protest peacefully are central to democracy.
When the premier trade union federation denies anyone those rights, then they are on their way to becoming the Jacobins of the current political dispensation. Robespierre under similar circumstances said "by sealing our work with our blood, we may see at least the bright dawn of universal happiness." Robespierre was duly guillotined.
Government, the opposition, civil society and the private sector have an obligation to join forces to address the chronic poverty linked to the high levels of unemployment. COSATU has no right to claim sole right to this constitutional responsibility. Soon the poor will realise that COSATU is using them in their political battle for hegemony within the tri-partite alliance.
When they justify violence to control the masses, then Robespierre's words ring worryingly true: "Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue". Ditto Stalin. "If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves."
The trade union's political thuggery will only grow the support for the DA the more its tactics fail to have effect. Increasingly the electorate will realise that under DA governance, despite all its flaws, democracy will flourish. As a consequence more and more people will migrate to the Western Cape from other provinces because their chances of survival here are better than in ANC-dominated provinces where service delivery and job creation are dwindling due to endemic corruption and incompetence.
This article first appeared in Die Burger
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