CONTROVERSY REGARDING KOPANO KE MATLA INVESTMENT  IN TOLLED ROADS REMINDS COSATU OF DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF INVESTMENT COMPANIES - CAN WORKERS REALLY RIDE THE INVESTMENT COMPANY TIGER?

The Democratic Left Front (DLF) calls on COSATU to intensify its campaign against labour broking and tolled roads in Gauteng despite efforts to delegitimise COSATU through the expose regarding the involvement of union investment companies in tenders to build tolled roads.

The DLF also calls for a national meeting of trade unions and social movements to review trade union involvement in investment companies in favour of worker-owned and worker-controlled collective enterprises. The DLF reaffirms its call for workers to occupy, take over, own and produce from factories and workplaces as an alternative to both investment companies and labour broking. The DLF calls on COSATU to convene such a national meeting.

The DLF makes these calls in the wake of the controversy regarding the involvement of the Kopano ke MatlaInvestment Company in building the R21 highway which under the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project. Media coverage of the story has pointed to the contradiction between COSATU's public position and mass action against tolled roads. For its part, COSATU has correctly insisted that this should not be used to delegitimise COSATU's position and action against the tolled roads.

The DLF is not surprised that the onslaught to soften COSATU on e-tolling is coming from various quarters in the ANC-SACP-COSATU, in particular the SACP. Its Deputy General Secretary, Jeremy Cronin, called on all of us to accept the 'horse has bolted' and must live with the reality that e-tolling must be used to make the public pay for privatised roads. As NUMSA has correctly pointed out, Cronin's attempt to constrain popular discontent is too late and will not work.

Cronin needs to go beyond the safe space of Umsebenzi Online and join the barricades of service delivery protests and the next round of worker mobilisation against e-tolls where he must punt the virtues of e-tolling. Cronin and the SACP are trying to discipline the working class to tow government's line on e-tolls. They are doing this when they, as the SACP, have failed to achieve a shift in government policy towards decommodified, integrated, mass and affordable public transport. 

All this is happening in a context where poor and working people are increasingly squeezed by the increasing costs of living (as seen in the rising prices for water, electricity and petrol).

At the same time, we see increasing government waste (through the use of consultants, investment in expensive and unsafe nuclear energy, the ongoing arms deal saga, and other wastage), increasing corruption. On top of it, elite politicians (including SACP leaders) and government managers are living it large. There is a need for principled opposition to Cronin's opportunism and that of other SACP leaders in government as career politicians in the ANC.

As stated above, the expose on Kopano is just another move to squeeze COSATU. However, this is not where the matter should end. This Kopano investment in tolled roads underlines the anti-worker, dangerous, contradictory and compromising nature of trade union involvement in investment companies. Investment companies are capitalist entities that get involved in investing workers' money in companies that exploit workers and the environment.

Trade union investment companies create a conflict of interests between short-term profit maximisation and worker interests. This logic means one thing: the maximum exploitation of workers and the environment. These contradictions are even more controversial in the current economic era characterised by the restructuring of work and the financialisation of capital.

Amongst other things, the restructuring of worker has resulted into the mushrooming of labour broking. As the DLF, we will not be surprised if the next expose against COSATU is about union investment in labour broking. In the era of financialisation, all investment companies including those owned by trade unions prefer stocks in profitable entities (including state tenders) which do not necessarily create decent jobs. All this goes against everything that COSATU stands for.

The DLF regards union investment companies as 'BEE Unionism'. As a result of trade union entanglement in such investment companies, some in the trade unions and investment companies are increasingly treating their membership base and procurement of services as opportunities for private enrichment.

This includes the use of worker medical aids, pension funds, union car fleets, photocopiers, stationery, t-shirts, etc. for BEE enrichment and kickbacks for some of the union leadership. There is a complex network of business interests feeding off workers' money located in trade unions.

In other words, some are using South African trade unions as vehicles for accumulation by constraining their radical and transformative potential within capitalism. All these matters must be spoken about honestly and in good faith.

The DLF strongly calls on COSATU and the rest of the trade union movement to move away from such investment companies. Trade unions have other alternatives. For example, the NUM and NUMSA have built and run successful conference centres to the benefit of their members. Trade unions in Europe have a long history of using workers' money to build worker-owned and worker-controlled successful and beneficial social housing, cooperative banking and other cooperative entities.

The DLF calls on COSATU to move away from investment companies towards the use of workers' money in building worker and community cooperatives in climate jobs and renewable energy cooperatives building wind-farms that subsidise agricultural production on redistributed land, cooperatives that develop appropriate and relevant text books for schools, printing cooperatives to produce material for use by trade unions and other social justice organisations, and so on.

In other words, the DLF calls on COSATU to drop investment companies in favour a host of useful worker-owned and worker-controlled collective and democratic enterprises that create jobs, pay a living wage, satisfy social needs and fulfill its political objectives. The DLF appeals to the mass base of workers in COSATU to ensure that their trade unions move away from investment companies.

Finally, the DLF reaffirms its support for the resolute COSATU campaign against labour broking and the privatisation of public roads through tolling. We pledge our ongoing and active support for the struggle in these struggles.

Statement issued by the Democratic Left Front, April 3 2012

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