At a time of the year when political and labour developments making the news headlines usually start dying down, the opposite seems to be happening in a rather shell shocked South Africa. Topping the news is of course the ongoing mess at state power utility Eskom which threatens to plunge the country into total darkness with a disastrous grid meltdown. Meanwhile millions of consumers are inconvenienced, heavy industrial electricity users operate on the brink of disaster, and thousands of retailers struggle to keep their cash registers operating as they face what could be their bleakest Christmas sales period in many years. This is South Africa’s current doom and gloom reality – seen together with other potential political and labour developments, the outlook is indeed dark with very little to be festive about.

Against this background the Cabinet will deal with senior appointments or changes at various battling parastatals at its last meeting of the year this week, including Eskom. Political events in the growing far left sphere outside the ruling alliance led by the African National Congress (ANC) will dominate the forthcoming weekend. After various formations of the organisationally and financially floundering ANC aborted holding elective conferences in the recent past, its KwaZulu-Natal provincial branch, the party’s largest and also the core of President Jacob Zuma’s power base, is scheduled to hold an elective conference at the weekend.

And in the labour sphere a new far-left political front is being launched by the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (NUMSA), recently expelled from the Congress of SA Trade Unions (COSATU). And public sector wage negotiations are still pending that, together with the electricity situation, could potentially bring the country to a standstill. And the now biggest labour union within COSATU following the expulsion of NUMSA, namely the National Health, Education and Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU), holds its national congress this week. It could set the future labour-political tone within COSATU.

Eskom’s power nightmare and other parastatals

Parastatals come under the spotlight at this week’s Cabinet meeting – the last one of the year. While there are some senior appointments or changes due at a number of these parastatals that will be discussed, topping the agenda will most likely be Eskom and its current electricity nightmare. A number of South Africa’s once world-class parastatals – Eskom, South African Airways, SABC, Transnet, and others - are experiencing degrees of trouble ranging from worrying to catastrophic.

What to make of it:  The anticipated changes/appointments follow months of wrangling around a number of dubious appointments, poor leadership performances, even court cases, and further deterioration at a number of key state-owned enterprises. It promises to be something of a battle though. At issue will be – directly or indirectly – the ANC’s cadre deployment, patronage systems in the ANC, and the resultant massive skills deficit in the public sector. And even the factional divisions in the ANC Alliance could have a bearing. Some of the anticipated removals and appointments of senior officials involve people allegedly with close ties to President Jacob Zuma, but having earned the wrath of others in the ANC or having become public embarrassments. Others are simply incompetent products of cadre deployment that have further contributed to eroding the skills base in these parastatals and helping to drive the deterioration of some. Yet the policy of cadre deployment continues to be implemented.

As far as Eskom, the parastatal sector’s major disaster, is concerned, it all seems to boil down to ineffective, unsuitable leaders and poor management. Power specialist Chris Yelland seems to argue that former Eskom CEO Brian Dames did a poor job and was not up to the challenges Eskom was facing. Then the utility had an acting CEO arguably equally unsuited to running a parastatal of such complexity and size. BizNews’ Alec Hogg suggests Ian McRae was the last truly industry-bred Eskom leader with extensive hands-on experience and that the utility should again look inside for suitable leadership.

The current Eskom CEO, Tshediso Matona, who is no doubt a capable manager given his previously held positions, among them as Public Enterprises director-general and at the World Health organisation, simply does not have any real experience related directly to the electricity industry. And it is being speculated he could this week be joined by Ben Ngubane, a politician, ambassador and former SABC chairman, as Eskom’s new chairman. It would make much more sense to have both a CEO and chairman with real industry-based experience. But even Ngubane, who comes from an opposition Inkatha Freedom party background, may fall foul of the ANC’s (cadre) deployment committee which opposes his appointment. It is not clear who the committee would want to deploy from within the ANC to help steer the sinking Eskom ship, but judging by past experience, it is unlikely to be anybody really suitable for the mammoth task of bringing Eskom back from the brink. It all boils down to Eskom not being correctly managed, operated or its grid being maintained in a manner that ensures technical, operational and financial sustainability.

Eskom has already resorted to Stage 3 load-shedding which, in practice, amounts to a desperate attempt to prevent a complete meltdown of the national power grid. It took California three weeks to to get power back on when its grid collapsed. But the American state could buy in electricity supply from surrounding power sources to get up and running again. Not a single power supplier in Africa can do the same here and supply South Africa with 40,000MW, so if the Eskom grid collapses, it could translate into potentially months of literal darkness. Eskom is scheduled to provide an update of the state of the national electricity situation today (Monday).

These developments strengthen the case for privatisation and independent power producers (IPPs), but the confusing and contradictory energy and electricity policies, planning and regulatory aspects are simply not allowing this to happen. And Eskom’s massive tariff increases to try and overcome these problems are to some extent self-defeating and will in any event only meet Eskom’s projected expenditure needs for the next five years. With a potentially disastrous Christmas season ahead for the retail sector and the effects on economic growth, the threat to the manufacturing and mining industries, and even coupled to developments like a potential public sector strike, the potential effect of Eskom’s troubles indeed project a frightening possible near-future scenario.

Important far left developments this weekend

As mentioned above, NUMSA is scheduled this weekend to nationally launch its long promised United Front, a movement intended to bring together like-minded or ideologically-related organisations, formations and individuals left of the ANC Alliance. It already launched the Gauteng region of the front two weeks ago.  And the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) led by Julius Malema and which won over a million votes in its first general election earlier this year, will also this weekend be holding its first elective national conference, or National People’s Assembly as it prefers calling it. Both events are important regarding the emergence of a far left opposition to the ANC-led alliance.

What to make of it:  The EFF first. The EFF’s claims to being a socialist party with a working class agenda are contested. Some would argue its character is closer to that of an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing party than to a true socialist party, and even NUMSA has in the past questioned it despite keeping the door open for future cooperation. Be that as it may: the EFF drew most of its million election votes in May from the urbanised working class, unemployed urban youth and impoverished shack-dwellers…the logical feeding ground for socialism. And the EFF’s biggest foe, the South African Communist Party (SACP), which has most to lose from the rise of parties like the EFF and a new ultra-left socialist movement, peddled the story about the EFF being fascist rather than socialist the hardest. Which perhaps says it all.

For now the party’s first elective conference will show whether its current leaders have been accepted and also whether Malema will remain fully in charge, bearing in mind he still faces prosecution that could end his political career. It may also deal with some recent internal, divisive ructions and it may shed light on whether the party will indeed be part of the new United Front on the left. Importantly, should the conference end up being divisive and expose negative undercurrents it could set the EFF on a similar path of deterioration as happened to other parties formed from breakaways from the ANC. The conference will ultimately be an important direction-decider for the emerging far left as a political force.

On to the United Front to be launched nationally by NUMSA. This event, if it goes ahead, will remove NUMSA further away from its former parent body, COSATU, as well as the ANC and the Alliance. Any chances of a reconciliation will become remote if not totally  impossible. It may also reveal the extent of political support for NUMSA and its proposed new front, as being a powerful labour union does not automatically translate into being a powerful political organisation. The converse of that is that the launch could give some indication of the popular workers’ support NUMSA is able to take with it out of COSATU and the Alliance. If it was anything to go by, the launch two weeks ago of the front’s Gauteng region – likely to be its mainstay – saw the coming together of some 250 delegates from  61 community-based, youth, students, faith-based and women’s organisations, and trade unions.

It was a development that seems to have worried the ANC Alliance sufficiently for a smear document to have arisen immediately afterwards, discrediting NUMSA’s leaders and people associated with NUMSA and the front, and bearing all the hallmarks of yet another dirty tricks attempt by the national intelligence agencies together with what looks like suspiciously familiar SACP inputs. The front’s agenda will be to conduct pro-working class, socialist campaigns and will also be aimed against “a glorious ANC (that) has been captured by the capitalist class”. NUMSA said “the South African working class needed a political organ of their own, committed to socialism both in its policies and actions”. But it seems it  will not be a political party contesting elections. That, NUMSA seems to have indicated, is to come later with the formation of a Movement for Socialism or a new political party.

These developments, however, do take the movement for mobilising a viable, effective far left political labour-political force to oppose the ANC and its alliance partners, quite a progressive step further.

Written by Africa-International Communications
Political Analyst & Editor: Stef Terblanche