Fallacy of trade union democracy

Europe and Africa, particularly towards the end of the Cold War era, makes interesting reading.
The ambitions of some trade union leaders to compete with the ruling parties’ heads of state in order to eventually run for president is an historic development that raises its head mainly outside the geography of the globalised international West.
The above-mentioned drive intensified in the early eighties, when US President Ronald Reagan secretly met with Pope John Paul II at the Holy See, more specifically, in the library of the Vatican.
Those two powerful world leaders conspired to strategise the fall of the communist regime initially in Poland. The leader of the Polish trade union, Solidarity, Lech Walesa, had lent his position and movement to be used as an instrument to eventually bring communism down. It was also expected that toppling General Jaruzelski and his communist government in Poland would have a domino effect on the rest of communistic Eastern Europe.
Known writer Carl Bernstein, whose investigative reportage contributed to the toppling of former US president Richard Nixon, described the aforementioned secret meetings in the March 1992 edition of America’s TIME magazine under the title “The Holy Alliance”, that “it were as if a divine people strategised the fall of communism”.
Reagan officially recognised the Vatican as a state and made them an ally.
During their secret meetings in the Vatican library, both men felt that it was their calling to strategise against “the terrible oppression of atheistic communism, believing they were given a spiritual mission, a special role in the divine plan of life”. A close eyewitness, Bill Clark, was quoted in the book, “The Crusader, Ronald Reagan, and the Fall of Communism”.
Walesa and his Solidarity eventually toppled the communist government in Poland and took it over. The Solidarity boss and Poland’s president represented Poland at the state funeral of the late US president Ronald Reagan.
The Polish-Catholic Pope and the US-Protestant president had succeeded.
When Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe visited the White House during Reagan’s presidency, Mugabe commented that he could not speak with Rea-gan, as “the American president played cards with him”. Every time Mugabe asked a question, Reagan’s aides, who sat behind him, wrote the answers on a big card and Reagan would only read the answer then back to Mugabe.
It is interesting to observe that South Africa’s white Afrikaans trade union shares the same name as its Polish predecessor, “Solidariteit” (Solidarity) and seems to be working back-to-back with the other political civil society Boer structure, Afriforum.
In Africa, similar situations developed. Maxwell Owusu from the University of Michigan in the USA, documented under the title “Domesticating Democracy, Culture, Civil Society, and Constitutionalism in Africa”: “In its drive to collapse communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries during the Cold War era, the US, the Western powers, and multinational institutions such as the International Monetary Funds, World Bank and Amnesty International have joined forces with local movements for democracy in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean to press for liberal political and economic reform”.
The aforementioned describes the interests of the international West in the Third World, more particularly in Africa, aptly and to the point.
The diminutive Zambian trade unio-nist from the Copperbelt, Frederick Chiluba, chairman of the Zambian Congress of Trade Unions, was identified as opposition to former president Kenneth Kaunda. He was aided, guided and well funded, assisting him to form his political opposition, Movement for Multiparty Democracy in 1990.
At that time, veteran politician Kenneth Kaunda was president of Zambia. During the Cold War era, Kaunda hosted most of the liberation movements from Southern Africa in Lusaka. Those inclu-ded, amongst others, South Africa’s Afri-can National Congress, South African Communist Party and their military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe; Zimbabwe’s Zapu and its military wing Zipra, and Namibia’s Swapo. However, it isolated and impoverished Zambia.
In 1991 Chiluba was elected as president of Zambia and Kaunda bowed out gracefully. The Zambian Post newspaper columnist, Roy Clarke, described Frederick Chiluba during his time in office as “a vain, cross-dressing, high-heel wearing, adulterous, dwarf thief”.
Under Chiluba and his MMD, it also had become impossible for South Africa’s ANC, the SACP and the armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe to return to Zambia, if the negotiations with the former colonial-apartheid regime and its international Western backers would fail. It was a geo-strategic move. Then, the US ambassador openly supported Chiluba, the ZCTU and its MMD.
When Kenya’s current Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, and his political party, Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), pushed for him to become president in December 2007, it was the trade unions that seemed to be the most violent and confrontational forces, supporting Odinga in the run-up to the Kenyan elections. They included the Kenyan Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU). The international West, particularly the new coloniser, the US strongly supported Odinga and his ODM. This was also widely reported.
The similarities with the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions – it even shares the abbreviation with its Zambian counterpart – and its former senior leader, who is the current political opposer to President Robert Mugabe, are obviously similar. Morgan Tsvangirai also formed his “own” political party, the Movement for Democratic Change-T (for Tsvangirai). The MDC was also grown from the ZCTU. By their own admission, both are heavily dependent on aid and guidance from their friends in the international West.
In fact, former US ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher Dell, is quoted as admitting: “Zimbabwe’s opposition is far from ideal. Had we had different partners we could have achieved more already.” Dell is further quoted as saying: “We need to keep the pressure on in order to keep Mugabe off his game and on his back foot, relying on his own shortcomings to do him in.” He followed it up: “Equally important is an active US leadership role in the international community. The UK is hamstrung by its colonial past and domestic politics, thus, letting them set the pace alone merely limits our effectiveness.” And: “We can be justifiably proud that in Zimbabwe we have helped advance the (US) President’s Freedom Agenda.”
This is a clear admission of interfering in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs in support of the MDC-T/ZCTU opposition.
In the case of South Africa, the secretary-general of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Zwelinzima Vavi, was observed to have stepped up his open criticism of the ANC Alliance-led government under President Jacob Zuma. In fact, ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema angrily rebuked Vavi in public. The Cosatu secretary-general is often accused of harbouring presidential ambitions for election year 2014.
Vavi’s public appeal to the broad civil society and its support structures to join him and his movement to create a broader power base was widely reported. Undeterred, Vavi keeps the heat on the ANC leadership and some BBBEE (Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment) business elites.
The Cosatu leader also viciously attacked Zimbabwe’s head of state, joining the international Western caco-phony against Mugabe, and demonstrating his open support for the MDC-T/ZCTU in Harare. Vavi travelled to Zimbabwe to campaign for the political opposition. He followed this one up with entering the war of attrition against Swaziland’s King Mswati III. Every time he spoke as the secretary-general of Cosatu, with the backing of the South African trade union umbrella.
Additionally, Cosatu’s countrywide rollout of at times even violent strikes seems to be an exercise to test how far they can go to achieve their goals.
Given the above, it is no surprise that most senior ANC insiders accuse Vavi of harbouring presidential ambitions.
The strategic pattern throughout seems the same. Therefore, one could assume that the interest groups and their strategists are all the same too.
Democracy can be interpreted any way and can thus be well abused. It often achieves its goal of a smooth transition of power. But, it can also be used to deliberately misrepresent and cause a violent push for power. Efforts to establish democracy can undermine and even destabilise.
However, democracy seems more cost effective than autocratic rulers, despite them being “close friends” of the powerful international West and its interests. It would therefore be of interest to the global, international Western powers to install democracy, rather than keeping close friends in positions of power, who are expensive to keep. That way, democracy’s price is high for the local population, but not for foreign interests.
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