THE NATIONAL CONGRESS

From 3 to 6 June 2015, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) held its 15th National Congress in Boksburg, Gauteng. It was an important meeting for both South Africa's trade union movement and the ruling party. Until 2012, NUM had been the country's largest workers’ organisation and the Congress of South African Trade Union (Cosatu)'s main affiliate. The mineworkers’ union lost its leading status in the aftermath of the August 2012 Marikana strike and massacre, when its rival Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) took over most of its members in the platinum belt. In the meantime, the ruling Tripartite Alliance entered its deepest crisis since its inception in the early 1990s. NUM's 2015 congress followed shortly after the expulsion of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) – now the country's largest trade union – from Cosatu, in November 2014. NUM's congress was also the elective meeting of a pivotal African National Congress (ANC) political ally, which had contributed to the Party's top national leadership like no other organisation since 1991. Despite mounting criticism of Jacob Zuma's presidency, NUM national leaders remained among its most vocal supporters.

Stakes were thus high and outgoing NUM leadership had planned things well. Both its president, Pete Matosa, and its general secretary, Frans Baleni – the political protégé of ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe – were ready to continue for, respectively, a third and a fourth term. Political alliances were sealed ahead of the congress and regional delegations thought to belong to the opposition motion, such as Rustenburg, were strategically placed at the back of the room.

As is customary, the congress started with long discussions between the various delegations about ‘credentials’ to agree on the exact number of voting delegates. Proceedings thereafter went smoothly on the first day. As usual in such union gatherings, leaders from allied workers and political organisations, as well as Cabinet ministers, queued to address the more than 800 NUM delegates. Speeches bore no surprises and very little space was dedicated to programmatic debate. Calls to ‘discipline’ and ‘class consciousness’ were now and then directed at invisible or visible external enemies such as the ‘vigilante’ and ‘yellow union’, Amcu.