Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Acronyms And Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Introduction: South African Trade Unions in Apartheid and Democracy
- PART I ORGANISATIONAL AGENCY IN UNION BUREAUCRACY AND POLITICS
- PART II LEADING MINEWORKERS: A CHARTERIST LEADERSHIP SCHOOL
- Chapter 6 The Burden of Leadership
- Chapter 7 The Learning Organisation
- Chapter 8 Trajectories of Union Leaders and NUM Leadership Ideals
- Chapter 9 Taking Control of NUM: The Rise of the Communist Faction
- Chapter 10 Conclusion: From Bureaucratic Organisation to Bureaucratic Politics
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 8 - Trajectories of Union Leaders and NUM Leadership Ideals
from PART II - LEADING MINEWORKERS: A CHARTERIST LEADERSHIP SCHOOL
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Acronyms And Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Introduction: South African Trade Unions in Apartheid and Democracy
- PART I ORGANISATIONAL AGENCY IN UNION BUREAUCRACY AND POLITICS
- PART II LEADING MINEWORKERS: A CHARTERIST LEADERSHIP SCHOOL
- Chapter 6 The Burden of Leadership
- Chapter 7 The Learning Organisation
- Chapter 8 Trajectories of Union Leaders and NUM Leadership Ideals
- Chapter 9 Taking Control of NUM: The Rise of the Communist Faction
- Chapter 10 Conclusion: From Bureaucratic Organisation to Bureaucratic Politics
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
OF PERSONAL SUCCESS AND WORKING-CLASS LEADERSHIP
What is common to the NUM leadership ideals considered in this chapter is a tension between, on the one hand, the union's aspiration to the type of organisational modernity epitomised by neoliberal forms of management and, on the other hand, the organisation's aim to remain a class-conscious union committed to fighting for mineworkers’ rights. This was well captured in Gwede Mantashe's 2002 report to the central committee in which he prescribed:
In the Year 2002 every national leader of any structure must go through a political school. Every Regional leader and Branch leader must go through a political school … This will be a blitz on political education. We must reinstate our confidence in working-class tools of analysis. This will require us to cut on resources allocated to management courses and redirect such resources to political education … Although these management programmes assist us [to] improve our efficiency level they equally temper with our ideological outlook. With many of the former leaders of the NUM being in business, and being our role models, going into business becomes an option without any morality crisis. This imposes a duty on us to intensify our political education.
This tension is also found in two ideals of NUM leadership that I shall call the ‘trade union executive’ and the ‘communist cadre’ – two ideals that have, I argue, become complementary in the contemporary NUM. Another tension, which partly overlaps with the former, is linked to the age or generational factor, opposing the figure of the ‘legitimist elder’ to that of the ‘young leader’. As mentioned in the above quote, NUM people who made it into business after apartheid have become ‘role models’ for many, given the rapid transformation of the job market, which has seen black and white elites converge at the top.
Aspirations to success, both symbolic and material, are palpable among local NUM leaders and they recall the fact that only a happy few among the union leadership have made their way out of their former socioeconomic condition. In May 2012, I spent time with NUM in and around Lonmin's Marikana operations.
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- Information
- Organise or Die?Democracy and Leadership in South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers, pp. 213 - 244Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2017