On The Lump

It’s great to see that Vukani Mde’s Political Diary is back in the Weekender. No apologies also for repeating his article on Zwelinzima Vavi from the current Maverick magazine, although it was in the COSATU Daily News yesterday. This one needs to be archived on the CU. It is good in itself, and is also good evidence that the previous wall-to-wall reaction in the South African bourgeois press (what in the USA is called “MSM” – main stream media) is breaking up like an ice floe in the spring. See the link below. Another one repeated from the COSATU Daily News is George Stacey’s article from Business Report on the phenomenon that used to be called “the lump” in England when it started there (linked below). The “lump” means you get paid a lump sum for your work as a “labour-only subcontractor” instead of being properly and legally employed with all your rights as such. This system of contracting is now rampant in South Africa. It creates a hybrid class spanning from lumpens through self-disciplined workers to self-conscious petty-bourgeois entrepreneurs, and it requires new forms of organising. In England “the lump” caused the construction workers’ union (UCATT) to shrink down to a small remnant of government and local authority employees. Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) members in the union at the time took the view that anyone who went on the lump was a traitor and had to expelled and shunned. This turned out to be a big mistake. What else could the workers do? They had to eat. They had to take the work on the terms it was offered, or starve. Stacey, as a reasonable businessman, can see a lot wrong with the lump system. He hopes for government intervention and a change of heart by employers. It won’t happen. Either very clever new means of organising workers will have to be devised, possibly exploiting the Internet, or else we will have to wait for the dictatorship of the proletariat before this evil can be done away with. The Communist University has decided to meet on the first floor of COSATU House in future. We had a good attendance and a good discussion yesterday evening on the National Democratic Revolution, opened by YCL National Secretary Cde Buti Manamela. Next week’s reading is Volodia Teitelboim’s “1000 Days of Popular Unity”. The next Branch General Meeting of the SACP Johannesburg Central Branch will be held November 5th at 10h00 in the SATAWU offices, 13th floor, Old Mutual Building, 29 Kerk Street, between Loveday and Harrison. Our discussions on the NDR, state power and elections will continue in that BGM. Today’s Saturday Star carries a refutation by Cde Enrique Orta, Counsellor at the Cuban Embassy, of the liberal-syndicalist journalist Michael Schmidt’s disgusting previous article on Cuban Trade Unionism. Schmidt, in typical liberal fashion, wants to drive a wedge between the organised mass of the working class and their proletarian political leadership. Cde Enrique’s letter seems to have been subjected to some hostile sub-editing (e.g. President Fidel Castro is referred to simply as “Castro” in the cold-war manner), while Schmidt has been given a privileged “right to reply” in italics where he adds insult to injury concerning what he pompously calls his “position”. The letter is not yet on the Internet but it will be transcribed later this morning and put on the SA Friends of Cuba Dialogue Forum . Letters, please, in support of Cde Orta and the Cuban revolution, should be sent to the Saturday Star at saturdayletters@inl.co.za . Click on these links: The man in the middle of the storm Vukani Mde Maverick (2022 words) Job statistics hide crisis in building trade George Stacey B Report (1319)