I'm on strike!

How long has this strike been on for? Do you feel angry, sympathetic, bored or annoyed about it? Who will emerge stronger and who will come out weaker at the end of this?

They say if you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind, which is a clichéd analogy for something so rooted in the Realpolitik of South Africa, that the only person who we can safely say is enjoying this strike is Thabo Mbeki. 

Let's remember how Jacob Zuma and his cobbled-together mob of trade-unions, youth leagues, big-businesses and anti-intellectuals managed to unseat the likely third-termer Thabo Mbeki.

Remember that they had a common goal - removing the then present and counter-revolutionary administration.That was the thin thread that bound them together in Polokwane and in the last election. It won them power and pride and chased into the political wilderness those who were against them. But the honeymoon is over. 

Now the unions, tired of waiting for their payback, have thrown down the heavy gauntlet of nationwide (and so far crippling, sometimes violent) strikes. The government, cash-strapped thanks to the recession and overspending, have found themselves unable to offer more than 7% (the unions demand 8.6%) and a R700 per public servant housing subsidy (the unions want R1000). And so the whole health and education service is held hostage for 1.6% and R300 a month. That should be all the evidence you need that this is not about money. 

Zwelinzima Vavi has not said a kindly word about the ANC in the last year and this week described the government as a bunch of hyenas. The relationship could not be more strained. The SACP and Young Communist League take more opportunities to insult the ANC than any of the opposition parties in parliament and yet the ANC insist that the tripartite alliance is sustainable. It isn't. 

If the unions win this pitched battle, then we will have a government whose strength is much depleted, a state who has bent to the will of its own employees and a government that shows it values courtship with COSATU more than it does reality or sense. 

On the other hand, if the government win, we reach an impasse. Here will come the long-talked about split in the alliance and final maturation of our adolescent democracy.

Whoever wins, there will be anger and political fallout: The casualties will likely be President Jacob Zuma, Blade Nzimande and a handful of too-powerful ministers and apparatchiks. I can almost hear Thabo Mbeki chuckling with his glass of whisky and a copy of The Mail and Guardian in hand.

The only real solution is one that government and the unions cannot provide, mostly because it would be counter-productive for them: We need to strengthen that part of the economy that includes the small businesses, the entrepreneurs, the innovators. The unions, government and big business cannot grow the economy or provide jobs. They can only shuffle cards between themselves and bicker over their dangerous hold on the reigns of power.

The waters ahead are uncharted, but will doubtless bring complex new challenges. I welcome them. Change is the only constant.

G