Transition to a liberal democracy has seen no change. Resistance to apartheid has morphed into resistance to neoliberalism. Ongoing crises in healthcare and service delivery, runaway corruption, continued debasement of education, an inability to meet housing needs, out-of-control crime and high unemployment all speak to the intolerable conditions that have worsened since 1994. It is no exaggeration to say that South Africa is ripe for revolution.

This critique is offered for the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) as food for thought towards unlocking Numsa’s historical task that presents possibilities for unifying the working class in struggle, increasing its confidence and steering us towards socialist revolution.

With the claims that a new trade union federation will be launched in March 2017, it is appropriate to draw up a balance sheet of the labour movement in South Africa, and ask whether the optimism of many that a new Left force is going to be unleashed is justified. Or whether the possibilities for a force of revolutionary working class politics lie elsewhere.

The labour movement is at a crossroads, as the country grapples with a major political crisis rooted in capitalism. This requires the labour movement to re-evaluates past strategies and seriously considers a new politics that  grapples with issues of top-down, patriarchal forms of organisation, and forges broad counter-hegemonic alliances that question economic growth paradigms which threaten the planet.