THE STATE OF THE UNION

Cosatu’s role in South African politics over the past few years has been greatly beyond its scope. More specifically, their involvement in playing party politics within the echelons of the ANC has been pyrotechnic to say the least.

I admit that I have not been following the recent public servants’ strike in the past few weeks. Regardless of a need to study the technicalities of the strike in detail, and even though I sympathise with the public servants who have a right not to live on peanuts, my prejudice over Cosatu’s role in contemporary politics already has been drawn based on the past conduct of the trade union.

I have no doubt that this strike is another reflection of Cosatu’s current leadership’s ambitions. They are trying to flex their muscle in the run up to the ANC elections at the end of this year and indeed, to show that they have the power to bring this country to a standstill. I believe that the strikers have a right to receive an increase, but I fear that Cosatu are using the strike as a political tool and will continue to do so until the 2009 national elections.

As a social democrat, I have no antagonism towards the existence of unions and I recognise the inalienable right of collective bargaining in the interests of class fairness. As such, unions by nature are representative of their respective work industries.

However, I remain sceptical when a unionist group uses Marxist doctrines in dictating how a country should be run and who should be its next President. Cosatu has been a key player in the Mbeki/Zuma split. Even though the group is 2 million strong, they are out of their jurisdiction in this regard. The church and religious councils, despite their sheer numbers, do not play a role in the tripartite alliance or in ANC in-house politics and neither should Cosatu.

When Cosatu makes statements on international policy, with regard to Israel, or statements with regards to Presidential support, they go beyond being a representative union. If they want to play politics, they should put their name on the ballot sheet and not do it by proxy.

SO WHAT'S ALL THIS FUSS ABOUT HAMAS?

Events in the Gaza Strip over the past few days have been most interesting. Nothing, from reality tv to mass strike action, is spontaneous. Hamas's coup provides no exception.

In the past week, the so-called Palestinian unity government collapsed as fast as nun entering a strip club. This collapse was by no means spur-of-the-moment. Ismail Haniyeh, or Isy as his friends affectionately call him, did not wake up one morning and decide to gather a band of chaps together to picket at the local Fatah offices.
No, not at all.

Rather it was a swift strategic take-over of Gaza in less than a couple of days, planned months before hand with deliberation and cunning political manoeuvring. The intricacies of these plans provided Hamas with its own version of "shock and awe" on the Fatah/PA security force in Gaza.

But what Hamas has done is not new and it is quite simple. They are attempting to consolidate their power in the strip, under the auspices of providing order to the gang run town. The Bolsheviks did it during Red October by storming the provisional government's parliament. The Germans did it in 33', by using the burning of the Reich Stag fiasco as a prelude to enact emergency powers and stifle any dissent.

Hamas's chess-like moves were no doubt planned with such a purpose. I even suspect that the capturing of BBC journalist Alan Johnson a couple of months ago was orchestrated behind the scenes by Hamas and his release, which is imminent, would be used as political ammunition after the Gaza take-over so that Hamas could say to the west "Hey, although we just staged a coup, we not so bad as you guys make us out to be."

Abbas's unsure response has shown how taken back Fatah are over what Hamas has done. His Kerensky-styled government has taken drastic and paranoid measures to limit the coup from spreading into the West Bank by arresting Hamas politicians and breaking almost all ties with the terrorist group. I am sure Hamas took such responses into account when planning their coup de tat.

The question is, so now that they got Gaza what are they going to achieve? In all probability they will try fortify their position in Gaza over the next few months. Within the next 12 months, Hamas will make a move by either attempting a sequel in the West Bank, with the political weight of Gaza behind them in their political hostile take-over bid, or they could use Gaza as a springboard for Iranian Shihab rockets and further instigate Israel and surrounding powers into an inevitable and strong-handed retaliation.

We have an interesting chess game ahead.