Leonard Gentle

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.

President Jacob Zuma recently returned from Russia, a strange place to be for many when you’re in the middle of a crisis at home, as many a commentator here in South Africa has observed. Maybe he and Putin were swapping stories of a new series of Survivor.

First they came for Papandreou - and I didn't speak out because I thought the Greeks are just lazy tax-dodgers.

Then they came for Berlusconi - and I didn't speak out because I thought he was just a racist and sexist old roué.

The public sector strike has been suspended. But whether the unions accept the state's latest offer or not, this strike may well be (and these things we are almost always fated to see only in retrospect) a watershed in South African politics.