Three decades into the democratic dispensation, unions still portray themselves and their members as victims of the "neoliberal capitalist system and establishment". Nothing could be further from the truth, writes Sipho Masondo.
The time has come for South African unions to cut ties with the past and usher in a new era in which they deploy their staggering collective financial muscle, power, and influence to help deliver economic freedom for black people in this country.
Before 1994, unions were militant organisations, fighting not only for the rights of workers, but they had also hitched their fortunes to several political parties and civil society movements, like the United Democratic Front, fighting to collapse the apartheid regime.