Critics of “transformation” in South African society often argue that the transformation process, ostensibly intended to redress the injustices of apartheid, is in reality designed to entrench the ANC’s hold on political power. Without weighing in on that particular debate, I will say how I surprised I am that Cosatu’s own press releases have taken to describing transformation as an instrument of political power rather than social justice. Consider the following story in the Sunday Times:

[Cosatu] will also intensify pressure for “radical” transformation of the judiciary and the media, both of which it believes were used by those conspiring against Zuma. At its KwaZulu-Natal congress this week, the federation resolved to launch a “vigorous campaign to ensure that justice is done”. “All former NPA managers who conspired against the president of the ANC (will) be brought to book … (to) destroy the agenda of the right,” Cosatu said, without mentioning Ngcuka or McCarthy by name.

It also resolved to press Zuma’s administration to fast-track transformation of the judiciary, which had “been used in the past to fight narrow factional interests”. The media, Cosatu said, had been used for the past 15 years to “serve the interests of counter-revolutionary forces and the capitalists”. Cosatu KwaZulu-Natal secretary Zet Luzipho said the union federation’s provincial leadership would look at what form the campaign would take. The issues around the NPA, the judiciary and the media would be linked, possibly into a single campaign.

There is almost no attempt here to disguise the political nature of Cosatu’s objectives. The calculation is presented straightforwardly: the media and judiciary attempted to block Jacob Zuma’s accession to the presidency, and therefore they must be “transformed”. This will fulfil a twofold purpose of punishing them for their intransigence, and pre-emptively stifling any resistance to the implementation Zuma’s political project.

Of course, it is very important that Cosatu not succeed in all of this. In order to survive, democracies need to be able to protect civil society against encroachment by the government, and to protect certain branches of government (like the judiciary, the central bank and the military) from being politicised by the elected branches. If a democracy can’t rigidly maintain these sort of internal distinctions, power eventually becomes concentrated in the hands of a small oligarchic elite, and this starts to erode the democratic character of the state. In short, South Africa’s success over the next ten years will depend to a large degree on whether our civil society and government institutions are strong enough to resist the attempts of even powerful elites, such as the ANC-affiliated Cosatu, to control them.