Relations between the ANC-led alliance and the labour movement provide an apparent parallel to those of 30 years ago, says labour columnist Terry Bell.
MUCH has changed in South Africa over the past 30 years, yet so much has remained the same. Institutional apartheid has gone, but the spatial - the geographic - reality remains. So too does the wage and welfare gap, the only difference being that it has grown, making it more of the same.
This brings to mind the comment by French novelist Alphonse Karr that the more things change, the more they stay the same. But in many instances, it also seems as if, on the political and organisational front, it is a question of back to square one, although often riddled with irony. Which may, of course, be much the same thing.
