The 1980s and early 1990s were intensely political years in South Africa which challenged the independent labour movement. Up to this point Numsa's postapartheid vision has been considered chiefly through its efforts to transform the economy. Turning to the union's political life a more complex picture emerges of the context in which the union was operating.

Giddens has noted how social movements shape and redefine themselves in antagonism to opposing groups. Mawu, Naawu and ultimately Micwu, defined themselves in opposition to the state and, in Mawu's case particularly, to the capitalist mode of production. They often positioned themselves at a tangent, and in tension with, liberation movements including the ANC, the black consciousness movement, the PAC, and the Stalinist inflected South African Communist Party (SACP). Their jealously guarded political independence however came under intense pressure as they were forced to confront questions of political alliances.

Mawu and Numsa's politics were controversial and at times other unions and political formations regarded them with hostility. Both unions however were associated with raising levels of debate to impressive levels, and many spoke of the tolerance, and advanced political debate that was associated with these unions. Yet they seldom went too far out on a limb and indeed, they often laid the foundations of Fosatu and Cosatu policy.

In the early 1980s challenges to these unions centred on whether, how, and when to participate in alliances with other organisations without compromising their independence. The question of how working class organisations should relate to other political formations had long been contentious in South Africa. The SACP had never commanded a mass following while mass black political organisations, such as the ANC, engaged in nationalist struggles against colonial and apartheid domination. Historically, unions had been the vehicles of working class organisation but they had never managed to insert strong working class programmes into political organisations. Fosatu and its unions were confronted with the same dilemma: how to assert the hegemony of working class goals. Their one advantage was that they were the most organised black movement in the country.