Cosatu, Ramaphosa on collision course
AS FINANCE Minister Tito Mboweni delivers his maiden budget speech today, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration appears increasingly on a collision course with Cosatu, which was crucial in his election.
Yesterday, the ANC alliance partner said a meeting on Monday with a special Cabinet Committee on Eskom – where Ramaphosa was present – deadlocked over the president’s plan to unbundle the power utility.
This afternoon, Mboweni is scheduled to announce measures to rescue Eskom, which was teetering on the brink of collapse following the unprecedented power crisis that saw stage 4 loadshedding.
In a statement yesterday, Cosatu warned Ramaphosa that the federation remained opposed to the unbundling of Eskom because it feared jobs losses.
“We remain totally opposed to any restructuring plan that will benefit the capitalist class and increase prices for the working class,” the federation said.
“The meeting did not succeed in breaking the deadlock between the workers and government, but agreed that the process of engagement should continue at both the workplace and political level,” the statement added.
Eskom has a debt of R419 billion and it has been reported the power utility proposed a debt swop of R100bn.
The South African Federation of Trade Unions also warned that South Africa’s economy was in a serious crisis, with the ballooning debt, high unemployment rate, the collapsing healthcare system and the education crisis.
The government was sitting with billions of rand in bailouts of SOEs. Eskom, SAA, Denel and the South African National Roads Agency Limited are sitting on huge bailouts.
Yesterday, opposition parties the DA, IFP and Cope also warned Mboweni to clean up the mess at Eskom and other troubled SOEs.
The parties warned that the country could not afford its escalating debt, which was approaching R3 trillion, despite the fact that the National Treasury said the debt would stabilise to 56% of the Gross Domestic Product.