Mboweni must toe the line, stick to ANC policies, says Cosatu
TRADE union Cosatu says it hopes Finance Minister Tito Mboweni will toe the line and stick to ANC policies when he delivers the much-anticipated 2019 Budget Speech in the National Assembly in February.
Cosatu has previously been critical of Mboweni’s utterances which it feels were not in line with policy resolutions taken by the ANC at its 54th National Elective Conference in Nasrec in December last year.
Speaking at an investor conference in New York earlier last month Mboweni called for South African Airways to be shut down, saying it had no future.
The comments did not go down well with its alliance partner or the ANC’s national executive committee.
Bheki Ntshalintshali, Cosatu general secretary, said that in a meeting with the ANC last month they had asked the ANC’s top six officials to rein in those ministers who spoke outside of the party’s policy framework and they mentioned Mboweni as one of the ministers who needed to be reined in.
“We thought what he was raising was not in line with the ANC resolutions,” said Ntshalintshali.
In September Ramaphosa announced a stimulus package designed to revive the economy that would focus on investment in the agriculture sector and township and rural economies in what he called a move to ignite economic activity in the country.
In his Mid-Term Budget speech in October Mboweni said the country needed to take a hard look at the operation of SOEs and there was also a need to confront the public sector wage bill.
The general secretary said they have regarded some of the minister’s statements as being reckless, including him saying there was no money to pay state worker increases.
Ntshalintshali said that in their meeting with the ANC top six they strongly recommended that the top six rein in those ministers who behaved outside of the ANC mandate.
“In our view the top six won’t oppose those suggestions because those are the resolutions of the conference. We were not expecting an immediate answer from them on those issues, but we hope next time we meet we will have different answers to those issues we were raising.
“They should be able to rein them in and say ‘minister what you’re saying is not in line with the ANC resolutions’ because we are not asking from them more than what the ANC resolutions were saying,” said Ntshalintshali.
Asked if Cosatu wanted Mboweni to return as Finance Minister should the ANC win next year’s elections, Ntshalintshali said it was not an easy question because if it was then the union would have long come out and said Mboweni should be dismissed.
Protas Madlala, a political analyst, said that Cosatu’s stance on Mboweni was simply to cast him in a bad light so that Ramaphosa does not retain him if the ANC returns to power after next year’s elections.
“This is their chance to point fingers and they’re making sure he comes across as unreliable to the president because he cannot be trusted as he doesn’t place emphasis on the policies of the organisation,” Madlala said.