Unions mull dumping ANC for SACP
Four Cosatu affiliates vow to switch sides in 2019 if Dlamini-Zuma wins the leadership
Should the ANC fail to endorse Cyril Ramaphosa as president in December, four of trade union federation Cosatu’s biggest affiliates plan to dump the governing party and throw their weight behind the South African Communist Party (SACP) in the 2019 general elections.
The SACP has never contested national elections but there are calls from within its ranks to do so. Its Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal structures and its youth wing have resolved that the party go it alone. A possible break with the ANC is expected to dominate the agenda at the SACP’s national congress next month.When Numsa turned on the ANC in 2013, it made a big dent.
The Communication Workers Union (CWU), education and health union Nehawu, teachers’ union Sadtu and municipal union Samwu were locked in intense sideline negotiations at Cosatu’s central committee in Centurion this week, preparing a joint position to “prepare for the worst”.
“There definitely needs to be a backup plan, and that is the [communist] party, so the upcoming July congress of the SACP will be crucial to finalising that proposal,” CWU president Clyde Mervin said.
National leaders from Nehawu, the CWU and Samwu, and a provincial leader of Sadtu, confirmed that a joint statement is being planned to tell workers not to vote for the ANC in the 2019 elections if Ramaphosa’s bid to take over from President Jacob Zuma fails.
They plan to issue the statement after the SACP’s July congress. Combined, the four unions represent 700 000 of Cosatu’s 1.7-million members. The leaders’ reasons for considering abandoning the ANC include the threat of continued state capture.
“If the candidate which he [Zuma] has endorsed, which is his [ex-]wife, takes control in December, there is no likelihood of a reversal of state capture,” a senior Samwu leader said on condition of anonymity, because his union had not yet made a national resolution on the issue.
“So we cannot be expected to support such an ANC in the elections when we have adopted campaigns against state capture, or be expected to support the [former] wife of the prime suspect of state capture.”
Nehawu and Sadtu led the charge to secure Cosatu’s endorsement for Ramaphosa, and have championed its most recent resolution calling on Zuma to step down.
They were also instrumental in the federation’s decision to ban Zuma from its events.
Explaining their opposition to Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s bid to be elected president of the ANC, Sadtu Mpumalanga secretary Walter Hlaise said her campaign was inspired by “paternalism”.
“It is not feminism when a man says: ‘My wife must lead.’ It’s paternalism, because it is a man who says she must lead. We do not think the approach by anyone who says they want a woman president is necessarily feminist; it’s factional.”
A senior Nehawu leader said, although the push for the SACP to contest the ANC in the elections is potentially historic, it will only happen if the working class fails to save the ANC from “self-destruction”.
“We are not there yet, so we will fight one battle at a time. If we fail, then those options are open,” Nehawu general secretary Bereng Shoke told the Mail & Guardian.
Police and prisons union Popcru expressed a similar view: “The SACP must reach a state where it must contest state power if this reconfiguration of this alliance doesn’t take us anywhere,” said Hangwani Maho, Popcru’s Limpopo secretary.
A KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Sadtu leader said the union would find it difficult to convince voters to back former minister and African Union Commission chairperson DlaminiZuma, who is the Zuma faction’s leading candidate to take over the ANC presidency.
Sadtu general secretary Mugwena Maluleke said that if the idea of the SACP contesting the elections emerges successfully at the party’s congress in July, “we will call a special national congress to deliberate on whether to support the SACP in the elections. That was a decision taken in the [union’s national executive committee] last year.”
A senior member of the SACP’s central committee said the concerns about the ANC’s year-end conference centred on the risk of “corrupt forces” retaining control of the ANC and the audit verification process of the party’s provincial structures.
The ANC’s provincial structures submitted their final membership figures on April 30 and the numbers are being queried, according to Ramaphosa’s backers in the party.
“The provisional numbers show KZN is first with more than 500 000 and Mpumalanga is in second place with close to 400000. But there are already queries on hundred of thousands of KZN’s members. So we said to the SG [secretary general Gwede Mantashe], the verification process should be tighter,” the SACP central committee member told the M&G this week.
At Cosatu’s meeting in Centurion, Minister of Sport and Recreation Thulas Nxesi, in his capacity as an SACP leader, warned that the national democratic revolution “is on trial”.
“If [Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi] Maimane can say in Parliament: ‘You, president, you have destroyed the ANC; we won’t allow you to destroy the country,’ and it resonates with some of the people, I don’t think it refers to the president but to all of us in the leadership of the ANC. The ANC has been destroyed by us,” Nxesi said.
The minister said there were three crucial upcoming events that leaders could not ignore because they would determine the future of the ANC.
“How do we use those events to intervene? On Sunday, we are having the political alliance council. How do we utilise that meeting to save the movement? The second event is the policy conference of the ANC. The third event, and I see these as one event, is the SACP conference in July and the ANC conference in December. These are make-or-break events,” he said.
Nxesi said there was growing sentiment among SACP members that the party should contest the elections and Cosatu should join it in redirecting the national democratic revolution, as an alternative for voters who are disenchanted with the ANC.
“If you listen to the mood now, as the leadership we might be seen as reactionary if we stand against that current [that wants the SACP to contest elections]. Those who are so alienated on the ground, who are not going to vote for the movement, what will be their alternative?” Nxesi asked.
He added that the outcome of the ANC’s December conference may make another “dent in the ANC which could leave it with nothing left”.
SACP spokesperson Alex Mashilo said the party would meet this weekend and that the option to contest state power would be on the agenda.
“The SACP is a working-class party and not a party only for its members. It will listen to the working class in considering the way forward.”
But, he said, at the moment, “our position is that we are not for party political [power], but we are for working-class power”.
ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe said that the discussions should be understood with “the contradictions of the relationship between employers and employees, because all those affiliates are public sector unions.
“The problem is that if they do that we will all lose power, us and the SACP will lose power together,” Mantashe told the M&G.
“We do not think the approach by anyone wanting a woman president is necessarily feminist; it’s factional”