SDUMO: INSIDERS COLLAPSED COSATU

Leader falls short of blaming Vavi on Cosatu woes

COSATU president Sdumo Dlamini claims his hands are clean in the face of the collapse of the federation.

In an interview with Sowetan, Dlamini stopped short of laying the whole blame on his rival, the federation’s boss Zwelinzima Vavi.

Dlamini documented the divisions to have started as far back as 2010.

“In 2010, the divisions took a sharp obvious turn. The fight was about taking Cosatu out of the alliance with the ANC and SACP and have a Cosatu that will in the end form a workers’ party.

Speaking from the federation ’ s headquarters in Johannesburg, he said the divisions were further deepened by the poor administration of Cosatu affairs, which led to investigations by forensic audit firm SizweNtsalubaGobodo, that found Vavi to have irregularly not followed Cosatu’s tender policy in awarding work to an external company.

In another report on the selling and buying of Cosatu buildings, Dlamini said the audit firm raised a conflict of interest against Vavi, and also found Vavi – together with his deputy Bheki Ntshalintshali and treasurer Freda Oosthuysen – guilty of failing in their duty to report to the company registry that they were selling more than 70% of Cosatu’s assets.

Dlamini said the auditors’ reports found nothing wrong against him.

“I am not defending myself against anything. I am not mobilising members to defend me or come to Cosatu offices and toyi-toyi in my defence. I have not violated any of Cosatu’s policies.

“I am able to say, during my time as president, Cosatu had challenges,” he said.

In a veiled attack on Vavi, he pointed out that Cosatu leaders put too much trust on an individual, and the decisions of that individual were never questioned.

“A lot of work has been done to collapse Cosatu from within ... we have a GS (Vavi) who has gone out publicly to say the federation is in a crisis. This is meant to paint Cosatu in a particular picture.”

He said some unions owed Cosatu over R7-million from not paying the political levy and subscriptions. He admitted that Cosatu had a cash flow crisis, but Numsa was not the main factor to their financial problems.

“Numsa stopped paying its subscription before it was expelled. It would skip months without paying and when it paid it never paid the out standing amount in full.

“The unions that are outside Cosatu and now in support of Numsa, must forgo the thought they will come back if Numsa is reinstated. We do not know when Numsa will come back.

I appeal to those unions to come back and we rebuild Cosatu. ”