“Ramaphosa doesn’t have all the answers”
Zuma ally punts stronger role for alliance partners
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa does not have a “silver bullet” to solve the problems facing the country.
This is according to Cosatu president Sdumo Dlamini, who warned yesterday that it would be naïve for South Africans to expect the election of Ramaphosa as ANC leader to bring them happiness.
Dlamini, who is close to President Jacob Zuma and was forced by Cosatu delegates to back Ramaphosa during the trade union federation’s central committee meeting in Irene, outside Pretoria, was addressing the National Education, Health and Allied Health Workers Union national congress in Boksburg, on the East Rand.
“We hope he [Ramaphosa] will listen to us,” he said. “We took this decision [to back Ramaphosa] because we cannot afford to stand on the sidelines, while other classes are contesting and shaping the future of our movement.
“We want an ANC which understands that the alliance should be positioned as a strategic centre of power and the ANC should remain the leader of that strategic centre of power.”
Dlamini warned that the ANC would face its demise were it to ignore the concern of the working class.
“We need to draw lessons from some of the African countries,” he said.
Dlamini revealed that Cosatu has been battling to have a meeting with the ANC for the past three months. A bilateral meeting that was supposed to have taken place this month was postponed to a date yet to be announced.
Dlamini said under the leadership of Ramaphosa, Cosatu was expecting and demanding that the ANC take a decision to scrap e-tolls and ensure that state-owned entities are not used as cash cows by anyone including by the “parasitic bourgeoisie”.
Dlamini said the federation was going to the ANC policy conference taking place this weekend in Johannesburg to contest the neo-liberal policy framework that has left the economy in white hands.
He also had harsh words for the South African Federation of Trade Unions, led by Zwelinzima Vavi, saying the new federation was working to contest the 2019 general elections but had failed to win last year’s municipal elections in the Eastern Cape where it contested.
In response, Vavi told Sowetan that Dlamini was “hallucinating”.