Stick to the shop floor, Zuma tells union leaders

President takes swipe at Numsa’s political agenda

PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma has lashed out at trade unionists and warned them to not act as politicians, but to stick to matters on the shop floor.

This can be interpreted as a veiled attack on Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, which is in the process of forming a political party.

Vavi and Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim are Zuma’s most ardent critics in the tripartite alliance.

“If you are a unionist and become too much of a politician, you don’t know how to deal with factory-floor issues,” Zuma told mourners at the reburial ceremony of struggle stalwart Moses Kotane in Pella, near Rustenburg, yesterday, which came to a standstill as cavalcades of luxury vehicles eased their way down dirt roads.

Zuma also berated members of the ANC for “fighting each other in the streets”.

Zuma’s comments angered Jim, who said he rejected the advice from Zuma “with the contempt it deserves”.

“I think it is high time Zuma should be told that he is not representing the working class.

“His advice is completely rejected. The working class is the only class that is capable of carrying the revolution to its logical conclusion . . .”

Zuma’s comments come with the ANC in the process of finding a solution to the problems in Cosatu that led to the expulsion of Numsa from the federation last year. IT’S MY TURF: President Jacob Zuma TARGET: Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi

An ANC task team led by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa is yet to finalise its recommendations after it called for a “ceasefire” between the factions led by Vavi and Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini.

Jim said Zuma’s comments showed that he was involved in sowing division in Cosatu.

“We are convinced, some of us, that the current fragmentation within the federation has got people like Zuma who are keeping quiet when in fact they are directly involved in destroying the federation.”

Zuma also decried the grow- ing levels of ill-discipline within the ANC.

“Are we disciplined in the ANC? I doubt it . . . In the ANC we fight ourselves in the streets,” said Zuma.

The remains of SACP and ANC leaders JB Marks and Kotane were repatriated to South Africa two weeks ago. Both died in exile and were buried in Moscow.

Kotane’s son Sam, currently South Africa’s ambassador to Senegal, thanked the South African government for repatriating the family patriarch, as well as the former Soviet government for housing and caring for his father and Marks. Kotane’s 103-year-old widow, Rebecca, was also in attendance.

Kotane, who led the SACP for nearly 40 years, helped the formerly white working-class party evolve into an indigenous African one and played an integral role as a member of the ANC’s national executive and as a trade unionist.

Harassed, imprisoned and eventually put in the dock during the Treason Trial in 1956, Kotane left the country in 1963.

Zuma said Kotane had been clear on the point that trade unionists cannot take over the space occupied by politicians.

SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande also berated members of the alliance who defied decisions made by leaders.

“Moses Kotane was a good communist and all good communists are in the ANC,” said Nzimande to rapturous applause. Trade unionism belonged within the alliance, not outside, he said.