Sdumo Dlamini,

capitalism is playing is weakening the working class through retrenchments and undermining labour laws.

We’ve also identified the challenge of business unionism as an area in which we need to do a lot of work because we can’t have a situation where fights within unions are about who controls investments of our unions. These investment companies are for empowering workers, training shop stewards and educating their children. We need to protect that.

We must reassert the founding principles of Cosatu, including the “one union, one industry” principle.

Shop stewards must remember that they represent workers at the workplace and that they are the custodians of the trade union.

We must revisit our long-standing decision of convening an investment council to discuss how we assist trade unions with investments, create a distance between trade unions and investment companies or a business wing of the union.

We must build Cosatu unions and strengthen them from the ground.

We have identified that there is the possibility of a distance between leaders at national level and members and shop stewards on the ground because of the growth of our unions. That does pose challenges.

[People] said that if Sdumo and Vavi resigned the problems of Cosatu would be gone. But the affiliates of Cosatu have strongly rejected that view. I have rejected that view.

It would be undermining Cosatu leaders and members to believe that the challenges that the organisation has been facing are due to two individuals. There is no scientific proof of that, except that factions would have fashioned themselves and unwittingly given factions the faces of Vavi and Sdumo. That is unfortunate.

But I say it undermines the intelligence of members to look at it like that. I think what is facing us here as a leadership collective is what do you do when a leader has erred whilst he is leading. Do you then say because it is that leader, let’s not take action? Those are difficult questions confronting us, the leadership. It’s not a Sdumo and Vavi matter.