State of ANC in the spotlight
COSATU leaders had to plead with members to allow ANC national executive committee (NEC) member and Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi to address the May Day rally at the Thobi Kula Indoor Sports Complex on Monday.
Shortly before Motsoaledi addressed the crowd, members held up pictures of ANC provincial chairman and premier Phumulo Masualle.
South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu) provincial deputy chairman Lazola Mphothe, who was directing the programme, reprimanded the workers not to “use the photo of the provincial chairman of the ANC for your factional battles”.
He said it was the ANC NEC deployed by the SG (secretary general Gwede Mantashe) speaking at the event.
“Comrades, please be disciplined, you can not destruct the NEC. The media is here to capture this event – please behave.”
Motsoaledi was finally allowed to speak, to the delight of most of the crowd. He said things were bad within the ANC and that the hearts of some of the members were bleeding.
“Something is wrong and we need to correct it. I have no answers for you, you must give the leadership answers. I was given guidelines by Mantashe on what to say, but today is not the day for speeches. Today I wish I was like Cyril Ramaphosa who knows all 11 official languages and can address you in ISIXHOSA,” he said.
Motsoaledi asked the crowd, which filled the hall to capacity, what they were going to do to correct things in the ANC elective conference in December.
“I am a member of the NEC and the national working committee and all those structures are divided. How are we going to unite the party if we can not even unite ourselves as leaders?” he asked.
Delivering the keynote address, Democratic Nurses Organisation of SA president and Cosatu central executive committee member Simon Hlangwani said workers had to unite and identify campaigns that would liberate them.
Workers needed to look where they were, where they wanted to go and what needed to be done to improve their working conditions.
He said the white monopoly capital was willing to pay exorbitant salaries to executives, but not willing to pay the minimum wage.
“Looking at the current situation the workers find themselves in, we feel President Jacob Zuma can not lead the country to improve and transform. Changing him as the president would help us achieve a better SA.”
Hlangwani said before deciding on a name, there should be a thorough interrogation of an individual's history, character and skills. “There is a certain deputy president whose name I will not say. He is a businessman, a former unionist with great negotiation skills. He chaired the constitutional assembly and we feel that deputy president can take this country in the right direction.”
SACP central executive committee member Fezeka Loliwe said the alliance was scarred.
Loliwe said the church should pray so the country “can be freed from this man”. Workers had to unite as running a race divided would not have the intended outcomes.
“We have no reason to fight as the alliance because we share the same ideologies,” Loliwe said. “In our unity we must ensure the second phase of the national democratic revolution benefits the poor.”