The ANC faces an election campaign under conditions of political civil war.

IN THE muddied circumstances of the gladiatorial contest between Sdumo Dlamini and Zwelinzima Vavi, only one thing is clear: the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) will not be the effective partner of the African National Congress (ANC) in next year’s elections that it has been in the past.

Since 1994, Cosatu has been the organisational arm of the ruling alliance.

The ANC is the political flag bearer, the party with the cachet of having liberated the country from apartheid, but it is frankly sloppy when it comes to organisation.

As for the South African Communist Party, it is a mouse beside its tripartite allies, a party with a membership the size of the population of Mthatha, the capital of the former Transkei Bantustan.

Cosatu, on the other hand, is a structured body with a solid culture of organisational efficiency and a membership of about 2,2million, which is more than double that of the ANC. It is Cosatu that brings out the voters at election time.

But Cosatu is in disarray now because of the warfare between a faction led by Dlamini, its president, and the supporters of general secretary Vavi, which has been raging since last December and seems likely to continue for the rest of this year and beyond.

Essentially, the conflict is over the degree of loyalty the labour federation should show to the ANC as the party in power.

Vavi insists it should be an arm’s-length relationship, with Cosatu broadly supporting the government but reserving the right to be openly critical of policies with which it disagrees and to pressure the administration into adopting what he calls Cosatu’s “progressive agenda” of distributive policies.

Dlamini and his supporters, on the other hand, contend that Vavi is too critical of the government, particularly of President Jacob Zuma’s leadership, and that his outspokenness is endangering the unity of the alliance. And as Vavi is famously outspoken and determined not to be silenced, his opponents, clearly backed by Zuma, are trying to demote or even kick him out of the federation. But this is proving not to be easy, as Vavi is a proud and determined man who enjoys strong support among ordinary trade unionists throughout the country.

His opponents have therefore tried to nail him on disciplinary issues, on which Cosatu officials can act on their own, first by accusing him of corruption because of the sale of Cosatu’s headquarters building in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, which they contended was sold below value, and more recently over a case of sexual misdemeanour to which Vavi has confessed.

However, neither has satisfied the proVavi camp, which argues heatedly that the campaign against him is a thinly disguised political conspiracy by a gang that wants to ingratiate itself with Zuma by turning Cosatu into a sweetheart ANC “labour desk”.

From a point where it looked as though he was heading for the canvas, Vavi made a comeback last week, when nine of Cosatu’s 19 affiliate unions petitioned Dlamini to convene a special congress of the federation to resolve the issue.

Such a congress would throw the issue before the broad body of worker members, where Vavi’s strength lies.

As a result, his supporters are now crowing that they will reverse the conspirators’ intent and ask the congress instead to remove Cosatu’s three top leaders, Dlamini, deputy general secretary Bheki Ntshalintshali and second deputy president Zingiswa Losi, and replace them with a new team.

But Dlamini, who now finds himself backed into a corner of his own making, has an opportunity to filibuster the issue.

Cosatu’s constitution requires him to respond to the demand of the nine unions within two weeks, but that means Dlamini need only prepare a logistical report about arrangements for the special congress at that point for presentation to Cosatu’s central executive committee meeting in November.

That will drag out the issue until a mere five months before the election, and it will still roll on after that.

In April, Business Day suggested there could be only one of two outcomes to this issue — either Vavi would be kicked out of the alliance or the ANC would go into the election in a state of civil war.

As things stand, it looks as though Vavi will not be evicted but that the ANC will indeed be at war with itself as it confronts its political opponents in April next year.

That means it will go into the election with its most important ally seriously weakened, which is bound to affect the outcome.

Last week, Dlamini pledged Cosatu’s full support for the ANC in next year’s elections, but will Cosatu really be in a position to provide that support?

First, the opposition Democratic Alliance has threatened to go court to challenge Cosatu’s right to use workers’ money to help fund a political party’s campaign. Whatever the result of such a case, if it comes to court, it is questionable whether Cosatu is in a financial position to be as generous as it has been in past elections.

Member unions are reportedly R9m in arrears with their affiliation fees, partly because of the shrinkage of membership as new splinter unions have broken away from Cosatu over the past year.

In addition, Cosatu’s biggest union, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), headed by Vavi’s chief ally, Irvin Jim, has threatened to withhold its substantial fees if the assault on Vavi continues.

Most important of all, though, is the role Vavi himself might play. He in effect triggered the escalation of what had until then been merely a simmering conflict in the federation, when he openly clashed with Zuma at the ANC’s elective national conference in Mangaung last December.

Zuma had just announced, in his speech wrapping up the conference, that both the Cabinet and the ANC had fully endorsed the National Development Plan (NDP) drafted by a commission under the Minister of Planning in the Presidency, Trevor Manuel, and that there was now “national consensus” on this programme, which charts a developmental course for the country to follow over the next 20 years. He called on the whole country to unite behind it.

But for Vavi, this was a blue rag to a leftist bull. First, he regards Manuel, who was Thabo Mbeki’s finance minister, and is widely acclaimed by the business community, as the leader of the “neoliberal” wing of the ANC.

Second, all of Vavi’s resentments of Zuma’s failure to implement “progressive” policies since becoming president have become encapsulated in his vehement opposition to the NDP.

It would be difficult, Vavi announced, for Cosatu to support the ANC in next year’s elections if the NDP was part of the ANC’s postelection programme.

Well, the NDP will be part of the ANC’s election platform. So what will Vavi do? Where will he be?

He may well find a slot beside his ally, Jim, in the fast-growing Numsa, which in turn may evolve into something of a rival to Cosatu?

Or he may go fully into politics, forming a leftwing Socialist Workers Party modelled on that of the former Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, for whom Vavi has expressed great admiration. Those are all longer-term possibilities. In the short term, we are looking at an election taking place in seven months’ time under conditions of political civil war.

Sparks is a former editor of the Rand Daily Mail.