Death of alliance began long before Zuma
Arequiem for the tripartite alliance, comprising the ANC, labour federation Cosatu and the South African Communist Party (SACP): the alliance is all but dead, and its fate was sealed long before President Jacob Zuma ascended to the party’s top spot at the ANC elective congress held in Polokwane in 2007.
In fact, one is tempted to say that it is unfair to blame Zuma for all the ills afflicting the tripartite arrangement — he is, after all, only in charge of one arm of the alliance, which is the governing party.
The aggressive dependency of Cosatu and the SACP on the ANC’s largesse, in the form of plum state jobs and the prospect of securing seats in Parliament, is at the core of the alliance’s rapid decline. Who would not be fed up with allies who are constantly taking without giving anything in return — only a political pacifist, and Zuma has shown in his 10year rule that he is anything but.
History tells us that the relationship underpinning the alliance has always been fraught, but what kept it together for so long was necessity and a common enemy in the form of the apartheid state. Remove that common enemy, and the cracks start to show.
That political marriage of convenience — like all others before it — starts coming unstuck and falls apart at the seams, albeit slowly.
The sweet seduction of historical nostalgia cannot hide the grim reality, which is that there is currently no mutually reinforcing reason for the alliance to exist.
Take, for example, the 2016 local government elections, during which Cosatu and the SACP agreed to campaign for the ANC, albeit with strings attached. Despite this, the backing of the two did not help lift the governing party’s fortunes at the polls — an area in which they had both been useful for the ANC.
Other than subjecting the ANC, and by extension Zuma, to constant empty threats, what else do Sdumo Dlamini’s Cosatu and Blade Nzimande’s SACP have to offer?
Zuma’s recent Cabinet reshuffle, during which he kicked Nzimande out, signalled that the SACP was no longer considered useful in the greater scheme of things.
Zuma always keeps his political opponents close and busy. So, by removing Nzimande he was in effect calling the SACP’s bluff on state capture and communicating a subliminal political message: that the communists talk a good game but fail to match their words with action. True to form, there has been no exodus of Cabinet ministers aligned to the SACP since Zuma humiliated Nzimande. This tells us that Zuma does not think much of the SACP as a political force.
Also, the ideological inertia wrought upon the alliance by the ANC’s dominance led to the emergence of union and political forces such as the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union and the EFF.
It also partly fed into the DA’s growth in urban areas among the black electorate.
The stasis within the alliance is apparent in the archaic rhetoric all its partners still cling to and deploy, reflecting how far removed they are from the pulse of a dynamic electorate, which has shown a limited appetite for nostalgia. The leftleaning and radical forces outside the ANC are more useful to the governing party than those that reside within.
By insisting on their doublespeak and doublethink when it comes to the ANC, both Cosatu and the SACP hastened their dual decline. The ANC’s sins are not the party’s alone, but are those of all the alliance partners. This is what Cosatu and the SACP fail to grasp when they critique the ANC but in the same breath express support for the “democratic revolution” and dismiss critical voices as “agents provocateur”.
Here is a provocative thought for them: the alliance is on its last legs.