‘Ramaphosa needs to start swinging a big axe’

COSATU has warned that President Cyril Ramaphosa will fail in the fight to stamp out corruption under his administration if he remains fearful of political confrontation.

This comes as the federation blasted the ANC over its links to the recent reports of the looting of Covid-19 relief funds through tender corruption.

Yesterday, Cosatu general secretary Bheki Ntshalintshali said that while the federation had noted Ramaphosa’s efforts to push back against corruption, he would be judged on the results and not his intentions.

“Aggressive prosecution is the only dependable vaccine to cure the virus of corruption, not speeches, letters, or public proclamations. President Ramaphosa will not win the fight against corruption if he continues to be confrontation averse. He needs to start swinging a big axe if he wants workers to trust and believe in him,” Ntshalintshali said.

The federation called for corrupt officials and politicians to be targeted by law enforcement agencies and to ensure that they were tossed behind bars.

Ntshalintshali said Ramaphosa had to remember that his campaign for presidency was based on the eradication of corruption.

“Workers feel that the president who campaigned in poetry is governing in prose and they are not impressed. The president must stop negotiating with criminals and use the only language they will understand which is prosecution and imprisonment,” he said.

Cosatu has also warned that SA voters could soon lose confidence and be alienated from the ANC as it continued to be plagued by political rot that was “eating away the party’s soul”.

Ntshalintshali said the ANC was increasingly suffering from ill-discipline and factionalism, with workers also fast losing confidence in the party’s willingness to honestly address corruption.

He said the appointment of former ethekwini mayor Zandile Gumede into the Kwazulu-natal legislature despite a cloud of corruption hanging over her head was among the reasons workers were starting to not take the ANC seriously.

“They are starting to view the organisation’s public statements as nothing but phony outrage for political propaganda purposes. It does not help for the ANC to issue statements of condemnation regarding the state of corruption in the country while reinstating people implicated in the VBS looting scandal and also promoting a former mayor facing corruption allegations to a higher position,” Ntshalintshali said.

He described the ANC as inward looking and politically reckless for promoting Gumede.

Cosatu also rejected the proposal by political parties, including the ANC and the EFF, for the postponement of next year’s local government elections.

Ntshalintshali said they had reflected on the current state of municipalities and concluded that the proposed postponement was unacceptable as it would result in poor service delivery, misgovernance and corruption.

“Postponing local government elections is tantamount to us being complicit to corruption. Voters have a right to express themselves and rate the performance of their councillors on the ballot,” he said.

The federation’s CEC has resolved to develop a campaign against corruption and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration to eradicate it.

“The CEC has resolved to mobilise for a general strike to force the government to act against corruption on the seventh of October, 2020, on the World Day for Decent Work,”ntshalintshali said.

ANC national spokesperson Pule Mabe had not responded to requests for comment at the time of going to print.