Cosatu girds for new alliance status fight
● Influential Cosatu affiliates are threatening to withdraw support for the ANC unless the labour federation is given a role in decision-making.
This is one of the proposals that will be debated at the Cosatu national conference that starts tomorrow.
In discussion documents to be tabled at the conference, the federation’s biggest affiliate in terms of membership, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu), suggested that Cosatu should consider throwing its weight behind the SACP if Cosatu is not given equal-partner status in the tripartite alliance.
The conference, where Zingiswa Losi is expected to emerge as the first woman Cosatu president, is likely to be marked by fierce debate over how much clout Cosatu wields in the alliance with the SACP and ANC.
Just eight months after the ANC elective conference at which Cyril Ramaphosa, who was backed by Cosatu and the SACP, triumphed, Cosatu seems to be unhappy over lack of consultation by the ruling party when important decisions are taken.
These include the signing of contracts with independent power producers; reconfiguration of the government, which may cost thousands of jobs; and the rise in the VAT rate to 15%.
Leaders in Cosatu, including president S’dumo Dlamini, say Cosatu wants to be an equal partner with the ANC and play a role in policymaking and the deployment of cadres, among other things.
Speaking to the Sunday Times this week, Nehawu general secretary Zola Saphetha said: “If the ANC is not paying particular attention to that class [the working class and poor] … we would have to mobilise that class to where it belongs and force the Communist Party to lead the national democratic revolution.”
Nehawu has become one of the most powerful unions in Cosatu due to the shrinking membership of the National Union of Mineworkers and the ousting from the federation of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA, and it is expected to use the conference this week to flex its muscles.
Saphetha said the ANC only paid attention to Cosatu and the SACP in the run- up to elections.
“Always other allies like the Communist Party and Cosatu are reduced to a ‘by the way’, not [given] a real, robust kind of a platform,” he said.
Dlamini said the alliance needed to be “reconfigured” so that all three partners took part in making decisions and in formulating an alliance election manifesto.
“We must have structural meetings … which must discuss issues that are to do with policy, particularly in government,” he said.
“[The call for reconfiguration] comes from a state of feeling excluded and not consulted.
“When there are problems, it’s too late for alliance partners to intervene because they were not part of the origins of those problems.”
Dlamini said such problems included factionalism in the ANC and those sparked by former president Jacob Zuma’s cabinet choices. Alliance partners were not kept in the picture and were therefore powerless to help to resolve these issues.
He said other alliance problems included e-tolls and the ANC’s reluctance to scrap labour brokers.
We would have to mobilise that class … and force the SACP to lead the national democratic revolution
Zola Saphetha
Nehawu general secretary