A CLEAR MESSAGE SENT TO THE ANC

THE booing of ANC national chairperson Gwede Mantashe by Cosatu members at the federation’s 14th conference in Joburg on Monday is a clear message to the governing party that its days of rhetorical sloganeering and insulting the public’s intelligence are over.

Mantashe was heckled off stage and sent packing by angry workers who denounced the governing party. They protested against the failure by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government to implement the final leg of an agreed three-year wage agreement.

Mantashe and his fellow ANC national executive committee (NEC) members, Lindiwe Zulu and Barbara Creecy, were humiliated and left with egg on their faces.

Despite the attempt by leaders of Cosatu, led by re-elected president Zingiswa Losi, to intervene and save face for Mantashe, the workers would have none of it. It was a repeat of what happened to Ramaphosa at last year’s May Day rally, when Cosatu members booed and jeered him in Rustenburg and refused to be addressed by him. At the time the police were forced to whisk him out of the stadium in Rustenburg using a Nyala.

It is not difficult to understand why workers turned against Mantashe and Ramaphosa. The government they lead failed to give workers an agreed salary increase in the face of rampant unemployment, inflation, inequality and the rising cost of living.

In other words, the money they now earn does not take them far on the retail shelves, as it did in the past. The prices of basics like food, electricity and petrol have rocketed.

As if this is not enough, workers and other South Africans have been in the dark for weeks due to power blackouts, thanks to Mantashe, Ramaphosa and their fellow comrade and NEC member, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan. So it comes as no surprise that workers publicly rejected Mantashe, who is also the minister of mineral resources and energy. Like many South Africans, they just got tired of being lied to and taken advantage of by their leaders.

Of course Mantashe tried to spin it by saying it was a stance against the ANC, rather than himself. That may well be true. But it also shows they see no difference between him and the current ANC leadership under Ramaphosa.