Cosatu, SACP ditch Ramaphosa

THE South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) have dumped President Cyril Ramaphosa ahead of the crucial ANC elective conference this month.

This was a major shift from the alliance partners, who are known to have thrown their weight behind Ramaphosa at the 54th conference in 2017, where he narrowly defeated Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.

Although these partners have no voting powers, they wield a big influence on their respective members, who are also ANC members.

Speaking to The Star’s sister paper, the Daily News exclusively yesterday, both ANC alliance partners said this time around they had decided not to endorse any party candidate because the working class and poor people have not benefited from previous endorsements.

Cosatu KwaZulu-Natal secretary Edwin Mkhize said his federation has not pronounced, and he does not think it will endorse, any candidate since all candidates Cosatu supported previously ended up disappointing them and left workers divided.

He said the federation felt it should leave it up to the workers who are ANC members in the branches to decide who they feel will better serve workers’ interests than the other candidates.

He said although Cosatu knew there was one ANC, workers felt they had to choose the better devils among the candidates, but were disappointed that the better devil became the worst devil.

“In 2007, we supported former president Jacob Zuma, and he won, but workers later regretted supporting him. In 2017, we threw our weight behind Ramaphosa, but again, we later realised that the better devil became the worst devil, so now we have chosen not to pronounce since we have noticed that those decisions were affecting unity among workers, because we ended up blaming one another. Although I’m not saying we will not pronounce, it is likely that we will not support any candidate,“said Mkhize.

He added that workers thought Ramaphosa would better understand workers’ challenges, since he was a unionist himself, but they continue to suffer under him, as currently they are at loggerheads with his administration over salary increases.

The government angered public service workers after unilaterally implementing a 3% increase while workers demanded between 7% and 10%. Workers have rejected the government's final 3% offer, vowing to bring the country to a standstill until their demands are met. Cosatu is yet to decide whether it will campaign for the ANC in the 2024 general elections.

SACP national spokesperson Alex Mashilo said his party never supported Ramaphosa, even in 2017, but it was a coincidence because both the SACP and Ramaphosa had a common vision of fighting corruption by calling for a state capture commission. He said there was nothing on paper where the

SACP took a resolution to support any candidate in 2017.

Mashilo said neither Ramaphosa nor Dr Zweli Mkhize has talked about a fundamental economic change that would create jobs in the country, so the SACP felt since both candidates have so far not announced any policy shift from the current one, the party will not support anyone.

He said the SACP’s main concern was policy politics rather than individual candidates, adding that there were no policy differences between Mkhize and Ramaphosa.

“We do not support any individual, so we rather leave that to our members, who are also ANC members, to make their own choices without being influenced by us as the leadership, but we would like to urge our members not to elect forces associated with corruption, because it will be a doomsday for the country if corrupt forces emerged at the conference,” said Mashilo.

He further stated that his party wanted a fundamental change to the country’s economic policy, since all the current ones were not growing the economy.

He said his party was still bitter that the ANC had adopted Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) as the country’s economic policy, despite his party’s objections to it.

The SACP spokesperson said the country’s lowest unemployment rate was in 1995, when it stood at 16%, and thereafter it has been growing.

Mashilo said after Gear it became worse, shooting to more than 20%, and has been on an upward trajectory since 1996, when Gear was adopted.

Offering his party’s solution as an alternative to the current economic challenges, Mashilo said the SACP was calling for industrialisation on a massive scale by the government to create jobs, rather than waiting for capitalists, who he said were driven by profit when investing in the country.

He said the government should speed up the land redistribution programme so that people could employ themselves through working their land.