Pretoria - A major split is looming in Cosatu following the trade union federation’s decision to dump the ANC ahead of the country’s general election in 2024.
Cosatu’s biggest affiliate, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union, with more than 275 000 members, was at the centre of the call.
The move was backed by the National Union of Mineworkers, South African Municipal Workers Union and the Police Prisons and Civil Rights Union.
They collectively forced Cosatu’s 14th national congress held this week to vote on the motion. Out of 1 854 delegates at the conference, fewer than 800 voted on the motion.
A total of 543 voted in favour of ditching the ANC in 2024, while 194 wanted such a decision to be placed on suspension until all Cosatu’s union members had ample time to discuss it. However, they failed.
The tirade against the ANC unfolded on Monday when scores of Cosatu members belonging to the four major unions barred the governing party’s national chairperson, Gwede Mantashe, from delivering a message of support to the congress.
The delegates heckled the Mineral Resources minister for two days in a row until he left the congress venue at the Gallagher Convention Centre.
Ironically, SACP general secretary Solly Mapaila was welcomed and delegates ululated when he also supported the workers’ protest against Mantashe.
“Workers must not be nice to the government if it reneges on its bargaining agreement. It is actually disrespectful,” he said, in the presence of Mantashe and other ANC leaders.
Adding fuel to the fire, Mapaila also announced, to the applause of delegates, that the SACP would make a decision on whether to contest the election on its own in December.
“The SACP is ready. Is the working class ready?” Mapaila asked.
His comments evidently irked Mantashe, who said: “The SACP served us with divorce papers in public.”
After Mapaila’s address, Mantashe ruled out any partnership between the ANC and SACP in the 2024 elections.
“We won’t be working together. We will be fishing from the same pond,” Mantashe said. He added that if SACP went ahead with its threat, it would shrink the support base of both parties ahead of the 2024 polls.
Tensions at the congress grew when the four major unions pushed the gathering to vote on the motion to dump the ANC while the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) and others wanted more time.
Cosatu’s top leadership managed to convince the general secretaries of the 18 affiliate unions to put a hold on the motion, but that was rejected and the matter put to the vote on Thursday.
It was at that point that unions such as Sadtu, the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa and other smaller unions walked out and failed to cast their votes, which resulted in the low turnout.
Speaking to Independent Media before the walkout, Sadtu general secretary Mugwena Maluleke was adamant that his union didn’t have a mandate to discuss the motion.
“We had robust discussions as an organisation, but as Sadtu we are beginning to see a Cosatu that is going to rupture. We are beginning to see a positional attitude instead of an engagement and convincing or persuading one another. We are beginning to see numerical arrogance taking centre stage. The assessment that we have done is that we no longer have the Cosatu we used to have.
“We are saying as Sadtu that we have a congress decision of supporting the ANC. So if the SACP takes a decision to contest, we will be compelled as an organisation to call a special congress of Sadtu that will then take a firm decision,” Maluleke said.
Sadtu is expected to meet for its national general council from Tuesday to Thursday next week and the issue of Cosatu’s decision on the ANC will likely feature high on the agenda. The congress is expected to be addressed by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
On Thursday, in a dramatic show of change in loyalty to the ANC, the re-elected Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi, warned the ANC government that it should immediately implement the 2018 bargaining council wage agreement which it had reneged on. This is a major source of Cosatu unions’ anger and their decision to defy the ANC.
“We cannot normalise a 44% unemployment rate, rising levels of poverty and inequality. We will no longer tolerate municipal workers being sent home unpaid. We will not accept the retrenchments of postal workers. We will wage relentless battles in defence of workers’ hard-won labour rights and collective bargaining.
“No employer, be it government, SOEs or the private sector will be allowed to undermine collective bargaining without facing the wrath of workers, our affiliates and Cosatu. Let this warning be heard loud and clear.”
Losi’s closing remarks were drastically different from her opening statement of the congress on Monday, in which she urged Cosatu unions to rally behind the ANC government in the 2024 elections to avoid a DA-led coalition government.
At the time, she said the DA coalition government would undermine the interests of workers, but the congress and its decision on the motion on the ANC changed her tune.
Pretoria News