Johannesburg | Saturday
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki accused the country’s main trade union federation on Friday of joining hands with rightists and using workers as cannon fodder.
His comments in the Internet publication “ANC Today” follow a sharp attack by the cabinet on Thursday on plans by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) to hold a general strike to protest against privatisation on August 29 and 30, the eve of a huge UN conference on racism in the east coast city of Durban.
Mbeki does not mention Cosatu by name, but it is clear he is referring to the federation, which has some 1,7-million members.
“The question that arises is why lies are being told (about the government’s programmes) and false claims made of the possibility of easy victories over the colonial and apartheid legacy,” he says.
“Whose interests do they serve, who abandon the morality of revolutionaries, so that they can use workers as cannon fodder to launch an offensive aimed at defeating their own liberation movement!
“One of the lies they tell is that our government has betrayed policies agreed by the broad democratic movement with regard to the issue of the restructuring of state assets.
“Thus they argue that, because of this, we have abandoned the pursuit of the objective of a better life for all.
“Those who have, apparently from ‘the left’, joined hands with the right wing, that has always sought to defeat our movement, need to know this. The enemy tried! The enemy failed!”
Cosatu is part of the ruling tripartite alliance, along with the ANC (the African National Congress) and the South African Communist Party.
Disagreements between the ANC and its two partners on economic policy have burst into the open over the past week, with tens of thousands of workers demonstrating against plans to privatise big state enterprises. – AFP