The ANC's alliance partners in KwaZulu-Natal have been publicly critical of its provincial executive committee — led by chairperson Siboniso Duma and secretary Bheki Mtolo — over its failure to meet them for more than a year and to consult them regarding key decisions.
(Darren Stewart/Gallo Images)
The ANC’s alliance partners in KwaZulu-Natal have called for urgent intervention from the party’s national leadership to address deteriorating relations between them and the provincial leadership.
They say the recent war of words between ANC KwaZulu-Natal secretary Bheki Mtolo and public sector affiliates of labour federation Cosatu has led to a “deadlock” in relations.
South African Communist Party (SACP) provincial secretary Themba Mthembu on Monday expressed concern that the alliance secretariat, which is meant to meet monthly, has held only “one or two” meetings since the current ANC leadership took office in July 2022.
This is after a number of public spats between Mtolo and public sector affiliates, including the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu), the South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) and, most recently, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu).
Mthembu said there had been “a history of issues” between the ANC in the province and the public sector unions, and a lack of consultation with the alliance partners on strategic decisions taken by the party.
They had again written to the ANC leadership requesting intervention last month, but had received no response.
“There are many other occasions on which we have written to them asking for an intervention, even since this leadership of Mtolo came into power. There is a long history of issues which have not been addressed,” Mthembu said.
“We have done so again. If there is a lack of response, then we must consider it as a stalemate in the working of the alliance in KwaZulu-Natal.”
In 2022, Mtolo verbally attacked Sadtu members for resisting an instruction from then education MEC Kwazi Mshengu that they wear traditional attire for an official event.
Mtolo also fell foul of Sawmu over the violent strike by its members in eThekwini ahead of this year’s 29 May elections. He accused the Samwu members of working with Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party to undermine the ANC ahead of the vote.
Mtolo called for the 2 000 workers involved in the illegal strike to be fired, enraging Cosatu and Samwu and alienating the ANC eThekwini region, whose members are also members of the union.
Most recently he took on Nehawu and, in a speech last month, accused its members in home affairs and other departments of being responsible for service delivery failures — and by extension for the ANC’s loss of power in the province.
The party went from getting 54% of the provincial vote in 2019 to a dismal 17% on 29 May, losing 30 of its 44 seats in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature.
The party has been reduced to occupying three seats in the provincial cabinet, where it is part of the provincial unity government led by the Inkatha Freedom Party’s (IFPs) Thami Ntuli.
The public sector unions have since taken Mtolo to task, saying that austerity measures and failures by the ANC leadership — rather than Nehawu — were responsible for the ANC’s electoral misfortunes.
Samwu last week accused Mtolo of “attempts to divide the workers” and called him a “political lunatic masquerading as the provincial secretary of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal”.
Samwu provincial secretary Nokubonga Dinga said the union was neither “pleased nor impressed” by the utterances of Mtolo, who was “supposed to be ashamed and humbled” after leading the ANC to defeat in the province.
Instead of focusing on organisational renewal, Mtolo had “decided to attack workers without any provocation” to ingratiate himself with “the ruling cabal” and to avoid the disbandment of the provincial executive committee.
Dinga said Mtolo had called for the dismissal of 2 000 Samwu members in eThekwini for going on strike in the weeks before the elections and had attempted to turn the city’s residents against the union. She said Mtolo had also attempted to pit Samwu against Nehawu by now praising its work.
“As Samwu we do not need fake, stinking praises from this scoundrel,” Dinga said.
“We are calling on the ANC to rein in this political liability, who seems to be eager to finish off what is left of the ANC in the province.”
The decision by the ANC in the province to suspend Zuma as a party member after he declared his support for the MK party last December heightened tensions between it and its partners.
At the time they claimed they were not consulted about the decision, but were merely called to a briefing at which they were instructed to publicly endorse the move to strip Zuma of his ANC membership.
This, and the inability of the ANC to accommodate either Cosatu or the SACP in the provincial cabinet ahead of its own leaders, has added to the tensions.
The ANC’s decision to go into a provincial and national unity government with the Democratic Alliance, the IFP and other parties does not sit well with either the SACP or Cosatu in KwaZulu-Natal.
Their leaders see it as undermining the future of the alliance — and their influence over the ANC — which does not bode well for the party with local government elections around the corner in 2026.
Cosatu provincial secretary Edwin Mkhize has called for “unity among the rank and file” in response to the “malicious” attack on public servants by Mtolo.
Mkhize said Cosatu “does not understand what triggered the attack” but was “not surprised” given the history of clashes with the trade union movement involving the ANC provincial secretary.
He said that historically, disputes between alliance partners were dealt with through internal structures and were managed by an ANC leadership, which had the “skills and the mindset” to do so, and had assisted in uniting the rank and file.
But the ANC KwaZulu-Natal leadership had “no appreciation of the worker’s role in the development of the economy and the provision of services” and “see no value in workers”.
Mkhize said Cosatu saw this as a “provocation” and an unnecessary diversion at a time when the debate should be about how to recover from the loss of power in the elections.
“All the energy and focus must be directed towards recovering from this setback, as we will be preparing for the 2026 local government elections soon. We should be ardently reflecting on all factors that affected the elections,” he said.
“We expect the senior structures of the congress movement to urgently intervene in KwaZulu-Natal as the situation has become unsettling, posing a new challenge for the congress movement.”
ANC provincial spokesperson Mafika Mndebele had not responded to a request for comment from the Mail & Guardian at the time of writing.