Sechaba ka’Nkosi
The African National Congress’s biggest alliance partner, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), will spend most of 1998 campaigning against the ANC’s lynchpin policy.
At the centre of the looming confrontation is an assertion by senior ANC leaders in Mafikeng during its conference last month that its Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) strategy is now the party’s official policy.
Yet, Cosatu argues, there was no debate or official position adopted on Gear by conference delegates. Most Cosatu heavyweights view this as a slap in the face, as the ANC has been fully aware of their problems with the policy, and orchestrated a campaign to confuse its membership on the alliance’s exact stance on it.
The trade union federation said that while it is still willing to assist the ANC in the run-up to the election next year, assistance could be conditional on the ruling party’s willingness to enter into bona fide negotiations with its allies — Cosatu and the South African Communist Party — on fundamental policies.
So angry is Cosatu that its leaders swung into action this week, blaming the government and Gear for almost every crisis in the country — from health to the ongoing dispute between the Ministry of Education and teacher unions, to jailbreaks and the failure by the Eastern Cape government to pay pensioners. Cosatu also said Gear was responsible for the many job losses last year and the ban on overtime pay for public prosecutors.
Says its assistant general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi: “It is very insensitive of the government to fail to deal with the Eastern Cape crisis because with such high unemployment, pensions become the only means of survival for most families in the province.
“Our view is that because of the emphasis on budgetary restraint, poverty in the depressed provinces is likely to become even worse this year. That is why it would be very immoral for Cosatu not to speak out on such issues.”
Cosatu insists the debate on macro-economic issues was deliberately avoided at the conference because it could have exposed policies that are not working and needed reviewing.
A crucial alliance summit next month is expected to be a highly contested affair among the three partners, and could set the agenda for their relationship through the year and possibly into the elections. One of Cosatu’s key demands about this meeting is that those areas which were left unfinished during the alliance summit in October last year must be concluded, and agreements must be reached on some of the contentious issues.
Coupled with that, the federation wants the ANC to give undertakings (on behalf of the government) that it will be willing to open all its policies for review by the alliance so that programmes that have failed can be replaced.
Without such engagement, Cosatu says it will again refuse to take part in any negotiations that will be organised under the auspices of Gear, including the proposed jobs summit scheduled for June. The alliance summit is likely to be preceded by Cosatu’s national executive committee meeting on February 10 and 11, which will draw up Cosatu’s plans and agenda for the year.
Cosatu warns that its programme of action could include the mobilisation of millions of unemployed and poor people on to the streets to force a review of ANC strategy.
Vavi says there is general satisfaction on the overall performance of the ANC-led government since 1994 and the way in which the government has handled the restructuring of the market. But it is still Cosatu’s view that Gear has failed to deliver to the majority of the poor in South Africa.
“In economics you don’t just make a list of wishes and hope that if you pronounce it often enough it will turn into a reality. You work policies around the reality you are faced with at the time. Any macro- economic reform programme that fails to deliver jobs and decent salaries to the poor is wrong. It must be overhauled. The poor and the unemployed cannot afford a policy that will take up to 20 years to deliver to the poor,” says Vavi.
The federation wants a meeting with President Nelson Mandela, Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and Finance Minister Trevor Manuel to discuss reviewing Gear and the crisis in social upliftment programmes.