Paul Kirk and Marianne Merten
The man hired by Golden Arrow buses to provide security to its besieged drivers is the KwaZulu-Natal hotel owner who allegedly offered a security guard money to withdraw a rape charge against tycoon Jonty Sandler.
Norman Reeves, the managing director of the Combat Group of Companies, is a former regimental sergeant-major in one of South Africa’s parachute battalions and a well- known supporter of the Inkatha Freedom Party.
Reeves allegedly offered the security guard from his Himeville Arms hotel R20 000 to drop his complaint against Sandler, who is due to be tried for the alleged rape in September. He is currently embroiled in a legal battle over unpaid debt, having opposed two claims that were lodged after the sheriff of the Pietermaritzburg High Court failed to penetrate his La Lucia mansion to serve court papers on him. Away from such controversy, Reeves is known as a man who values discipline above everything and gets things done. Various institutions have in the past called him in to sort out disputes ranging from student protests to taxi blockades.
This week his Combat Group personnel were patrolling Khayelitsha in cars and armoured Saracen vehicles, standing guard at bus terminals – and responding more rapidly than police to several shootings.
The company’s predilection for discipline was borne out when Reeves’s staff fired off a letter of complaint to top Cape police officials after they discovered that senior police officers had trampled over the already marked and cordoned-off scene of an attack on a bus on Monday in which a woman passenger died
.@ Cosatu challenge to ANC leaders
The federation has accused the government of failing to implement alliance agreements
Sechaba ka’Nkosi and Jaspreet Kindra
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has warned that its alliance with the African National Congress is heading towards a crisis as the government increasingly marginalises the union federation on key policy decisions.
Cosatu has also accused the government of not implementing sections of the ANC’s election manifesto, claiming that the ANC, as a party, has “no decisive control” over policy development in the government – a situation which has “set the stage for a shift to the right in economic policies”.
In a discussion paper drafted for the union federation’s national congress in September, Cosatu warns that the alliance is “heading towards a crisis”.
The union says its relationship with the government is “dangerously undefined”. There is no mechanism to ensure that the government implements alliance agreements. Some in the government seem uncomfortable about consulting the alliance on major policies. They adopt the refrain that “government must govern”.
Cosatu warns of the emergence of a “new bureaucratic bourgeoisie”, adding that the lack of systems to ensure “executive accountability to the alliance released government leaders from consistent oversight and support. It created conditions for the politics of patronage and careerism.”
The document also guns for the conduct of ANC cadres leaving the government, complaining that no limits have been placed on “leaders joining business straight out of government or investing in enterprises, which increases the potential for lobbying by capital”.
Cosatu’s unprecedented warning is likely to stimulate a renewed effort on the part of ANC to bolster its flagging alliance with the left wing, namely Cosatu and the South African Communist Party.
Discussion papers drawn up for the ANC’s forthcoming national general council conference, in Port Elizabeth next week, suggest the ANC will try to demonstrate its willingness to soften its conservative economic policies to appease its left-wing alliance partners.
However, the documents fail to come up with practical ideas on how such change should be implemented, suggesting the conference will be more about soothing tensions in the alliance as opposed to shifts in economic policy.
The Cosatu-led left wing of the alliance, which enjoys the strong backing of the SACP, already says it is worried that the gathering will merely result in a public-relations exercise.
“What we are afraid of is that the conference can deteriorate into a political lecture by the ANC on how we should or should not criti-cise policies we are not in agreement with,” said a Cosatu member.
“Experience has taught us that it is better to fight from within our own structures than in ANC national meetings.”
One of the key discussion documents for the meeting, ANC: People’s Movement and Agent for Change, calls for broad socio- economic processes that are different from ordinary capitalism and based on the creation of a new “cadreship” capable of implementing party programmes.
“Our programme is not only about transformation of material conditions,” argues the ANC in the document, “but also about engendering new social values.”
The Port Elizabeth conference is modelled on the Kabwe Consultative Conference in Zambia 15 years ago that gave strategic direction to the ANC in the midst of massive politi-cal resistance in South Africa. But in post-apartheid South Africa stakes appear to be higher.
This time the ANC will have to deal with internal problems such as increasing factionalism within the organisation – as well as the tripartite alliance – and the influence of the left wing of the organisation.
While the conference does not have any powers to reverse decisions taken at the party’s highest decision-making body – the national congress – its main purpose will be to heal the rift within its ranks ahead of the local government elections as a united front.
ANC branches have already raised serious reservations on the party’s decision to appoint premiers and now mayors as a prerogative of the deployment committee.
The issue became clearer during Mpumalanga’s attempt to oppose Premier Ndaweni Mahlangu’s nomination for the premiership and is expected to erupt again when congresses are held, particularly in the faction-riddled provinces of Gauteng and the Free State.
While dealing with internal dissent may not be difficult, the most critical critique is expected from the left bloc, which is still battling with redirecting the party’s economic reform programme.
The left’s pessimism has its roots in two previous conferences where both Cosatu and the SACP failed to make any meaningful inroads in influencing ANC policies.
At the centre of the discontent is the ANC’s investor-friendly economic policies, which have created serious division within the alliance.
In the conference documents, the ANC calls for the strengthening of the alliance and the building of a broad front that will include organs of civil society with a common programme for transformation.