Johannesburg | Monday
THE row between the South African government and the country’s biggest trade union federation Cosatu grew on Sunday as the union rejected President Thabo Mbeki’s accusations that it was spreading lies about the state’s privatisation plan.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions’ representative Patrick Craven told a press conference in Johannesburg: “We reject what they say about us. We can substantiate and prove everything we had said about the ANC government.”
Mbeki on Friday slammed Cosatu for calling a nationwide strike on August 29 and 30 to protest the privatisation of state enterprises.
The African National Congress (ANC) government wants to raise revenue by selling off electricity, telecommunications, weapons and transport state enterprises. But Cosatu, an alliance partner of the ruling party, claims it will lead to job losses.
Mbeki charged: “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.” Craven on Sunday told journalists that Cosatu had held talks with the government about its privatisation programme, but said the trade union movement had never agreed to support it.
“Cosatu never agreed with privatisation,” he said.
The trade union federation’s planned strike comes just ahead of the United Nations’ anti-racism conference, which is to begin in Durban on August 31.
The government has made known its displeasure at the strike in full-page advertisements in two Sunday newspapers which carried the headline “The general strike is not really necessary.”
Cosatu has some 1,7-million members and helped bring the ANC to power, but the relationship between the two movements has since soured, though both deny rumours of a split.
Tony Leon, the leader of the official opposition Democratic Alliance, on Sunday called on the government not to let itself be influenced by its ally.
“Their influence over national economic policy has been disproportionate and damaging since 1994. A ruling party must govern for the benefit of all the people, not for a unionised minority.” – AFP