Johannesburg | Saturday
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki has agreed to meet with leaders of the country’s largest trade union federation following a two-day general strike, the ruling party’s online publication said on Friday.
Mbeki’s decision comes after a request for a meeting by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which launched a national strike on Wednesday and Thursday to protest against the government’s privatisation policies.
“Because of the importance of the matter you raise, I have given a copy of your letter to our Secretary General (Kgalema Motlanthe) with the request that we do everything possible to ensure that we indeed meet as soon as possible,” Mbeki wrote in the latest issue of ANC Today.
The Cosatu strike represents the most serious fallout between the ANC and Cosatu, its alliance partner, since the country’s first democratic elections in 1994.
Cosatu claims privatisation will lead to massive lay-offs at state-owned companies like electricity supplier Eskom, and the nation’s biggest transport operator Transnet.
The government has defended its policy, saying it is restructuring its assets to be more competitive.
But Cosatu secretary-general Zwelinzima Vavi said the ANC’s policy merely served to expand the role of the private sector.
Mbeki last Sunday accused Cosatu of misleading workers and using them as “cannon fodder in an offensive aimed at defeating their own liberation movement.”
But on Friday he called a halt to the mud-slinging.
“I agree fully with you that it is through discussion, rather than trading accusations in public, or other forms of hostile confrontation that we will find solution for whatever issues…between the ANC and Cosatu,” Mbeki said.
He said for many years the ANC preferred to stay outside the public debate, but in the end “it remained impossible for the ANC to remain silent while its positions are so grossly misrepresented.”
He said he hoped that these issues could be discussed when the ANC and Cosatu met.
“We will all be ready to confront these strategic issues frankly, honestly, in depth and as true comrades,” the president concluded. – AFP