The Congress of SA Trade Unions’ (Cosatu) has accused the government of conducting a propaganda campaign against it after President Thabo Mbeki expressed concern that the trade union federation failed to attend a meeting on Friday.
Cosatu said the meeting of the presidential working group went ahead even though the presidency had been informed that it could not attend.
Earlier on Friday, presidential representative Bheki Khumalo said: ”The president is extremely concerned.”
This was the third meeting of the working group that Cosatu had missed, Khumalo said.
He said the other groups — the Federations of Unions of SA and the National Council of Trade Unions — always attended. Speaking to Sapa on Friday night, Cosatu representative Vukani Mde said the federation received a letter from the president’s office last week inviting union officials to attend the meeting.
”Cosatu wrote a letter to the presidential office six working days ago stating that the union would not be able to attend as it was holding its annual national summit of the Cosatu locals at Gallagher Estate. Our meeting was planned months ago and we expressed our inability to attend for this reason.”
Mde said after replying to the government, Cosatu received no further word from the presidency.
”The meeting then went ahead today (Friday) without us. The president’s office didn’t inform us that they would go ahead with their meeting or that they would re-schedule their meeting and have just pretended that the letter does not exist…
”Now the president comes out of the meeting expressing concern that Cosatu didn’t attend and also creates the impression that the meeting was particularly between the president and Cosatu.
”This type of behaviour from the president’s office is very disappointing. Its either dishonesty or disorganisation on the part of the presidential office because we cannot believe that in all this time they (the president’ office) didn’t receive our letter and did not understand why we could not attend and did not just say why we were not at the meeting…”
Mde also denied that Cosatu had missed previous meetings of the presidential working group.
”Cosatu has never deliberately missed or shunned any presidential trade union working group meeting. We are fully involved on Nedlac (National Economic Development and Labour Council) and don’t miss any Nedlac engagements.
”…the president’s office cancelled two meetings last year and we (Cosatu) missed the third meeting last year due to a misunderstanding on our part, and for that we apologised because it was an honest mistake,” Mde said. – Sapa