The African National Congress Women’s League’s surprise attack on this month’s anti-privatisation strike has prompted speculation that its president, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, is feeling politically vulnerable.
A senior ANC leader said that Madikizela-Mandela’s court battles ”have in essence paralysed” the league, whose national conference is two years overdue. Its national executive committee’s term of office has therefore expired.
In sharp contrast to her support for the trade unions’ right to strike over privatisation last year, the league attacked this month’s two-day stoppage by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). Siding with the ANC leadership, the Cabinet and the party’s youth league, it labelled ”elements in Cosatu” ultra-leftists.
Madikizela-Mandela told the Mail & Guardian after Cosatu’s strike last year: ”It ought to be an accepted fact that if unions are unhappy with the economic policies … it should be their democratic right to say so. That should not be seen as dissent.”
This year the league ”thanked” people who had not participated in the anti-privatisation strike. ”People cannot be misled by abstract slogans and lies” nor the government ”blackmailed by ultra-leftists who did not understand the terrain of the struggle”, it said.
The strike’s ”failure” should ”serve as a lesson to those elements within Cosatu who want to undermine the ANC and the transformation agenda in this country”.
Eyebrows were raised when Madikizela-Mandela attended the recent ANC policy conference in Kempton Park — a rare appearance at a major party function.
She did not attend the ANC’s national general council in Port Elizabeth in 2000 and has boycotted meetings of the national executive committee and the national working committee. Madikizela-Mandela had reportedly angered ANC leaders by publicly attacking the government’s Aids policy and social delivery record.
When the M&G tried to contact her this week, someone who sounded like Madikizela-Mandela promised to pass questions on to her. The line was abruptly cut off. In a second phone inquiry, a male explained that she was not available to answer ”those kind of questions”.
Bathabile Dlamini, the league’s general secretary, declined to comment, saying only that the league would call a press conference when it had something to announce.
ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama said he expected a report on the league’s readiness for the party’s national conference next month.
Madikizela-Mandela is embroiled in two legal battles and was recently found guilty of breaching Parliament’s code of conduct by failing to disclose her financial interests. The more serious of her legal battles involves charges that she fraudulently applied to Saambou for personal loans on behalf of people supposedly employed by the league.
The Saambou trial was postponed until the end of February after she failed to appear in court this week because of a broken foot.
Party members say her problems might have caused her to turn to the ANC leadership for help. Others say the looming ANC conference, which will elect a new national executive, may have left Madikizela-Mandela feeling vulnerable.
It is understood that the league’s national conference is unlikely to take place before March.