Government leaders have embarked on a nationwide charm offensive, apparently spurred by mounting criticism of their handling of the HIV/Aids crisis, Zimbabwe and unemployment.
In the past two weeks President Thabo Mbeki, his deputy Jacob Zuma and several senior Cabinet ministers have met trade union federations, church leaders and even the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) to address their concerns on these issues.
African National Congress insiders said next year’s elections were a factor in the government’s attempts to reach out to its various constituencies. The initiative also aimed to co-ordinate responses on these issues ahead of June’s Growth and Development Summit.
ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe said the government was being proactive rather than responding to criticism. ”It is government’s job to interact,” he said.
An ANC national executive committee member remarked: ”The feedback from the imbizos [where government leaders interact with ordinary citizens] has also shaken them up.”
This week Zuma was also trying to build bridges with the alliance partners when he expressed the government’s commitment to the Freedom Charter and the Reconstruction and Development Programme at the National Union of Mineworkers’ national congress in Pretoria. He ”assured” the workers of the government’s willingness to fight HIV/Aids ”which is affecting the worker constituency adversely”.
And he clearly had the 2004 elections in mind when he went on to ”applaud” the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s (Cosatu) decision to back the ANC in next year’s polls. He said: ”As our great statesman Chief Albert Luthuli said when describing the revolutionary alliance, the ANC is the shield and the revolutionary trade union movement is the spear.”
At the same congress Cosatu president Willie Madisha warned the ANC-led government: ”Our election victory may turn out to be hollow, as we cannot ensure that the majority of our people see their needs and desires reflected in strong government policies to bring about job creation and development.”
At Mbeki’s meeting with three major labour federations, including Cosatu, two weeks ago, unionists called for the government’s decisive intervention in Zimbabwe, voiced unhappiness over the handling of the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) agreement on a national Aids treatment plan and complained about the growth of casual labour in South Africa.
Mbeki’s representative Bheki Khumalo said ”it was a coincidence” that all the meetings happened at the same time. He described them as an ”ongoing initiative” by Mbeki and Zuma to interact with civil society.
Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana announced after the meeting that the Nedlac agreement was back on the table. He said Zuma had convinced the TAC to suspend its civil disobedience campaign.
Government insiders said the government had been embarrassed by the international coverage given to the disobedience campaign, called to protest against the government’s failure to provide universal access to anti-retroviral drugs. Labour insiders pointed out that Cosatu’s insistence that the Nedlac agreement would be made a part of the growth summit’s agenda if the issues around it were not resolved, had managed to propel the government.
The organisations behind the campaign — the TAC and Cosatu — are two of the ANC’s most active support bases. A senior ANC leader said the party wanted to ensure that HIV/Aids did not become an election issue as it had in the 2000 municipal polls.
The leader said Aids dissident Peter Mokaba had handled the party’s election campaign in 2000. He was widely blamed for the party’s muddled statements on the illness then.
Mokaba died last year and his place as election chief has been taken by Northern Cape Premier Manne Dipico.
Zuma is believed to have taken responsibility for managing the Aids issue. Senior ANC leaders said Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, also an Aids dissident, was being sidelined by ANC members of Parliament who now preferred to deal with Zuma.
Zuma appeared on SABC television two weeks ago, providing details about the government’s Aids programmes, among other matters. The ANC’s other alliance partner, the South African Communist Party, this week also expressed concern over the government’s delay in implementing an effective public health anti-retroviral plan.
At the meeting of Mbeki’s trade union working group, unionists raised the Zimbabwe government’s violation of international labour norms by arresting members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions who were staging a legitimate strike.
Presidency representative Khumalo said the unions had insisted on including Zimbabwe on the agenda. There had been a ”frank exchange of views between government and labour”, he said.
Mdladlana said casualisation would form part of the growth summit’s agenda. In seeking solutions to problems such as unemployment, he said ”we will discuss the doables” such as poverty-alleviation programmes, private-public partnerships and public works programmes.
The SACP said that rather than rely on state-sponsored public works programmes, the government should use its infrastructure development programme as a lever. It suggested awarding tenders to companies with the most labour-intensive proposals.