/ 11 July 2003

Alliance partners ‘left out’

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party appear to have been sidelined in the African National Congress’s election list process, according to leftists within the ruling alliance.

Cosatu members do not feature on either the national or the provincial list committees, which administer and implement rules for the selection of candidates.

Members of the SACP have a presence on only some provincial committees.

However, they are represented on the national list committee, which was appointed by the ANC’s national executive committee.

Cosatu central executive committee members told the Mail & Guardian this week that they would be raising their concerns with the ANC structures in their respective provinces next week.

It is understood the issue is likely to be discussed at Cosatu’s central executive committee meeting next week and at the SACP’s politburo later this month.

Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven was non-committal. ”We will be holding discussions with our alliance partners as soon as possible about securing an ANC victory with the best possible ANC candidates,” he said.

SACP members pointed out that the communists who do feature on the national and provincial list committees made it because of their entrenched ANC backgrounds and not on the strength of their socialist credentials.

ANC and SACP veteran Brian Bunting and SACP chairperson Charles Nqakula, who are members of the national list committee, are cited as examples.

Senior alliance leaders said the ANC has gradually shifted the election process from being alliance-driven, as it was in the first elections in 1994, to being ANC-led.

The ANC’s Mpho Lekgoro said ”the days of the quota system”, where each of the alliance partners was allocated a certain number of seats in Parliament and the legislatures in 1994, were gone.

”The elections are being fought under the ANC’s banner. The ANC’s constitution describes the creation of the list committee as an ANC process. Members of the alliance, as ANC members, are free to elect their candidates through their respective ANC branches,” he said

However, the general elections in 1999 are described by SACP and Cosatu members as having been more open, when list conferences were jointly hosted.

An alliance leader pointed out that workers were ”already reluctant about campaigning for the ANC after they lost their battle on the privatisation of state assets”.

Another said: ”If our demands do not even make it to the election manifesto, what is the point of it all — why do we call it the ruling tripartite alliance?”