The type of tripartite alliance the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) envisioned for South Africa did not yet exist, Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said on Wednesday.
Vavi said this type of alliance, in which the African National Congress’s (ANC) leadership role was recognised, but in which there was also complete equality between the ANC, the SA Communist Party and Congress of SA Trade Unions, would not exist for the foreseeable future.
However, the alliance was healthy, said the labour federation’s president Willie Madisha.
”We love it. It’s ours. It belongs to the workers of our country.”
Madisha said Cosatu’s problems with the alliance were well-known.
”It [the alliance] is a sick man that needs nurturing,” he said.
However, Cosatu’s central executive committee was sure the federation would make progress within the milieu set by the problems.
This would be the ”bigger chunk” of the discussions at Cosatu’s eighth national congress in September. The media conference at which the two Cosatu leaders were speaking was held to announce the congress’s main discussion points.
Madisha said there was no doubt the government had improved people’s lives since it came to power in 1994, but Vavi added that often social improvements were negated by joblessness.
”Even access to electricity is minor without a job. It is a short-term victory,” he said, recalling recent electricity cut-offs in Gauteng. Eskom cut the electricity supply to about 600 000 people whose accounts were in arrears.
”Telkom has cut 80% of the new phone lines they introduced in the last five years,” he said.
”It is complex. You can’t blind yourself to unemployment and its impact.”
He said South Africa’s socio-political victories since 1994 had been ”real and very important”, but unemployment, which Cosatu believed to be higher than Statistics SA’s 30,5% figure [in 2002] because of those who had given up job seeking, could not be ignored.
A good illustration of the extent of job losses was the 100 000 members Cosatu had lost since its seventh congress in 2002. This drop was linked to a drop in the formal work force, not disillusionment with unions, Vavi said.
Vavi warned the few mining and finance companies which dominate the South African economy that their positions would continue to be contested.
”If our economy is limited to these few companies we are doomed. Freedom will be limited to ‘black faces’ like the president and a few judges. There will be zilch for the rest.”
He said South Africa needed to guard against slowly moving along this continuum, as had happened in Zimbabwe.
”It is unfair to pick on Zimbabwe,” he then said.
”There are a host of offenders where the only [post-colonial] right is the right to throw a ballot paper into a ballot box after five years. We don’t want that.”
Asked to comment on the pending National Union of Mineworkers strike, Vavi said the strike had Cosatu’s full support and would go ahead, starting on Sunday night’s first shift — unless something dramatic happened.
”We condemn the crocodile tears of the mining industry,” Vavi said.
He pointed out that last year when the rand was down and the gold mining companies made a 40% profit there was no equivalent wage hike for the miners.
”Now they cry foul about a stronger rand and there is talk of job cuts,” he said. – Sapa