The general secretary of the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu), Cunningham Ngcukana, is expected to leave the federation to assume a senior position in the secretariat of New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) at the beginning of April.
Ngcukana said he would not deny or confirm that he was negotiating a new job.
The move by the Nactu stalwart puts the future of the country’s third-largest labour federation on the line. Nactu reportedly has about 350 000 members, putting it behind only the Congress of South African Unions and the Federation of Unions SA.
Over the past two years Nactu has been hamstrung by both internal factions and a stagnant membership. The problem of decreasing membership has been experienced by all unions since 1994, partly because of high levels of unemployment and far-reaching changes in the labour market. In 2000 Nactu landed in hot water when it was accused of gross mismanagement, amounting to about R15-million, by its acting national treasurer. Its financial health has never fully recovered.
Ngcukana was an operative for the Azanian People’s Liberation Army, the Pan Africanist Congress’s former armed wing. He started his career in the unions when he joined the Nactu-affiliated Black Allied Workers’ Union in the early 1980s.
He believes firmly that trade unions should be independent from political parties and had thrown his weight behind efforts to create a super labour federation in South Africa by bringing together the different trade union federations — traditionally divided along political and ideological lines.
For now, however, Nactu’s survival will depend on what the “other layers of leadership can bring and the strengthening of the federation’s internal structures”, said Thobile Yante, a senior researcher in the National Labour and Economic Development Institute.
The frontrunner to succeed Ngcukana is rumoured to be Mahlomola Skhosana, the current deputy general secretary of the federation. He would not comment on his prospects of getting the job.