A Congress of South Africa Trade Unions (Cosatu) document released last week on the state of the Tripartite Alliance is somewhat misleading and has a number of flaws. We wonder what serves as Cosatu’s political point of reference in dealings with its alliance partners.
In particular, certain alliance partners are regarded as ”better” than others. For example, ”the work with the South African Communist Party has rather been better [than with the African National Congress]”. With respect to the South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco), it is stated that ”[Sanco] has become docile and almost irrelevant”. No attempt is made to elaborate on joint work and campaigns that have been conducted with Sanco, as is the case with the SACP, or to provide a factual explanation to these serious allegations against an alliance partner.
With respect to the ANC, the assessment reports that ”no bilateral meetings have been held”. What should have been included is the fact that Cosatu had resolved to hold a bilateral meeting with the ANC, but had never requested such a meeting. Had it done so, the ANC would have responded positively.
Furthermore, the assessment reports that: ”… Some ANC members seem uncomfortable about Cosatu activists participating in ANC branches. The yangena iCosatu bathini abasebenzi [Cosatu has entered, what are the workers saying] to announce the arrival of Cosatu activists attending ANC meetings and activities in their own capacity as ANC cadre has been cited as a tactic designed to stop our members from attending.
This reflects two broad problems. First, it shows that the 2002 Briefing Notes may have succeeded in presenting Cosatu as a problematic formation among ordinary ANC members. Second, it reflects insecurity on the part of some ANC leaders worried about their own narrow leadership positions, who have an interest in creating hostility towards Cosatu or workers in general.”
The assessment makes serious allegations regarding factional behaviour within the ANC without any reference to facts to support this assertion. This concern has never been raised in any alliance discussion.
The assessment also claims that ”at the GDS [Growth and Development Summit] in June 2003 [Cosatu] won a major psychological victory, enforcing an agreement that BEE [black economic empowerment] must be broadly based to benefit all formerly disenfranchised black South Africans”.
Once again, the document fails to record the factual background to this ”victory”, which includes that at the ANC’s Stellenbosch conference in 2002 it was resolved that ”[BEE] is a moral, political, social and economic requirement of this country’s collective future. BEE is defined in its broadest sense as an integrated and coherent socio-economic process located in the context of the Reconstruction and Development Programme. Its benefits must be shared across society, and impact as widely as possible.”
It is the view of the ANC that government programmes are broadly supportive of this resolution. The same document does indeed make reference, at various points, to the substantive engagements that Cosatu has had with the ANC over the past 14 months.
Against this background of intensive and direct engagement at all levels of government policy, it is difficult to understand what Cosatu means when it says that the ANC and the government treat Cosatu ”as if we were any other NGO”.
Since the elections the alliance secretariat [which directs the work of the pact] has met no less than 12 times. Only twice were meetings postponed, on both occasions as a result of the non-availability of Cosatu or SACP representatives.
However, Cosatu expresses frustration that the secretariat meetings ”have generally not been very productive, with little substantive debate or progress on summit preparations”.
This statement reveals the extent to which Cosatu regards the alliance not as a site for strategic engagement among comrades, but rather as a bargaining chamber, in which demands are made to which the other partners must agree. Failure to agree to Cosatu’s demands triggers the inevitable deployment of ”power” against either the ANC or the government.
The failure to agree on an alliance programme of action that led to the postponement of the alliance summit last month has nothing to do with lack of interest on the part of the ANC, or lack of ”productivity” on the part of the secretariat. Rather it is that the ANC on the one hand, and Cosatu and the SACP on the other, differ politically regarding the one aspect of such a programme, which is on how the alliance is led and on how it should lead society.
The most recent alliance summit defined the relationship between the alliance and government policy making as follows: ”It is critical that the process of policy development and implementation is informed on an on-going basis by collective endeavour. Consistent discussion in the alliance and tighter coordination is important to give effect to our common programme of social transformation.”
A number of mechanisms including the alliance secretariat, the 10-a-side leadership meetings and the alliance summit were put in place to give effect to this proposal.
Both Cosatu and the SACP have indicated that they are not satisfied with the formulation and I have asked the general secretaries of Cosatu, Sanco and the SACP for a proposal to be used as a basis for further discussion and agreement.
The ANC is of the view that the alliance is working well, and that our alliance partners are making a valuable and important contribution to the policies and programmes of the ANC, as well as the specifics of government policy. Whatever problems have emerged will be resolved.
Kgalema Motlanthe is ANC secretary general. This is an edited version of an ANC Today article of December 3. The Cosatu document entitled Assessment of the past Fourteen Months since after the Eighth National Congress held in September 2003 is available on www.cosatu.org.za