The Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (Cosatu) enthusiastic support for former deputy president Jacob Zuma went down like a lead blimp at this week’s Cape Town launch of the jobs coalition touted as a United Democratic Front-style grassroots movement.
Waving posters that read ”Demand the right to work”, a group heckled Western Cape Cosatu deputy chairperson Wente Ntaka as she talked of the labour federation’s determination ”to defend our deputy president from being attacked … We are going to defend him until he is proven guilty by a court of law.”
Ntaka was reduced to silence as the discontent rose to a loud buzz among the 1 300-strong crowd. After a short caucus with fellow union leaders, she returned to the microphone to talk of the ”crisis of unemployment”, earning her thunderous applause.
Ntaka’s vocal support for Zuma was not meant to be part of Monday evening’s official launch programme. She was apparently fired up by an earlier shop stewards’ council meeting and the singing of ”Long live Zuma, Zuma our president” by a handful of delegates.
With tensions over Zuma at fever-pitch in the tripartite alliance, the UDF character of the movement, which also embraces church and NGO groups, is now being downplayed. In a Cosatu letter dated August 4 to ”colleagues and comrades”, there was an unambiguous reference to a ”UDF-type initiative of the 1980s”.
Cosatu’s official line was that the launch ”was the expansion of [its] Jobs and Poverty Campaign” announced earlier this year. The federation again endorsed its goal of cooperation with other civil society groups at last week’s central committee meeting.
Western Cape Cosatu secretary Tony Ehrenreich quickly moved to distance the coalition from suggestions it might challenge the African National Congress. He dismissed repeated calls from the floor for the federation to go it alone.
”Some of the civil society groups have come in with their own ambitions. We have to find a way to respect each other and behave so that [the coalition] does not threaten each others’ alliances,” he told the Mail & Guardian.
Cosatu president Willie Madisha cancelled his attendance at the launch at short notice. No ANC officials attended, and only one of the promised 10 UDF stalwarts showed up.
Allan Boesak, a former UDF patron, has reportedly said the coalition had the potential to address people’s concerns. However, Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel, a former UDF leader, slammed the move as ”opportunistic” and ”populist”.
The still-unnamed coalition’s main aim is to focus attention on social justice by stopping job losses and reversing the widening wealth distribution gap. Borrowing the banners of the Cosatu Jobs and Poverty Campaign, the launch brought together unionists and 72 organisations representing women, land activists, fishermen, religious groups and Aids activists.