The African National Congress feels the Congress of South African Trade Unions has jumped the gun by rejecting President Thabo Mbeki’s call for an inquiry into claims that there is a plot against Jacob Zuma.
”We feel it is unfortunate that Cosatu has rejected the proposal before engaging,” ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama told the South African Press Association on Thursday night.
”We were hoping to go to an alliance meeting where we would discuss all issues.”
Ngonyama did not know when another alliance meeting would take place.
”It depends on the alliance secretariat,” he said.
He said he did not believe the ANC would ”go it alone”.
”It is still to early to think that way.”
Regarding the way forward, Ngonyama said the ANC would make its ”final position” known at the pending alliance meeting.
Earlier on Thursday, Cosatu president Willie Madisha said the ”commission of inquiry on its own can’t resolve the underlying political problems we face”.
If a commission were established, it should look at the entire operation of the tripartite alliance and not just one person, he told reporters in Johannesburg.
Mbeki proposed the commission in a letter to a recent alliance meeting convened to discuss the Zuma saga.
He said the alliance should set up the commission to establish whether ”members of the ANC and broad democratic movement, including the president of the ANC, had been and are involved in a conspiracy targeted at marginalising or destroying deputy president Zuma”.
Some members of the alliance including Cosatu believe there is a politically inspired conspiracy to stop Zuma from becoming the next president of the ANC.
He is seen as being too close to the working class. Cosatu decided at a special session of its central executive committee on Wednesday to reject the commission.
Asked if Cosatu believed Mbeki was behind the plot, deputy general secretary Bheki Ntshalintshali said the federation had never said this.
”Whether the president is behind or not behind, we cannot make a pronouncement on this. We don’t know who is behind this,” he said.
Madisha said Mbeki’s letter ”undermined all the good work” the recent alliance meeting had achieved.
The letter was read out at the end of the meeting and was meant to be confidential. However it appeared on the African National Congress’ website two days later.
The federation believed Mbeki should lobby for his views to be accepted within ANC formations so that it became the official ANC view, instead of his personal proposal.
Madisha said there were several reasons why the commission would not work.
Some witnesses might not want to give evidence for fear they might not be promoted. Others might be worried their testimony would be leaked to the media.
He said unlike a judicial commission, an internal commission was seriously limited in its ability to gather information. It could not subpoena witnesses, seize documents held by state institutions, or allow witnesses to be cross examined by lawyers.
It would not work because it was ”a commission amongst comrades”, Madisha said.
Cosatu believed a political crisis required political solutions, and not commissions of inquiry.
Cosatu would continue to call on Mbeki to ensure the corruption charges against Zuma were dropped and that he was reinstated as deputy president of the country.
Cosatu took these resolutions at its central committee meeting last month.
A further resolution said if Zuma did end up being tried, then a full bench of judges should hear the matter.
The SA Communist Party will discuss the commission on Friday.
The ANC’s national executive committee meets next week where the commission is expected to be discussed. – Sapa