The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has charged that its alliance partner, the ruling African National Congress, is making contradictory statements on whether or not its deputy leader, Jacob Zuma, has been summoned to account for statements made during his recent rape trial.
Cosatu also suggests that there must be a serious crisis in the movement.
Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven said in a statement on Monday that in the Sunday Times on June 4, and later on Interface on the South African Broadcasting Corporation channel SABC3, ANC national chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota — who is South Africa’s minister of defence — said ”the NEC [national executive council] has indicated that there are a number of issues and questions that they want Zuma to explain”.
However, in The Star on June 5 (Monday), ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe was quoted as being ”adamant that this was untrue”, and in the Sowetan on the same day, ANC spokesperson Steyn Speed said he also knew nothing about Zuma being summoned to explain his behaviour.
Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, who met Kgalema Motlanthe in an alliance secretariat meeting on Thursday, confirmed that Motlanthe did not report any process in respect of the deputy leader ”other than what is contained in the ANC national executive committee statement”.
Craven said: ”The manner in which the Sunday Times ran this story, based on countless faceless sources claiming to be members of the ANC NEC, represents a typical example of what Cosatu raised two weeks ago. Some people, who clearly form part of a conspiracy, with a clear political agenda, use sections of the media to run a slander campaign against other members, or even other leaders, of the ANC.
”The Sunday Times and many others have been engaged in such collaboration with these unnamed sources for many years. It is a type of behaviour that completely discredits the newspaper houses and undermines their independence. Cosatu condemns all those faceless cowards as the people who, if we knew who they were, we could identify as the people driving our country into dictatorship.”
Cosatu noted that the ANC NEC statement on May 29 insisted that there was no crisis within its ranks. ”Yet a few days later the national chairperson makes a statement to millions of TV viewers, which the secretary general immediately refutes. This surely proves that there must be a serious crisis.”
Earlier on Monday, Speed released a statement by spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama, saying that the movement had noted that a national Sunday newspaper — the Sunday Times — had reported that Zuma will be called to account regarding statements he had made during his rape trial, including that he had taken a shower after sex. But it said: ”The ANC has taken no such decision.”
Instead, the national executive committee resolved that, due to his request to be excused from the committee discussion on matters arising from his trial, the ANC’s officials would brief Zuma on issues raised during the course of the discussion, ”affording him an opportunity to comment on them”. — I-Net Bridge