ANC president Thabo Mbeki is conspicuously absent from the list of leaders scheduled to address the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (Cosatu) congress next week, cementing the widespread suspicion that the federation is now firmly behind ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma, who is the keynote speaker at the congress.
According to Cosatu officials, it will be the first time since the unbanning of the ANC in 1990 that an ANC president does not address a Cosatu congress.
Zuma has addressed the congresses of the majority of the federation’s affiliates in the past few months, sometimes against the wishes of some ANC leaders. The Mail & Guardian reported last month that there were differences within Cosatu about whether Zuma or Mbeki should be invited as the keynote speaker.
Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven said the federation had sent an invite to the ANC, which had decided to deploy Zuma to address the congress. Zuma has come to be seen as the ANC’s de facto left-leaning presidential candidate who values input from the labour movement. This is in spite of the fact that he has been criticised for what is perceived as his recent opportunistic embracing of the left.
Political commentator Moeletsi Mbeki — who is also the president’s brother — commented in the Sunday Times last week that he doubted Zuma had better economic policies for the country than the current ANC government. ”If he had better policies he would have produced them long ago, but he hasn’t. He just wants the power.”
He also accused the leadership of Cosatu of planning to hijack the ANC for personal gains. ”What Cosatu is trying to do is to manipulate the leadership process of the ANC so that it ceases to be a transparent process and so that the leadership is open to appointment by secret groups operating outside the rules of the party. The best-case scenario is that they think they will manipulate him and dictate economic policy to him. The more cynical view is that these guys — [Cosatu general secretary] Zwelinzima [Vavi] and [SACP general secretary] Blade [Nzimande] — want to put JZ in power because they expect to become ministers in his Cabinet.”
This week Zuma’s backers made an effort to reassure the local business community and foreign investors that Zuma would not tinker with current ANC policies. ”It’s an insult to Zuma to suggest this without any evidence being presented. Zuma is a democrat and he has never and will never in the future try to manipulate ANC policy to suit himself,” said a statement penned by Zuma’s personal adviser, Elias Khumalo.
The statement added that, like any other ANC member, ”[Zuma] does not need to produce any political or economic policies because his policies are those of the ANC”.
Zuma’s presidential ambitions have been dogged by criticism from business and political analysts who say that it is not clear in what direction he would take economic policy.
Zuma, who had toed the party line while he was deputy president of the country, has in recent weeks taken numerous swipes at the government and the leadership of the ANC. He has also lodged numerous frontal attacks on Mbeki and his leadership style which, he says, is characterised by the ”centralisation of power”.
At the recent congress of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) Zuma commended the unions for opposing government’s efforts to privatise public enterprises. Taking a swipe at government’s abandoned policy, Zuma said: ”Your determination has helped convince our government to keep our railways and ports in state hands. But the struggles against casualisation of labour, for centralised bargaining, and against privatisation, are not the ones you can wage on your own. You will have to continue to link with your comrades in other Cosatu affiliates.”
Zuma’s backers say that Moeletsi’s attack on Zuma reveals that he is ignorant about the way in which ANC and government policies are formulated. ”Zuma is not in a position to produce his own economic policies. If he were to do so, the ANC would call him in for a disciplinary. Zuma’s critics must be reminded that the issue of policy formulation in the ANC is not done individually.”
The Zuma camp also dismissed claims that foreign investors and the South African business community were concerned about the effects of a Zuma presidency on the country’s economy. ”None of the institutions set to deal with foreign investors have raised these concerns that the likes of Moeletsi are talking about.”