The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) says it is angered by President Thabo Mbeki’s use of the race card against the labour federation.
Cosatu said in a statement on Sunday that Mbeki had written about it and the South African Communist Party (SACP) in his weekly newsletter on ANC Today.
”We find it particularly offensive that President Mbeki has seen fit to play the race card in a manner that suggests that the people with business interests — whom he is defending — are somehow blacker than the working-class components of the alliance,” Cosatu said.
In his newsletter, Mbeki defended the involvement of Cabinet ministers in the Gautrain rapid-rail project shareholding, saying that there has been a determination to cast them in a bad light — motivated by the stereotype that black people are corrupt.
”Moreover,” said Cosatu, ”the president’s style of engagement leaves much to be desired. He never debates on the strength of his arguments or correctness of the points he is raising.
”He always seeks to misrepresent people’s genuine concerns in order to ridicule those he disagrees with and question their integrity.
”He throws the race card even against organisations whose membership is constituted mainly by the very ANC [African National Congress] members he is leading.
”In the process of doing so he has antagonised countless organisations and left the ANC and the [tripartite] alliance fractious and deeply divided.”
Cosatu will not withdraw even one word of what it has said in the matter of the Gautrain and the involvement of some ministers.
”We reiterate that it is wrong for political leaders who have been tasked to lead transformation to get involved in business deals that compromise their roles as government administrators.
”We believe it is immoral for anyone to seek to be both a people’s representative and a businessman or -woman at the same time.”
Cosatu is extremely concerned that a growing number of ANC and government leaders have all manner of business interests, directly or through their spouses.
”In his letter the president does not deny that government ministers and other prominent leaders are shareholders in companies that are profiting from government contracts, and specifically from the Gautrain Bombela contract,” Cosatu said.
”On the contrary, the president seeks to justify this situation and to portray it as normal and even admirable.”
Mbeki wrote that ”the multiparty offensive” of accusers of the ANC — including the media, Cosatu, the Democratic Alliance and the SACP — are determined to project his ruling movement as being ”nothing more than a cabal of mercenary politicians, posing as liberation fighters” and motivated by the conviction that the ANC has been caught in the act of engagement in personal self-enrichment and parasitic capitalism.