The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said on Thursday it would push for a left-wing candidate to succeed President Thabo Mbeki as the ruling African National Congress (ANC) gears up to elect new leaders later this year.
”This time around we are taking a keen interest,” secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi told reporters after a three-day Cosatu national committee meeting.
”If the ANC is to be hijacked by the business class and its interests, then we are in trouble.”
The ANC is scheduled to meet in December to elect a new party leader to take the reins from Mbeki and likely become South Africa’s next president in 2009.
Cosatu has in recent months stepped up criticism of Mbeki’s market-oriented policies, which have won South Africa plaudits from international economists but done little so far to reduce poverty and unemployment.
Cosatu said it would use the months before the ANC’s December meeting to mobilise its vast grassroots network in an effort to push the ANC toward the left.
”We have taken a decisive action to influence the process,” said Sdumo Dlamini, the federation’s first deputy president.
”Our resolve is to influence the current leadership of the ANC [so] that [it] will be biased to the working class. The call has been that we need to see that the ANC has pronounced itself as the disciplined force of the left.”
Cosatu officials declined to say if the federation would openly back specific candidates such as former deputy president Jacob Zuma, who has mustered a large left-wing following after being fired as Mbeki’s deputy in 2005 amid a corruption scandal.
ANC officials have said decisions on the leadership of the party, which took South Africa from apartheid to democracy under Nelson Mandela in 1994, are an issue for ANC members. — Reuters