African National Congress (ANC) alliance partner the Congress of South African Teade Unions (Cosatu) has announced a radical strategy aimed at changing the ANC’s leadership and overall policy direction. The trade union federation has also warned that it may not endorse the ANC in the next election if the ruling party does not deliver results for workers.
Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi spoke to Mail & Guardian reporter Rapule Tabane about Cosatu’s plans for the ANC.
What exactly does Cosatu mean when it calls for the recapture of the ANC?
Over many years now, we have said the alliance and ordinary ANC members are not driving government policy processes. We have cautioned that the most important economic policies are coming from government, more so from the presidency; that the people who have influence are drawn from Harvard University and the President’s Investment Council.
How are you going to do this — by flooding its ranks?
Flooding ANC ranks is the only workable strategy. Our members cannot stay outside and choose to complain about the ANC. There is massive anger exploding about the accumulation path and our members have given us the most militant directive to date in the history of Cosatu. We have been given strict dates to engage with the ANC and our affiliates will check what has been achieved and what we need to do.
The ANC has already told the SACP that no one should tell them how to run their affairs. Will you respect that?
Historically, Cosatu has said we never want to interfere in ANC affairs and we don’t want them meddling in ours as well. But our congress last year decided that the ANC is the most important social force, despite the identified problems such as hollowing out of internal democracy, weak structures and an inability to function optimally.
The mood in Cosatu is that 12 years on we will no longer moan about the alliance and marginalisation. We want progress and we must define what we want to do with the ANC.
The fact that we plan to identify individuals who should be part of the new ANC leadership elected at the national conference in December indicates how deep-seated is the feeling of anger and marginalisation in Cosatu. It is totally unprecedented. We are aware that some of our positions might lead to conflict with the ANC and we have said to them that we must manage this thing together.
What is this pact you want to enter into with the ANC and what will it achieve?
The idea of the pact is also unprecedented. If you remember, in the 1990s during the drawing up of the Reconstruction and Development Programme [RDP], some people had said ‘let’s have an RDP accordâ€, but the majority questioned why we should sign an accord with ourselves. But the same people who rejected it are now saying they want a pact because they want clear delivery targets. The pact will outline clear targets and the resources that are needed to achieve them. The pact will also indicate how the alliance must function. Our mandate is that the pact should be drawn up by the end of this year so that, towards the end of 2008, our members can evaluate if it has delivered or not.
Is that what you mean by your statement that the days of the blank cheque are over?
Yes. That is why all of these things have to be done by 2008. The idea is that workers will not endorse the ANC during the 2009 elections if there are no concrete results for them.
It sounds like you essentially want to take over the ANC.
We are not taking over the ANC, but we are reclaiming what rightfully belongs to the left. The ANC’s claim to be a left party should not be a rhetorical claim but must be demonstrable. It is not like we are entering the ANC from the flank. We built the ANC over many decades. Workers are the primary motive force for the revolution, and without workers there would be no freedom in South Africa.
The ANC is a force of the left and my personal opinion is that it would be a mistake for the left to try and create their own new party. The ANC is the primary force; let’s fix it. There is no guarantee that a new left force will act any differently from the ANC. All left political parties that get into government are always shifting to the right, because in government the demands and realities that you have to deal with are different. Even in Brazil, there are interesting contradictions that President Lula [da Silva] faces and they face a debate about whether the shifts they have made have not diluted their standing as a party of the left.
You should then be more understanding about the pressure the ANC faces —?
It is true that government faces a task of balancing all sorts of pressures. But globalisation has never imposed in detail what policies government should follow. There is a broad framework, but government still has choices. We believe the South African government has made the wrong choices.
Was Cosatu inspired by Latin America’s left parties?
Yes, we were in Bolivia and we were absolutely inspired. We learnt some lessons, and that is why we will not hand over the ANC to anyone.
Are you aiming to remove individuals from the ANC leadership, the ones you refer to as the hegemonic conservative bloc?
We call them the 1996 Class Project because they are driving a project to make the ANC centre-left and not radical left. We have come to the conclusion that they are deliberately encouraging the malfunctioning of the party because you cannot drive a neoliberal agenda if ANC members have a voice. They want the ANC to die so that they can impose their hegemonic agenda. So we are starting this process in the next few weeks and months to identify a leadership collective to be in the ANC national executive committee. The current ANC NEC is simply not representative of the ANC constituency. It is made up of the middle- and upper-classes and is dominated by people with business interests.
But that NEC was elected by ordinary members at the last congress.
That is the irony. Karl Marx once made a point about the working class electing their own butchers, although I’m not saying the ANC leaders are butchers.