The African National Congress (ANC) leadership debate must shift from personalities to the collective to take the ruling party forward and retain its working-class bias, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said on Tuesday.
”As ANC members we need to defend the progressive strand in ANC policy and its continued bias towards the working class,” Vavi said at the South African Communist Party and Cosatu bilateral summit in Johannesburg.
”The challenge is how we retain its progressive posture and working-class leadership under the current conditions of intense contestation?”
This requires an examination of how the ANC reflects working-class bias in its policies and leadership structures.
”Without doubt we know that leadership contests can either place an organisation on a higher growth path or lead to paralysis and disintegration.
”For that reason, as we approach the ANC conference, we need to exercise maximum caution not to destroy the movement due to narrow factionalist positions.
”Neither should we allow a sense of paralysis or helplessness to creep in as we tackle leadership questions. We must shift debate from personalities to what collective will take the ANC forward and retain its progressive working-class bias,” Vavi said.
Vavi said the union has attached ”lots of importance” to the ruling party’s policy conference to be held in June and will convene to critique the conference-discussion papers, published in March, on April 3 and 4.
”In our view this is part and parcel of achieving our strategic objectives that we so clearly spelt out in our ninth national congress.”
The union will then debate the leadership issue at its fourth central committee meeting in September.
It will also review the progress of implementing its resolutions and adapt its ”political, organisational and international strategies”.
Cosatu reportedly announced a radical strategy to change the ANC’s leadership and policy direction last week.
The trade-union federation has also warned it might not endorse the ruling ANC in the next election if the party does not deliver results for workers.
Vavi said ”flooding” the ranks of its alliance partner is the only workable strategy.
”Our members cannot stay outside and choose to complain about the ANC. There is massive anger exploding … and our members have given us the most militant directive to date in the history of Cosatu,” he said.
”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.”
Vavi said the mood in Cosatu is it will no longer complain about the alliance and marginalisation.
”We want progress and we must define what we want to do with the ANC,” he said. — Sapa