The process of identifying potential candidates to lead the African National Congress (ANC) has officially begun within the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).
”The discussion is being declared open,” said Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi at a media briefing in Johannesburg on Thursday.
The federation’s central executive committee (CEC) this week adopted a guiding framework to identify leadership that promotes the best interests of the workers.
In a shift to an ”active role to influence policies and leadership”, Vavi said Cosatu wants the ANC leadership to reflect its working-class constituency, which he said has been displaced.
”If we say that the working class is the primary motive force of the revolution, then we must allow it to lead that revolution.”
Members will be asked to discuss Cosatu’s 14-page framework document and identify leadership that relates to it.
The initial discussion will take place at a CEC meeting next month and the federation is expected to name who it will back in September.
Vavi said Cosatu remained ”very uneasy” with current economic policies.
The Cosatu document also outlines issues around the tri-partite alliance (Cosatu, the ANC and the South African Communist Party) and commitment to the unity of the ANC and the movement.
It calls for leadership that can ”better unify the ANC” and help regain its character as a ”progressive, working-class biased, multi-class liberation movement that unites all our people”.
”There is no doubt the movement is seeing its worst time in terms of unity,” Vavi said.
The multi-class alliance was under threat as ”a few black leaders” used state power to advance their own positions rather than majority interests, the framework puts forward.
”The question is whether we can maintain this alliance without too much compromise on our ultimate goals. The answer depends, in part, on how effectively we can manage our relationship to the ANC and the alliance.”
The framework also states that the ANC faced hollowing of the internal organisation, poor internal democracy and power centred in the state.
There was also a tendency to use the party as an ”instrument of individual accumulation”.
The document stems from a resolution from Cosatu’s ninth national congress last year, declaring that the federation had an interest in who led the ANC and its policies.
When asked about the candidacy of ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma, Vavi replied: ”You can’t write the minutes of a meeting before it has taken place.”
He described Zuma as someone who ”relates to us”.
The ANC is due to elect its party president and top leadership in December. — Sapa