The working-class movement in South Africa is eating itself alive because of its leadership squabbles, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) president Willie Madisha said on Tuesday.
”The way many are conducting themselves is not proper. [Let us] call on the African National Congress [ANC] to stop disappointing us,” he told a Food and Allied Workers’ Union conference in Randburg.
”The ANC is an experienced organisation — almost a hundred years old — we must call on the ANC to lead all of us. It must be united in order in for it to do so.”
Madisha said the same applied for the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Cosatu.
Madisha said: ”The ANC is not leading here, the [SACP] is not leading, Cosatu is not leading.”
”These problems are to me very serious problems … Why are we failing to lead? The ANC has the kind of squabbles that do not take us forward,” he said.
”We have got to call on the ANC to lead. Our hearts, comrades, are sore because we see our movement eating itself alive,” said Madisha.
If union members really wanted South Africa to become socialist, they must not say ”viva socialism” (at union gatherings) … ”while at the same time we are capitalists and push for capitalism”, Madisha said.
Earlier, ANC chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota said the continued existence of the tripartite alliance was the only way South Africa would ever become a socialist country.
He said it would be a ”very, very long time” before socialism could be constructed because South Africa first needed to accumulate sufficient capital.
Ensuring the tripartite alliance remained in place was the key towards advancing to a ”new order of society”, he said.
At the moment, however, the constraints in society meant ”all of us must insist on a realistic assessment of the conditions of our time and country”, he said.
Socialism was not a ”pipe dream” said Lekota.
However, ”we must deal with the realities of our time”, he said.
Historic opportunity
Meanwhile, Cosatu said earlier on Tuesday that the ANC leadership contest can make or break the tripartite alliance.
The warning comes in draft policy documents to be discussed at the trade-union federation’s central committee meeting, which takes place in Esselen Park next week.
The central committee is tasked with determining Cosatu’s new strategy based on the draft policy documents, which are titled: The ANC Leadership Challenge; Framework for an Alliance Governance and Elections Pact; and The National Democratic Revolution and Socialism.
The labour federation is concerned about the tripartite alliance — which comprises itself, the ANC and the South African Communist Party — particularly about the ANC role in the alliance and how the party is governed.
It sees the ANC conference at the end of the year and the leadership election as a time for change.
”We cannot allow emotions and a beauty-contest mentality to drive our thinking when we are presented with a historic opportunity to correct historic mistakes and wrongs and save our revolution,” the documents state.
But Cosatu also warns that the leadership election should not divide the movement. — Sapa