Cosatu’s push to break President Thabo Mbeki’s hold over the African National Congress (ANC) is set to move up several gears next week, as it lists its preferred candidates for the ANC leadership and firms up a radical election pact with the ruling party.
For the first time, the labour federation is to withdraw its electoral “blank cheque” by making its support for ANC in the 2009 poll conditional on a programme agreed by the “tripartite alliance”, which would form the basis of the party’s manifesto.
Cosatu documents released this week, setting out its proposals for a pact, read like Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s worst nightmare. Calling for popular control of government policy through the tripartite alliance, they would mean radical departures across the spectrum of government economic policy.
The federation warned this week that it would review progress in June next year. If the ANC had not shifted sufficiently “to represent the interests of the working class”, it would “go back to the trenches”.
The proposed pact and the lists for the ANC’s top six posts and national executive committee will be hammered out over four days next week by the 500 members of Cosatu’s central committee (CC), in line with decisions of its watershed ninth national congress last September.
It is highly likely that the lists will exclude Mbeki, most of his ministers and party bosses seen to be close to him, including deputy secretary general Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele and chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota.
A group of senior unionists grouped around Cosatu president Willie ÂMadisha and National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa general secretary Silumko Nondwangu, was reported to be planning a pro-Mbeki counteroffensive at the CC.
However, the consensus view is that this will not deflect the federation from endorsing ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma as future president. It is also considered probable that Cosatu will follow the ANC Youth League in punting ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe and SACP chairperson Gwede Mantashe for “top six” posts.
Madisha appears to be increasingly isolated in Cosatu, and there were signs on Thursday that he could face a no-confidence motion before the CC begins.
Significantly, he was absent from a Cosatu media conference in Randburg, Johannesburg, this week called to raise the curtain on next week’s meeting.
The effect of the Cosatu list process on voting at the ANC’s December national conference in Polokwane could be marked.
In Randburg, Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi stressed that Cosatu members also belonged to the ANC and would lobby for Cosatu-approved candidates in ANC branches, which choose 90% of conference delegates. Labour activists frequently spearhead ANC branches.
Deputy general secretary Bheki Ntshalintshali said delegates at past conferences had tended to vote “for people they saw on television”. In Polokwane, the goal would be to ensure informed voting based on Cosatu Âcriteria.
Documents drawn up to guide the CC debate, released this week, make no explicit mention of Mbeki. But their attack on individual leaders “no matter how brilliant and gifted” who fail to build the collective, and who “if left alone could destroy organisations”, is clearly directed at him.
The documents list criteria for the endorsement of ANC leaders that are clearly framed as a counter to Mbeki’s policies and political style. Central to Cosatu’s list process is the proposed alliance election pact, which the federation plans to canvass in its structures as a basis for campaigning in the build-up to the ANC conference.
The possibility of a pact was mooted at the ANC’s June policy conference, and Motlanthe told the Mail & Guardian this week that as an autonomous alliance member, Cosatu was within its rights to press for it.
However, other ANC bigwigs more closely aligned to Mbeki are unlikely to be so sanguine. Mbeki has made it clear that he considers the labour movement and the SACP politically subservient to the ANC in the alliance.
And the Cosatu document “Framework for an alliance governance and elections pact”, to be debated by its CC, contains a raft of economic proposals that are likely to hit strong resistance from the ANC top brass.
The document calls for the alliance to drive and oversee the work of government, and suggests a rerun of the 1955 Congress of the People to collect popular demands.
Complaining that the Mbeki administration has elevated the fiscal Âmatters to the highest policy level and the treasury to a “super ministry”, it advocates a comprehensive overhaul of fiscal and monetary policy. This would include moderate deficit financing, and progressive taxation that would impose a heavier burden on the rich and big business, and higher tax to gross domestic product ratio “to leverage resources”.
Cosatu urges a new mandate for the Reserve Bank, binding it to pursue developmental objectives and job creation. It wants inflation targeting scrapped, interest rate policy radically revised and the bank’s board reshaped to include labour and civil society.
It calls for new controls on speculative investment and capital flight, including “speed bumps or the Tobin tax”, and short-term measures to force “socially constructive” investment, in particular prescribed asset legislation.
The document also calls for expanded public ownership, including a state bank, new state corporations in banking and pharmaceuticals, and the renationalisation of Sasol and Mittal Steel.
Other proposals calculated to disturb Manuel’s beauty sleep are an expanded parliamentary role in the budget process, a basic income grant, tighter labour market regulation, an enforceable right to free basic services, and legislation forcing parastatals to follow developmental, rather than commercial, imperatives.
In its documents, Cosatu says there is “a very real possibility” that the ANC will reject the pact concept, or that there will be no agreement on its contents. In that event, it suggests a return to “trench warfare”.
The pact
Cosatu’s criteria for acceptable ANC leaders, listed in CC documents, include:
- Support for a mass participatory national democratic revolution, which is “not hostile to socialism”, and for the Freedom Charter’s call for nationalisation, wealth redistribution and free education;
- Proven commitment to the “tripartite alliance”, which Cosatu wants revamped to drive government policy and monitor its implementation, with all members enjoying equal status. The alliance should undertake “thorough preparation for the transition programme from capitalism to socialism”;
- Commitment to the unity of the ANC as a multiclass, working class-based movement. “Attempts to rush it into becoming party capitalism [sic] or centre-left must be reversed,” the documents declare;
- Support for an anti-imperialist and internationalist foreign policy, including opposition to “Anglo-ÂAmerican warlordism”; and
- Commitment to “a decade of workers and the poor”. Describing big business as South Africa’s principal economic beneficiary since 1994, the documents add: “We need leaders who can work with civil society to set ambitious targets to reverse this trend.”