South Africa cannot afford to lose the tripartite alliance, businessman Tokyo Sexwale told students in Johannesburg on Friday.
”We can’t have a Cosatu [Congress of South African Trade Unions] that feels that it has got serious difficulties with the ANC [African National Congress]. We can’t have an ANC that can’t see eye to eye with its members,” he said.
The tripartite alliance comprises the ANC, Cosatu and the South African Communist Party.
Sexwale warned that leadership battles would cause South Africa’s democratic revolution to fail. He said the leadership of the ANC is not about electing one ”superstar”.
On his own role in the ANC’s leadership race, he said: ”I would rather remain president in your hearts, unelected, than putting daggers in the backs of others at the Union Buildings.”
Responding to criticisms about a possible contradiction between his ANC membership and his business interests, he said the depth of his pockets do not determine his social consciousness.
He called for a democratic developmental state where the government intervenes in the market to ”correct the movement of capital from one sector to another”.
Earlier this week, Cosatu said the ANC leadership contest can make or break the tripartite alliance. The warning came 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 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, particularly about the ANC’s role in it 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.
”Before emotions take their toll on all of us and before we get trapped into pro-this and anti-that caucus, we must agree on the framework and criteria for electing leadership,” the documents state.
”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.” — Sapa