The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has thrown its considerable weight behind Jacob Zuma as its preferred candidate for the ANC presidency, in defiance of objections by ANC chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota.
At its central committee (CC) meeting on Thursday the federation also endorsed ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe for the ANC deputy presidency, South African Communist Party (SACP) chairperson Gwede Mantashe as secretary general, National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete as deputy secretary general and ANC national executive committee (NEC) member Matthews Phosa as treasurer.
Conspicuously absent were the names of Thabo Mbeki, his Cabinet members and senior party figures aligned with him.
The post of chairperson, for which a CC commission had proposed three possible candidates — Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Sports Minister Makhenkesi Stofile and Lekota — was reserved for a woman candidate, with Dlamini-Zuma possibly, but not necessarily, fitting the bill.
The CC also mandated Cosatu’s central executive committee — a smaller leadership body due to meet in November — to recommend a list of additional candidates, including Cosatu leaders who are ANC members, for the ANC’s NEC.
The decision to list, and the favouring of Zuma for the top post, is likely to heighten friction between the federation and the ruling party’s current leadership, which takes a dim view of perceived Cosatu interference in an internal ANC matter.
Lekota, sitting among Cosatu’s top office-bearers on the conference stage, observed proceedings silently and stony-faced. It emerged he had told the CC commission that debated the leadership issue on Wednesday that the ANC viewed Cosatu’s decision to “choose leaders of other alliance partners as irregular and departing from tradition and protocols”.
His objection was initally noted in the commission’s draft resolution, but was later excised on the demand of Cosatu affiliates. It was decided merely to mandate the November central executive committee meeting to “manage together with alliance partners the potential problems that might arise as a consequence of the [September 2006] 9th congress resolutions on the leadership question in the ANC”.
On Monday Lekota was scolded by delegates for criticising the unruly conduct of strikes in an address to the CC. However, certain affiliates recommended that his name be included on Cosatu’s list for the ANC NEC.
CC delegates were clearly surprised that the commission’s draft resolution gave three options: adopting the list of favoured candidates for specific positions, asking the CC to draw up a pool of names from which the ANC should choose its “top six” and not identifying names at all.
Fikile Majola, general secretary of Cosatu’s health workers’ union, Nehawu, said the commission had not had enough time to agree on a single option, although the majority favoured identifying the top six.
However, the resolution noted that option three violated the 9th congress resolution, which instructed the CC to “resolve on a programme that must unite the liberation movement and identify leadership which best pursues a programme in the interest of the working class”.
Only Cosatu’s food union, Fawu, favoured the pool alternative, but climbed down during Thursday’s debate, saying it was “open to persuasion” by other affiliates.
Cosatu’s list, which closely follows that of the ANC Youth League, is strongly pro-Zuma and anti-Mbeki in more ways than one. Motlanthe has studiously avoided being identified with the Mbeki camp, while Mantashe, Mbete and Phosa are all seen as Zuma sympathisers.
During the debate it was emphasised repeatedly that Cosatu had no right to nominate candidates for ANC positions.
But the National Union of Mineworkers’ general secretary, Frans Baleni, argued that there was a long tradition of alliance members trying to influence one another. Baleni recalled that at Cosatu’s launch in 1985, leadership candidates had been canvassed with ANC president Oliver Tambo in Lusaka.
At a press conference in Randburg last week Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said the plan was for Cosatu members who also belonged to the ANC to push the federation’s favoured leaders in ANC branches.
One affiliate leader stressed that it was not enough to list names; those nominated had to abide by certain leadership criteria. The resolution lists these as a commitment to the radical transformation of society; a proven commitment to the alliance and a belief in the working class as “a primary motive force”; commitment to the unity of the ANC, and the alliance; support for the idea of a decade of workers and the poor; and political experience and a struggle record.
The CC insisted that Cosatu leaders deployed to the ANC should not serve on company boards and should be subject to “regular and structured accountability”.
The CC list for the ANC top six represents a triumph for Vavi, who once described Zuma’s rise to the ANC top job as “an unstoppable tsunami” and was in visibly high spirits this week.
In his addresses to the CC Vavi did not mention Zuma by name. However, he did call for the removal of Mbeki, alluding to him as “that man”.
Cutting a far more sober figure was Cosatu president Willie Madisha, projected by his opponents as an Mbeki man, whom observers agreed was “fighting for his political life”.
Madisha eluded an apparent push to neutralise him before the CC, which referred the question of his role in an unaccounted-for R500 000 “donation” to the SACP to the November meeting of Cosatu’s central executive committee.
On Monday delegates agreed in closed session to defer the matter until a police investigation had been completed.
At a meeting last Thursday a majority of Cosatu leaders voted down a move to oust him as president.
Suggestions of a coordinated drive to neutralise him before the CC were lent weight by the SACP’s sudden announcement on Sunday that its investigators had found no evidence for his claim that he personally handed the R500 000 in cash to SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande.
One observer expressed sympathy with Madisha, who has already said he will not restand for the presidency at Cosatu’s next congress. “He’s not so much pro-Mbeki as against Zuma, whom he does not consider a credible worker champion,” the observer said.
More calls to clamp down on media
Pressure for curbs on the private media is gaining ominous momentum on the left, swelling the anti-press clamour of authoritarians in the government and ANC.
Addressing Cosatu’s central committee on Tuesday this week, South African Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande urged workers to lead a debate “on the role of the media in our democracy, as well as discuss the challenge of balancing freedom of expression and human rights as contained in our Bill of Rights”.
He accused the media of becoming “deeply enmeshed in some of the factionalist battles within our organisations” and of “positioning itself … in terms of some of the key debates and challenges inside our broader movement”.
On September 4, the SACP attacked “City Press, sections of SABC TV news, pockets of the Independent Group and the Mail & Guardian” for letting themselves be used by leaders to discredit each other, and selective publication of “destructive information” and “outright lies”.
The SACP recalled that the recent ANC policy conference had debated “the parameters within which the media must operate, especially the tendency to elevate freedom of expression above the human rights of particularly those holding public office”. It calls for this to be “taken up in earnest”.
Arguing that media self-regulation needs to be interrogated, the SACP advocates an independent media regulator under neither state nor media control.
At this week’s CC, Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi also attacked media “irresponsibility”.
Earlier this year ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma told the World Editors Forum the media”were beginning to threaten their own freedom”. His complaint that the media could not regulate themselves was taken up in a resolution of the KwaZulu-Natal ANC. — Drew Forrest