President Thabo Mbeki’s free-market economic policies have been ”disastrous” for the country, Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu’s general secretary told the Financial Times in an interview published on Thursday.
Vavi accused Mbeki’s government of having lost sight of the concerns of the poor and unemployed during his eight years of rule.
”If the world belonged to me, everything stops now,” he told the influential business daily, adding that new policies should be the result of a broad, national debate.
”Business people will seize on his comments, as Mr Vavi has been a force behind Mr Zuma’s increasingly confident campaign to replace Mr Mbeki as the ANC leader,” the Financial Times said.
Speaking in Cosatu’s Johannesburg headquarters, Vavi told the paper that the ANC had rushed ”too quickly” to open the economy after the end of white rule in 1994.
”We allowed the marketers to take charge of important departments and all they knew was that South Africa must be open to chilly winds of competition.
”The focus should have been on labour intensive, rather than capital intensive sectors,” Vavi said in the interview.
”We have had this flirtation with neo-liberal policies that have been absolutely disastrous for our development.”
While Vavi told the Financial Times that he liked Finance Minister Trevor Manuel ”as a friend” and for having disproved the sceptics who suspected that the ANC would wreck the economy on taking power.
However, he said, Manuel had failed the poor.
Vavi went on to tell the Financial Times that Zuma had been right to reassure investors that policy would not be set on the whims of the president — but rather by the party.
Zuma was right to have said ”I do not have horns and a tail.”
Vavi attacked the culture of Mbeki’s government during the interview.
He said Mbeki’s allies liked to suggest the union movement was seeking to lead South Africa into Zimbabwe-style chaos.
But ”we are not asking for hyper inflation, we don’t ask for high deficits, we say that money ought to be spent and invested correctly”, Vavi said.
Unemployment, officially at 25%, but informally estimated to be near 40%, was a ”national emergency”, Vavi said. – Sapa