Willie Madisha plans to take legal action in both the high court and Equality Court over his dismissal as president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Tuesday.
Madisha, who was axed last month, wanted to be reinstated, according to the national broadcaster.
It reported that the Equality Court action would also seek monetary compensation and the overturning of Cosatu’s decision on procedural grounds.
Madisha was dismissed over his involvement in a scandal concerning a missing South African Communist Party (SACP) donation.
A Cosatu-appointed commission into the matter found that the way in which he had handled the matter had damaged both his reputation and that of Cosatu.
Malawian businessman Charles Modise laid a complaint against the SACP last year in connection with a R500 000 donation he claimed to have made to the party in 2002.
He claimed he gave the money, packed in black plastic bags, to Madisha, who in turn swore he transported the money in the boot of his car to SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande. However, Nzimande denied ever receiving the money.
Madisha voluntarily stepped down as Cosatu president in October when the probe started into the missing donation, to allow it “to continue without my interference”.
At the time, Madisha suggested that alliance leaders were “plotting against each other” in the run-up to the African National Congress (ANC) national conference in December.
In December, Madisha was suspended as president of the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) for apparently telling members not to vote for then deputy president of the ANC Jacob Zuma, who went on to win the presidency of the party.
However, the commission could find “no evidence” to support Madisha’s contention that the matter was “transported into Cosatu to settle unresolved scores by individual leaders and to cast the president as destructive.”
Instead, it criticised his conduct in relation to the donation as falling “well short” of expectations.
Meanwhile, the SACP is keeping under wraps the details of an investigation into whether Nzimande took and failed to pass on the R500 000 donation from businessman Charles Modise, the Mail & Guardian reported last week.
Even officials on the party’s central executive committee were not given copies of a report by chartered accountants SAB&T, which investigated Nzimande’s finances after allegations made by Modise and Madisha that Nzimande had failed to pass on the cash, delivered in black garbage bags, to the party.
The officials had access only to the findings of the report, which cleared Nzimande on the basis that “no tangible and corroborating evidence could be located and/or traced so as to substantiate the allegation made by Mr Madisha”.