The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has decided there is no need for general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi to apologise for saying he was prepared to lay down his life for the revolution.
This decision was made after it received a letter from the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC).
On June 24, the SAHRC gave Vavi a fortnight to retract his comments. Commission spokesperson Vincent Moaga said that if Vavi failed to retract his statement, it could subpoena him to appear before it.
It would then issue findings and recommendations, which could include obtaining an order from the Equality Court prohibiting Vavi from uttering similar statements.
On Monday, Cosatu’s national office bearers (NOBs) considered a letter sent to it by the SAHRC on June 23, spokesperson Patrick Craven said in a statement.
”The NOBs rejected the allegations made by the SAHRC, which have already been comprehensively answered in the general secretary’s statement dated June 23 2008,” he said.
”They reaffirmed their full support for [Vavi] and agreed that he must not apologise for anything he said.”
Vavi made his June 23 statement to ”set the record straight” about remarks he made at the funeral of Pretty Nomhle Singonzo-Shuping, the second vice-president of the Police and Prisons’ Civil Rights Union (Popcru) on June 21.
Reiterating those comments, he said: ”For our revolution, and for millions of people I have not seen and will never come across, in defence of my comrades who are victims of unfair treatment and injustice or who are targeted so that they and the revolution is weakened, I am prepared to make the supreme sacrifice. I am prepared to lay down my own life.
”I know that I share that commitment with millions of other comrades who fought for change and who now know their responsibilities to that revolution.”
The comments were ”essentially” a tribute to Singozo-Shuping and trying to situate them in a narrow rule of law paradigm ”does nothing except to grab ill-informed news headlines”, he said.
At the time, he said the SAHRC had not contacted Cosatu for an explanation and he was consequently not aware of any deadline for an apology.
Vavi said he had explained to mourners that Singonzo-Shuping was a revolutionary and pledged to her that her comrades were prepared to do as she had in taking up arms and killing in defence of each other, their leaders and the revolution.
”I singled out Jacob Zuma to make an example. I said because Jacob Zuma is one of us and is one of our leaders, for him and for our revolution we are prepared to lay down our lives and for him we are prepared to shoot and kill.”
Vavi claimed his statement was deliberately being taken out of context ”to drive a debate at the public level with a clear political agenda”.
He believed that political agenda was to ”isolate our leaders for systematic attack so that eventually when they fall one by one, no one, including their very own organisations, will come to their defence”. — Sapa