Leaders of Cosatu and the SACP believe they are about to reach agreements with the ANC which will maximise their influence in the upcoming elections and on future government policies and appointments.
This could silence calls for the SACP to contest elections on its own or even for allocated quotas of seats on ANC lists for legislatures.
Last weekend the SACP’s Young Communist League proposed that the ANC’s alliance partners should have a 30% quota of seats on ANC national and provincial legislature lists.
The YCL said it believed this would ensure that the alliance co-governs with the ANC in a new spirit arising out of commitment by the ANC’s post- Polokwane leaders to take the alliance seriously.
The alliance leaders are working on a programme of action that will determine areas of cooperation in policy formulation and deployment.
Both Cosatu and the SACP have told the ANC that the days when they were used as voting fodder in elections are over and that they want to co-determine government policy.
The SACP calls the new arrangement a ”reconfigured alliance”, while Cosatu calls it a ”pact” and the ANC says it is a ”programme of action”.
Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi said the programme for governance being worked out was the pact the unions had pressed for in the past.
”What we are interested in is the reversal of years of marginalisation, even if the ANC is not interested in publicly signing a pact,” he said.
Vavi said Cosatu was satisfied with the agreement reached at the alliance summit that the alliance partners will join the ANC’s deployment committee, although meaning had still to be given to this agreement.
He said Cosatu has not discussed quotas.
SACP spokesperson Malesela Maleka said the party will finalise its position on its relationship with the ruling ANC at a policy conference later this month.
He said the party’s main concern was that members deployed in the legislatures should be accountable to the party.
Although a resolution at the SACP congress last year makes provision for a possible quota system, three members of the SACP’s central committee, who spoke to the Mail & Guardian anonymously, said quotas might limit the SACP unnecessarily and attract disgruntled opportunistic elements from the ANC.
One leader argued that the SACP already has sufficient representation in the National Assembly, with 80 of the ANC’s 269 MPs affiliated to it.
”They are there not because of quotas but because of a list process, which showed that they enjoyed the support of the majority of ANC branches.
”In some provincial legislatures we might be even better represented, while in others we will have almost zero representation. This reflects the work of the party and the degree of support in localities.”
There is also fear in the party that such a rigid suggestion might limit the SACP and unnecessarily agitate the ANC.
”We’re not even sure to suggest something as rigid as this is winnable. Such a limit may also be used to put us in our place, to say that ‘now you’ve got your third, shut up’.”
Some leaders also fear that such a limit may give rise to opportunism in the party.
”People who can’t make it in the ANC will want to use it as a fast-track to the list.”
The central committee member pointed out that it was ANC president Jacob Zuma who first proposed that the independent voice of the SACP was missing from the legislatures because ”we were there as ANC members”.
”He was complaining that the counterbalancing voice of the left was not there and we should push the envelope.”
Zuma said this at a special congress of the SACP in 2005.
The SACP will also argue strongly for some structures in government to change and particularly for the establishment of a planning ministry based in the presidency to ensure coherence.
The disjunction between national and provincial governments will also be highlighted and the health, education and security sector will be targeted for specific interventions.
”At next year’s Cabinet lekgotla we should present a plan that is, in effect, a ‘ready to govern’ document,” said a party leader.
Meanwhile, Cosatu has made it clear that it supports the views of ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe that there should be respect for the judiciary.
”Even as we defend Zuma we don’t want to come across as attacking the judiciary and creating the impression that we think that Zuma is above the law and the law has no right to hold him accountable, Vavi told a media conference in Johannesburg on Thursday.
However, he said, workers were very angry about what was happening to Zuma, and the Cosatu leadership was concerned about what would happen should he be found guilty.
He said Cosatu was not threatening chaos, but was hoping that through its discussion with other leaders a solution could be found.
Vavi said although there was support among members of Cosatu’s central executive committee for a law granting indemnity to a sitting president to help Zuma, the federation had not taken a final decision.