National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) leaders launched a scathing attack against the Congress of the People (Cope) on Monday, saying its founders had inferiority complexes and were ”honorary whites”.
Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim warned members against ”selling out” to Cope, a new opposition party that broke away from the African National Congress (ANC) and its alliance partners.
”The elections process exposed the fact that Mosiuoa Lekota, [Mbhazima] Shilowa and their friends, although they had been members of the ANC, they had a serious problem of inferiority complex and that they never understood the meaning of the national democratic revolution.
”Their noise about the ‘rule of law’ qualifies them to be ‘honorary whites’ as it is mainly white people who own the real means of production in this country and control the economy,” said Jim.
Both Shilowa and another Cope member, Willie Madisha, are former union leaders. Madisha has since started a new unionist movement.
”What has [gone] wrong in our federation?” asked Jim.
”Madisha was our president. Shilowa was our national general secretary. How can our federation present such people?”
Jim was speaking at the union’s mini-national congress in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg.
Union members should not ”cross the picket line and sell out”, he said.
Jim said members needed to be educated on political awareness.
”So that we will be able to differentiate between water, paraffin and petrol,” said Jim, in an apparent reference to so-called sell-outs within the union’s ranks.
”Cope has taught us a lesson in the liberation to be vigilant and to always remember that it is not everybody around us who is actually with us.”
Jim also took a swipe at the official opposition, saying the Democratic Alliance clearly ”hates Comrade Jacob Zuma”.
”They fear him because they have failed to brainwash him and they fail to corrupt his mind,” said Jim.
Numsa president Cedric Gina, whose union claims some 260 000 members and is an affiliate of the ANC’s partner, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), described Cope as the ”enemy”.
”Cope is an enemy of the workers and the poor and we must defend our factories and communities from them. It is indeed unfortunate that some of their leaders were once leaders of the trade union movement,” said Gina.
Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi and the newly appointed Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande, of the South African Communist Party, who were scheduled to address the congress on Monday, are now expected to attend on Tuesday, organisers said. — Sapa