/ 28 August 2009

Cosatu, Zille head for talks over cabinet

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Friday backed off from its Equality Court demand that Western Cape Premier Helen Zille reconstitute her male-dominated cabinet.

Instead, Cosatu’s Western Cape provincial secretary, Tony Ehrenreich, and Zille’s legal team were scheduled to sit down for talks on an out-of-court settlement.

In a brief hearing on Friday morning, Judge Willem Louw suggested the settlement might take the form of a joint statement by the two parties.

Ehrenreich laid a complaint with the court after Zille, who also leads the Democratic Alliance, appointed ten males and no women other than herself to her cabinet in May this year.

Friday’s ”directions” hearing was meant to be a procedural discussion on how the case would be conducted.

However, Ehrenreich told the judge it had emerged from Zille’s replying papers that she was as committed to advancing gender issues as was Cosatu, a point he said she had not made when she defended her cabinet appointments earlier.

He asked Louw for advice on whether the Equality Court was the correct forum for the complaint, saying there might be possible ”alternative forums”.

Cosatu has also complained to the gender and human rights commissions.

”There is an avenue and there is a possibility for a more meaningful discussion,” Ehrenreich said.

Zille’s advocate, Renate Williams, said that if there was a possibility that the matter could be settled, it should be explored by the parties.

Louw provisionally postponed the matter to September 4, and repeated what he said earlier about a joint statement.

”I’m sure that there is a possibility to come up with something,” he said.

Louw said earlier that if the hearing did go ahead, one of the issues that the parties might want to deal with before getting on to the merits was Zille’s claim that the selection of a cabinet was the exercise of a prerogative power and could not be challenged.

Ehrenreich told the judge that if there was a hearing, he would object to it being decided on papers only, as Cosatu would want to cross-examine those who had filed affidavits.

The main affidavit in the replying papers was by Zille. — Sapa