Relations between Cosatu boss Zwelinzima Vavi and top ANC leaders, including party president Jacob Zuma and ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe, appear to have hit a new low. This is suggested by Vavi’s conspicuous absence from the ANC’s January 8 celebrations in Polokwane last weekend.
His no-show at the all-important annual party event, at which Zuma unveiled the ANC’s plans for the year, raised eyebrows in the alliance with some leaders reading it as a sign of deepening tension between him and the ANC leadership.
Vavi, who once declared he would “kill for Zuma”, is now being ignored by him. The president believes Vavi overstepped the mark in public pronouncements that criticised Zuma and ANC policies, a close associate of Vavi said.
Things have changed since last year when Mantashe said Vavi was ready for “deployment” by the ANC, which set tongues wagging about Vavi’s rumoured ambition for high office in Luthuli House.
The tide turned when Cosatu, still reeling from a chaotic public service strike that harmed its relationship with the ANC, declared it would refuse to support ANC candidates for local government elections whom the trade union movement deemed unfit for office.
Zuma is said to have taken offence at Vavi’s widely publicised remarks that Zuma was presiding over a “predatory” state plagued by a paralysis of leadership and that ANC leaders were “political hyenas”.
Cosatu also co-hosted a civil society conference late last year that angered the ANC. Alliance partners sparred at the time over the fact that the party had not been invited to participate.
No show
According to a senior alliance leader, the ANC invited Vavi and other Cosatu officials to the party’s gala dinner and to Zuma’s January 8 address, but Vavi failed to show up for both events.
Cosatu president Sdumo Dlamini confirmed this but denied that it was a snub. “He was in Durban and he wanted to come but he missed the flight,” he said. “His flight from Durban to Johannesburg was cancelled a day before.
“The next available flight for him was on Saturday and he would have arrived in Johannesburg at 08h00. He would still have needed to drive for three hours from Johannesburg to Polokwane.”
Dlamini said he had explained this to the ANC and South African Communist Party leaders. ‘We tried everything for him to come but it did not work,” he said.
In keeping with tradition, Cosatu contributed a message of support, which Dlamini delivered, at the ANC’s birthday celebrations. But a senior alliance leader close to Vavi said the federation leader was no longer on good terms with ANC top brass, including Zuma and Mantashe. “He has stepped on many people’s toes. This [the tension] is deeper than you think.
According to Cosatu insiders Vavi’s announcement last year that he would not be available for an ANC position came from his realisation that he had angered too many ANC leaders.
‘Tit for tat’
His public pronouncement that Blade Nzimande, the higher education and training minister, should quit his government job and return to the SACP head office, aggravated the situation. Nzimande is seen as close to Zuma.
Zet Luzipho, Cosatu’s provincial secretary in KwaZulu-Natal, said that Vavi’s travel problems were understandable. “Polokwane is not next door to Durban,” he said.
Mantashe and Baleka Mbete, the ANC chairperson, did not attend Cosatu’s 25th anniversary rally in December, Luzipho said, although he insisted that Vavi’s absence was not “tit for tat”.
“We did not read too much into the fact that the general secretary of the ANC [Mantashe] was not there.” But, Luzipho said, Cosatu had taken issue with the way in which the ANC had tried to isolate Vavi from Cosatu by targeting him for his public comments. The ANC’s response was unfair, he said.
“Vavi is not above Cosatu,” Luzipho said. “None of the things said by Vavi was not said by Cosatu. It is unfortunate that the ANC tried to isolate him. It speaks of paranoia.”
In his January 8 statement Zuma told ANC members that the ANC had a duty to support the alliance, while the SACP and Cosatu “have a responsibility to strengthen and defend the ANC”.
“These responsibilities must be executed within the established and time-tested culture and discipline of our movement. We must not allow ourselves to introduce new tendencies that are foreign to our movement, such as engaging one another in public on internal matters,” Zuma said.
He was referring to Cosatu’s repeated criticism of ministers who spent government money on luxury cars and hotel stays. Vavi’s lashing last year of the former communications minister, Siphiwe Nyanda, among others, for such excesses brought Vavi to the brink of being disciplined by the ANC.
ANC spokesperson Keith Khoza said that although it would have been good for Vavi to grace the event, the ANC was happy that other Cosatu representatives were present.
He denied that Zuma was not on good terms with Vavi. “Cosatu and the ANC are two different organisations, they [are] bound to differ from time to time. That’s not acrimonious. Our president [Zuma] has taken it well,” said Khoza.
Questions sent to Cosatu’s spokesperson Patrick Craven were un-answered at the time of going to press. Vavi did not return phone calls and text messages.