In the municipal elections citizens can choose between candidates to lead them at local level. But for organisations such as Cosatu there is no choice — however much it may bitch about the ruling party, it is the ANC or nothing.
The deteriorating relationship between Cosatu and the ANC made headlines last year, with Cosatu threatening it would refuse to sign a blank cheque backing all ANC candidates regardless of their track record. At the time the ANC government provoked Cosatu’s ire by hanging tough on civil service wages and backing a wage subsidy policy seen as eroding workers’ rights.
On the one hand Cosatu, largely through its general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, attacked ANC leaders for shamelessly using state resources to line the pockets of the rich and influential. On the other Cosatu and Vavi were the subject of harsh criticism by the ANC, with the party’s secretary general, Gwede Mantashe, even accusing the federation of covertly planning to become a South African version of the Movement for Democratic Change, the union movement that grew into the main Zimbabwean opposition.
By the end of the year the two warring parties had called a truce, as they always do at election time. But there was still a glimmer of hope that this election would be different — Cosatu promised its members that it would refuse to support candidates who had acquired a reputation for corruption and mismanagement.
Now, after three months of relative quiet, Vavi has gone public with labour’s continuing concerns, saying that ANC and Cosatu are going to the electorate with their “tails between [their] legs” because of a continual lack of service delivery and more than a million job losses.
Moreover, Vavi said at a Numsa bargaining council this week, the candidate list process had not thrown up the best the ANC had to offer — it had favoured those with money or access to money.
“If we do not do something about corruption we will find ourselves in a predatory state, where the social order of feeding will be as it is alleged in Angola and Kenya, where the first family becomes the first to feed, followed by the Cabinet and provincial leadership, and our people come last to find absolutely nothing, not even bones,” he said.
The question has been asked a thousand times: why does Cosatu hang in so stubbornly, like a woman in an abusive relationship? The answer is quite simple: because it believes it has nowhere else to go.
In an interview with the Mail & Guardian, Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven said: “If you look at the policies of opposition parties, we still remain closer policywise to the ANC than to any other political party. So we have no choice.”
So again the ANC has driven home the point that Cosatu will remain on the sidelines, while the real decisions will remain the exclusive domain of Luthuli House.