Ahead of a crucial meeting on Wednesday to decide on the fate of its general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, the clarion call has come from leaders within the union federation riled by what is seen as an attempt to remove Vavi.
Vavi's sexual relationship with a Cosatu employee and the manner in which the woman was employed will be debated at the meeting. Members are then expected to vote on whether Vavi should be removed, suspended or retained.
The National Union of Metalworkers South Africa (Numsa), Cosatu's biggest affiliate with 320 000 members, on Monday blamed the paralysis of the labour federation on its gradual support of capitalist ambitions, including what the ANC administration adopted during the 1994 socio-economic formation.
"It is now about whether or not Cosatu should continue to be a socialist trade union federation or become a labour desk; a toy telephone of the bourgeoisie," said Numsa president Cedric Gina.
According to Gina, capitalism and the failure of the alliance to radically pursue its national democratic revolution (NDR) have resulted in this crisis that has divided Cosatu. The NDR speaks to the management of capitalism in order to ensure that blacks are liberated economically.
Numsa's deputy general secretary Karl Cloete traced capitalism in the alliance back to 1994, when the ANC administration took over and introduced a series of contradictory economic freedom policies. He claims the underpinnings of all these policies were capitalism and that the ANC was always aware that they were not transforming the economy.
"Stemming from the resolutions of the Codesa negotiations, the country found itself economically strained and having to pay back the apartheid debt," he said.
Gear, NDP opposition
The controversial growth, employment and redistribution (Gear) policy is alleged to be identical to the National Development Plan (NDP), which has been received with mixed feelings by Cosatu – with Vavi at the forefront of the group that opposes it.
"By defending the NDP, people are supporting a South Africa of imperialism and that is going against the implementation of the Freedom Charter and its nationalisation demands," said Gina.
Gina and Cloete offered this analysis after a Numsa special central committee met on Sunday to discuss Cosatu's Wednesday meeting. Numsa has called for the meeting to be cancelled owing to Cosatu not following its constitutional guidelines.
In July, Vavi was accussed by a 26-year-old staffer of raping her at the Cosatu House offices. He denied the rape allegations but admitted to having sex with her in the office. Vavi has since opened a case of extortion against the woman after she allegedly asked for R2-million in exhange for her silence. She subsequently dropped the rape accusation during an internal Cosatu inquiry.
However, Vavi is still facing internal charges for bringing the federation into disrepute and hiring the woman without following Cosatu procedure. Cosatu affiliates remain divided over whether or not Vavi is a victim of a smear campaign to oust him.
Core business neglected
Gina accused the Cosatu leadership of neglecting its core business – to fight for the rights of the working class – by focusing on protecting the interests and ambitions of the right-wing capitalist forces.
The impasse with the e-toll campaign and labour brokers emerged as an indication of how Cosatu's core business has been pushed aside to fight personal-political squabbles. "Within Cosatu, some argued for the e-tolling campaign to stop and that we should not honour and execute the Cosatu resolution and policy of nationalisation of the commanding heights of the South African economy," said Gina.
Cosatu had launched a campaign resisting the plan, approved by government in 2006, to charge commuters to use roads improved under the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Programme. The federation claimed the plan was unconstitutional and it would affect the poor, the unemployed and would impact negatively on the economy. Cosatu had been planning further protests for the year against tolling but all of that came to a halt in recent weeks.
Since launching its campaign against labour brokering in 1999, Cosatu had been aggressively making its position known until it recently lost its momentum. Cosatu views labour brokering as a way of treating workers as commodities, who can be traded to generate a profit. It went as far as calling it "human trafficking and a modern form of slavery".
As it stands Cosatu is well short of its 2015 plan, set out in 2003, following its eighth national congress in Gauteng. The federation had defined two central priorities that it intended to work on with the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the ANC: to build working class power and ensure quality jobs.
The plan identifies core strategies for taking forward the NDP, which Numsa claims the alliance has failed to honour. Ironically, the plan also revealed that there were fears that Cosatu's 30th anniversary in 2015 would come at a time when coherence and unity in the federation may be undermined, leading to splits. The Cosatu of 2003 feared the collapse of the alliance and in that context, the ANC and the SACP will also face divisions.
Cosatu national campaigns
With this in mind, Numsa has called for the implementation of the 11th national congress resolutions as well as the execution of the Cosatu national campaigns, organising and collective bargaining conference resolutions. Numsa will also convene a special national congress in December 2013 with a special focus on unifying Cosatu and the labour movement.
In December last year at the ANC's elective conference in Mangaung, Cosatu president Sdumo Dlamini, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) president Senzeni Zokwana and National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union (Nehawu) general secretary Fikile Majola were elected onto the ANC's national executive committee.
Vavi and Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim, who were both critical of President Jacob Zuma's re-election and various ANC policies in the run-up to the Mangaung conference, refused to be co-opted onto the new ANC national executive council, rejecting nomination.
Vavi seen a threat
Numsa claims Vavi is seen as a threat to the ambitions of the right-wing capitalist forces, which see a Cosatu under his leadership as obstructing its ambitions to give capitalism a human face.
"We are defending Vavi because we want a revolutionary socialist, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist Cosatu," said Gina.
Claims have been rife that there is a faction of Cosatu that has launched a smear campaign in order to get Vavi to be expelled.
In March, there were calls for Vavi to be investigated after allegations of corruption in the acquisition of Cosatu's new headquarters. He denied that unity in Cosatu was beginning to collapse and that the organisation was split.
"We have to show them that we are not splitting or paralysed, as the media and their 'sources' want us to believe." He also said it was natural for any organisation to have internal differences.
Similar events befell former Cosatu president Willie Madisha when he was expelled in 2008. He was ousted during a central executive committee meeting in relation to his involvement in a R500 000 donation made to the SACP by a Malawian businessperson, Charles Modise.
Modise claimed that he gave the money, in black plastic bags, to Madisha, who in turn said he handed the cash to SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande. Nzimande said he never received it. Madisha, a then close ally of President Thabo Mbeki, was axed shortly after Zuma was elected president of the ANC in Polokwane.
'Political imbeciles'
Madisha lashed out at his detractors, claiming he had been victimised by "political imbeciles". He claimed his eight-year Cosatu presidency ended because he said the allegations against him surfaced after he started investigating Vavi for allegedly misusing a Cosatu credit card.
The SACP refused to be drawn into the labels and attacks on the alliance, claiming that Cosatu's internal processes will resolve the problems faced by the alliance.
"They will deal with issues in a manner that unites Cosatu. We have absolute confidence in that process and would desist from any public engagement with anybody on those issues," SACP spokesperson Malesela Maleka told the Mail & Guardian.
Wednesday's special meeting will not only decide the fate of Vavi, but also the trajectory of Cosatu and its affiliates and consequently its alliance with the ANC and SACP.
Numsa promised that if the meeting was not cancelled, it would attend and use the platform to emphasise the need for Cosatu to clarify its position on whether it was still interested in workers and their needs.