Cosatu has criticised its key ally the ANC, which it is campaigning for ahead of the municipal elections, for dragging its feet in implementing the economic reconstruction and recovery plan to address the country’s dire socioeconomic challenges.
The plan was unveiled by President Cyril Ramaphosa in October 2020. It is anchored on an expanded public employment programme, a R1-trillion infrastructure effort mostly leveraged from the private sector, a pledge to accelerate energy generation, and many structural economic reforms.
The embattled economy has been battered by Covid-19, contracting by about 7% in 2020, and resulting in the loss of about 1.4-million jobs as businesses shut their doors during the lockdowns imposed to combat the spread of coronavirus.
Business Leadership SA is among stakeholders that have called for “rapid” implementation of the economic recovery plan to grow the economy.
Cosatu embarked on a national march on Thursday against job losses, retrenchments, corruption, gender-based violence and attacks on collective bargaining.
Addressing workers who marched in the Johannesburg CBD, Cosatu Gauteng chair Amos Monyela said the economy is not growing.
Implement commitments
“Cosatu contributed in the [drafting of the] economic reconstruction and recovery plan. Today, it is not implemented in totality. We are calling for government to start implementing this plan in totality,” said Monyela.
In its list of demands, Cosatu said besides cleaning up and rebuilding the state after the decade of state capture, “it is critical for government and the private sector to urgently implement their commitments under the economic recovery and reconstruction plan”.
“Addressing the blockages to investment, fixing broken [state-owned enterprises], a freeze on retrenching workers, a commitment to creating new jobs and promoting decent work are fundamental if we are to grow the economy, recapacitate the state and build a modern nation.”
It wants the private sector to commit to halting retrenchments and to creating new jobs, and the government should provide measures to support job creation in the private sector.
Speaking to Business Day on the sidelines of the march, Cosatu second deputy president Louisa Thipe said the need to expedite implementation of economic reforms is one of the issues the federation always raised during alliance meetings, summits and lekgotlas. “We raise them,” she said, stressing that the slow implementation of the plan should be addressed.
Renewal project
When asked if she thinks the ANC is not listening to their concerns, Thipe said: “At times things are not attended to as one would wish.”
But ANC Gauteng provincial secretary Jacob Khawe was more forthright. “Our obligation as the ANC is to always provide leadership in government. We are in a renewal project, we need to build an ANC that listens, listens to the membership, listens to unions, listens to civic [organisations], listens to churches,” said Khawe.
He said the ANC should accept that “we are getting far away from you. Renewal means we must come closer and work with you”.
It was pointed out that the Cosatu march on Thursday was poorly attended, compared with the national strike by the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) that started with a national march on Tuesday. But Thipe said the poor turnout was because of the lockdown restrictions permitting not more than 2,000 people to gather outdoors.
“We did not anticipate large numbers. We said those who cannot come must stay home. We are not surprised about the numbers,” she said, stressing that their members are used to the no work no pay principle, when asked if she thinks their members did not attend the strike for fear of losing their day’s wages.
Gerhard Papenfus, CEO of the National Employers’ Association of SA (Neasa), said it is ridiculous that Cosatu, “now only a marginalised worker representative body for government employees, which has clearly run out of ideas, embarked on this pointless, self-serving endeavour”.
“Their ability to impact the national discourse has vanished entirely. They are yearning for previous glory, but through this clumsy [and] even ridiculous endeavour, they will merely further confirm their irrelevance”, he said.
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