Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi warned on Tuesday that the newly elected leaders of the ANC must not take their alliance partners for granted.
She urged them to listen to alliance partners and help solve workers’ issues if it is to win their support ahead of the national elections in 2024.
Cosatu’s voice in the alliance is important as the labour federation, with a membership of about 1.6-million, has traditionally campaigned for the ANC during elections since 1994.
Workers are still angry at the state after it backed out of implementing the last leg of a three-year wage deal signed in the public service co-ordinating bargaining council in 2018, citing a lack of funds. In February, the Constitutional Court ruled that the government did not have to implement the final part as the unions were “unjustifiably enriched” from the “impugned collective agreement”.
The relations are so bad between the ANC and its left-leaning allies in the tripartite alliance that Ramaphosa was booed at a Workers’ Day rally in Rustenburg, with the ANC national chair Gwede Mantashe suffering the same fate at the Cosatu national congress in September.
Further straining relations between parties was the decision by acting public service and administration minister Thulas Nxesi to unilaterally implement a final, revised 3% wage offer for public servants, as per figures in the medium-term budget policy statement of October 26.
Some public service unions have called on the labour federation to dump the ANC and support the SACP in the 2024 elections. The SACP and Cosatu have previously expressed concern over the ANC’s poor management of alliance relations, saying its structures were often overlooked on key government decisions. Some argued the alliance was as good as dead.
In an interview with Business Day on the sidelines of the five-day ANC congress, which ends on Tuesday, Losi said they had raised the issue of the reconfiguration of the alliance at the party’s national executive committee (NEC) meetings and in the alliance.
“You cannot take the alliance partners for granted. We hope [the issue of the reconfiguration] of the alliance was not just included in the president’s speech,” Losi said.
“We are hopeful that we are going to have an alliance meeting after this conference and table the issues that we are sent by workers to table, and we are hopeful that we are going to have a leadership that is listening and acting on those issues.”
Losi said slogans alone would not change the ANC’s dwindling electoral fortunes. The party’s electoral support is largely expected to dip below 50% in 2024, a move that could force it into a coalition government.
Losi said the new ANC leadership had a responsibility to cleanse and renew the ANC. “We are hopeful that the issues that have been advanced in step-aside, dealing with corruption, this collective leadership will embrace all of those strides that have been made, because 2024 is not going to come and the ANC is going to be in power because delegates have voted for the leadership.”
“These officials and the NEC that is going to be elected must embrace the fact that they need more than the branches of the ANC to govern, and therefore what the people of SA [express about] the ANC and what they need it to do to cleanse itself must be taken seriously. It must listen.”
Failure to listen could result in workers not showing up to vote ANC in 2024, she said.
“The danger of is that you end up with coalition governments that do not work ... as they are about a gentleman’s agreement, not about the electorate,” the Cosatu president said.
She said the ANC needed to govern with the alliance partners and the people of SA.
In his political report at the first day of the ANC national congress, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the renewal of the governing party would be incomplete without the renewal of “our entire movement, including how we deal with the issue of the reconfiguration of the alliance, the core of the movement”.
Ramaphosa said the ANC must recognise that “there have been weaknesses, lapses and shortcomings in how we have managed this relationship and how we have approached our common tasks and responsibilities”.
“In recent times, we have observed tensions within the alliance. Some of these tensions arise from our inability to engage effectively and regularly on key issues, while others arise from the broader challenge of an ANC government that is, in effect, in an employer-employee relationship with a significant portion of Cosatu members,” the president said. “This is a complexity that we must understand and resolve.”
Ramaphosa said: “The matter of reconfiguration should be seen as leading to improving alliance relations at the national, provincial, regional and local level. It can be said that at the heart of this process of improving relations in the alliance lies the imperative to strengthen the alliance and build its capacity to achieve its historical mission — to drive and complete our shared strategy, the national democratic revolution.”
The president stressed that the ANC “stands ready to work with Cosatu, the SACP and all progressive formations to build working-class unity”.
Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla said Cosatu looked forward to “robust engagements with the ANC and the SACP on the radical reconfiguration of the alliance. The 2024 elections are around the corner, so we don't have time to waste”.
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