In what could further erode the ANC’s electoral support, four of Cosatu’s biggest unions have called on the labour federation to dump the governing party and rally behind the SA Communist Party (SACP) in the 2024 national elections.
Delegates from the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union, National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union, SA Municipal Workers Union and the National Union of Mineworkers on Tuesday called on Cosatu to ditch the ANC, accusing it of undermining workers and failing to implement tripartite alliance programmes.
The four unions account for more than 600,000 of Cosatu’s estimated membership of 1.6-million.
This is not the first time the unions have threatened to walk away from the ANC, and analysts have dismissed this as sabre-rattling by Cosatu to strengthen its negotiating hand with the governing party.
Traditional
Cosatu and the SACP, as members of the ANC-led tripartite alliance, have traditionally supported the ANC during elections. However, over the years relations between the alliance partners have taken strain, primarily because of the ANC’s poor performance in government and its lackadaisical approach in dealing with poor service delivery, corruption and malfeasance in the public service.
The SACP announced in the past few years that it was considering contesting elections on its own to take up the plight of the working class and the poor. It has, however, so far failed to follow through on this threat.
Delegates at Cosatu’s four-day congress, which ends on Thursday, debated the proposal to leave the ANC alliance after an address by SACP general secretary Solly Mapaila.
In his speech, Mapaila said the SACP should reconsider the blanket electoral support it gives the ANC as it feels undermined by the governing party’s failure to implement alliance resolutions in government. “We may as well put the reversal of the neoliberal trajectory as a precondition of ANC support in the upcoming elections,” he said.
Mapaila stressed that the SACP had to “contest the ANC”, to roars of approval from the nearly 2,000 delegates.
The ANC’s electoral support has been declining over the years. In the municipal elections in 2021, it lost Gauteng’s metros of Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane to a DA-led multiparty coalition when its support dipped below 50% for the first time since 1994.
Political analysts and ANC leaders have pointed to the possibility of the governing party losing the 2024 elections if it does not tackle service delivery issues and corruption within its ranks.
Mapaila said proposals raised by the SACP in tripartite alliance platforms had been ignored by the ANC, while “criminals are now contesting the ANC [and] their views are heard”.
‘Decayed’
A relationship with the tripartite alliance needed to be based on a radical programme of action, said Mapaila, adding that the alliance in its current form was decayed and not able to drive a radical economic agenda.
“The ANC must understand the grounds have shifted,” Mapaila said to loud applause. “The working class can’t afford anymore to be pacified.”
Workers are still angry after the government refused to implement the last leg of a three-year wage deal signed in the Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council in 2018, with the Constitutional Court ruling in February that the government could back out of the pay deal as unions were “unjustifiably enriched” from the “impugned” wage agreement.
The SACP had urged former minister of public service & administration Senzo Mchunu to not go to court over the wage impasse because it would cost support from workers.
Divorce papers
Cosatu unions also weighed in on the matter, with the SA Democratic Teachers Union calling for a consultative conference in 2023 to deliberate on the matter and adopt a formal position.
Cosatu general secretary Bheki Ntshalintshali said union leaders must discuss it first and report to the conference on the way forward on Wednesday.
ANC national chair Gwede Mantashe, addressing the media after Mapaila’s address, said he had taken note of the issues raised. However, Mantashe took issue with being served “divorce papers in public”.
Mantashe, who was booed off stage and prevented from addressing the Cosatu congress on Monday, said they needed to get together to rebuild the weakened alliance.
Mantashe said the ANC would not support the SACP if it breaks ranks with the ANC because the SACP would be “fishing from the same pond” as the governing party.
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