Cosatu, a key ally of the ANC, will, for the first time in its 37 years of existence, hold a special national consultative conference in 2023 to debate and take a decision on its relationship with the governing party.
The relationship between the ANC and its left-leaning allies in the tripartite alliance seems to have soured, culminating in the booing of party president Cyril Ramaphosa at a Workers’ Day rally in Rustenburg in May and its chair, Gwede Mantashe, at the Cosatu conference on Monday.
If carried through, the threat to dump the alliance could be disastrous for the ANC, which lost the metros of Tshwane, Joburg and Ekurhuleni in the 2021 municipal elections when its electoral support dipped below 50% for the first time.
The labour federation says it is not happy about the ANC’s performance in government, its commitment to fighting corruption and malfeasance in the public sector and its reneging on a wage deal it had signed with its employees.
Cosatu has accused the ANC of undermining workers by refusing to accede to their demands for above-inflation wage increases and for undermining collective bargaining.
It is also irked by the government’s poor record on service delivery and its failure to tame joblessness.
SACP
On Tuesday, Cosatu’s biggest unions — the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union, Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union, SA Municipal Workers’ Union and National Union of Mineworkers — called on the conference to take an immediate decision to dump the ANC and support the SA Communist Party (SACP) in 2024.
The SACP has been threatening to go it alone at elections for a long time but it has failed to follow through on this threat.
SACP general secretary Solly Mapaila told delegates to the congress that the alliance partners were fed up dealing with “two different ANCs”.
He said the one they dealt with at alliance meetings was very different from the one they dealt with in government.
The four unions jointly account for more than 700,000 of Cosatu’s membership of about 1.6-million.
Final decision
The other Cosatu affiliates at the conference, most notably the SA Democratic Teachers Union and Democratic Nursing Organisation of SA, won the day, calling for a consultative conference to deliberate and take a decision on the matter.
Bheki Ntshalintshali, the outgoing general secretary of Cosatu, told delegates attending the labour federation’s four-day national congress in Midrand that general secretaries of the 18 Cosatu affiliates resolved on Wednesday to convene a
special national congress in May 2023 to take “a final decision
on the way forward regarding this matter”.
Ntshalintshali said the leaders noted the need to seek consensus among all Cosatu unions on such a “fundamental, important matter”.
They also believed there was a need for Cosatu affiliates to “consult their members and structures on the way forward regarding Cosatu’s posture towards future electoral support”, he said.
Stellenbosch University political analyst Amanda Gouws said Cosatu had done the footwork for the ANC in terms of “recruiting membership and canvassing for the ANC during elections”. She said it would be a “huge blow” for the ANC if Cosatu elected to dump it and support the SACP. “It will also mean the end of the tripartite alliance [because] Cosatu has a huge membership.”
Wits University political analyst Susan Booysen said the tripartite alliance had helped build the image of the ANC.
The withdrawal of that support could spell disaster for the ANC at the polls.
Refusing
Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla said this was the first time Cosatu had taken a decision to hold a special national congress to discuss whether to dump the ANC or continue supporting it in future elections. “In the last congress in 2018, we said we move for SACP support [to contest elections] on condition that there is a reconfigured alliance and that the tripartite alliance is the political centre. But the ANC is refusing for the alliance to be the political centre,” Pamla said.
He said the tripartite alliance, as the political centre, meant decisions to deploy, assess and reshuffle cabinet ministers should be jointly taken by the alliance partners.
Pamla said this was the first time “this question [of Cosatu’s electoral support] is being presented like this”.
The issue being deferred to a consultative congress was necessary because “at stake is the unity of the federation and the unity of affiliates themselves”.
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