A main takeaway from Cosatu’s national elective congress is that its members are tired of the ANC’s failure to keep its end of the bargain in the marriage of convenience that is the tripartite alliance and are considering walking away from it.
The word “marriage” is not used lightly. ANC chair Gwede Mantashe, who stood in for President Cyril Ramaphosa, and was booed by delegates at the four-day congress, did not take kindly to being served “divorce papers” in the public by the SA Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Solly Mapaila.
The embarrassing scenes were reminiscent of angry workers booing, jeering, taunting, heckling and stopping Ramaphosa from addressing a Workers’ Day rally in Rustenburg on May 1.
It all started with Zingiswa Losi, who was re-elected unopposed as Cosatu president, telling delegates, on the first day of the congress, that the ANC was still the best option to advance workers’ struggles and that the governing party must be defended.
But moments after her remarks, chaotic scenes played out as delegates stormed the stage, booed and prevented Mantashe from delivering the ANC's message of support.
Workers are angry at the government refusing to meet their demands for above-inflation pay rises at the public service co-ordinating bargaining council. The government tabled a final revised 3% offer, and unions are asking for a 6.5% rise in line with the headline inflation rate forecast by the Reserve Bank for 2022.
Mantashe dismissed the workers’ frustrations as “staged anger”, but agreed that delegates were sending a message to the government on their demands for higher pay.
That delegates spent a considerable amount of time debating whether Cosatu should take an immediate decision to dump the ANC and support the SACP in 2024, or defer the decision to a national consultative congress in May 2023, was telling of the great lengths workers are willing to take to free themselves from the alliance they say is anti-working class.
The congress did not want the ANC to address it because of anger on a number of issues.
— Zingiswa Losi
The two motions were put to a vote on Thursday and it is not yet clear when the results would be announced. This after Mapaila stirred a hornet's nest by declaring to the congress that the alliance partners needed to re-evaluate the blanket electoral support they gave the ANC, and said the SACP was ready to contest elections in 2024.
Losi, a staunch Ramaphosa ally, said: “The congress did not want the ANC to address it because of anger on a number of issues.” She said the conference did not declare “us moving away from the alliance”.
During the Cosatu national congress in 2018, “we said we want a reconfigured alliance. In the absence of that, we said Cosatu will consider moving and supporting the SACP to contest state power ... We are not moving away from the ANC as yet, we are supporting the SACP to contest elections in 2024”.
The alliance partners were not happy with the ANC’s track record in the government, unemployment, poor service, slow economic growth, nonimplementation of standing wage deals and corruption in the party and the government.
Political analysts told Business Day that Cosatu dumping the ANC to support the SACP in the general election in 2024 would spell the end of the tripartite alliance and deliver a huge electoral blow to the ANC. Cosatu has a membership of about 1.6-million and has always campaigned and supported the ANC during elections since 1994.
Cosatu was the first alliance partner to rally behind Ramaphosa’s campaign for the ANC presidency in 2017. However, the recently ended congress did not take a resolution to support his bid for a second term in December.
“There is no resolution, as we always do, that Cosatu resolves to support the ANC in the 2024 election. We don’t have that resolution. And we don’t have a resolution that says we shouldn’t, by the way. I don’t want to misrepresent congress. Congress didn’t say we do not want to support the ANC. The congress spoke about the party [SACP] contesting state power,” said Losi.
Losi called on the ANC to listen to workers if it wants to win the 2024 election. The party’s electoral fortunes have been dwindling, resulting in losses of the Gauteng metros of Ekurhuleni, Tshwane and Johannesburg to DA-led coalitions in the 2021 local government elections when its support fell below 50% for the first time since the dawn of democracy.
On Friday, the DA’s Mpho Phalatse was removed as Joburg executive mayor through a motion of no confidence and replaced by ANC councillor Dada Morero.
“Workers are angry. We want the ANC to hear the voice of workers. Workers are clear, they are saying we can’t continue to be voting fodder [of the ANC],” the Cosatu president said.
“If the electorate in SA was as happy as the ANC would want to imagine, about the state of the nation in our country, the ANC would have performed way better in the local government elections in 2021,” she said.
On Friday, Mapaila said: “The SACP welcomes the resolution adopted by Cosatu on the relationship of the working-class and the SACP as a working-class party to electoral contestation, against the background of the related critical questions of the necessity to reconfigure the alliance and renew and unite our movement.
“The SACP will engage and work together with Cosatu to articulate the implementation of the resolution and build wider trade union and working-class unity towards socialism.”
Cosatu has a huge responsibility. It must decide whether the ANC occupies opposition benches in 2024 or the labour federation continues to be a case study on battered spouse syndrome.
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