Cracks widen in tripartite alliance

The cracks in the alliance between the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the country’s largest and most powerful trade union - the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) - are beginning to widen as millions of COSATU members prepare to embark on a two-day strike on Wednesday, reports said on Monday.

An estimated 1.8 million workers are expected to down tools on Wednesday to protest against the government’s privatisation of state assets. COSATU has refused to postpone the strike until after the UN Conference Against Racism which begins in Durban on Thursday. Last week top cabinet ministers publicly rebuked COSATU accusing the leadership of “hypocrisy” and of “misleading the public”. Writing in the ANC on-line newsletter, ‘ANC Today’, President Thabo Mbeki dismissed the trade-union’s argument that the privatisation policy was not agreed by the ANC’s alliance partners.

“Whose interest do they serve to abandon the morality of revolutionaries, so that they can use workers as cannon fodder to launch an offensive aimed at defeating their own liberation movement,” Mbeki wrote. COSATU’s general secretary Zwlinzima Vavi was quoted as saying that he was “disappointed” that Mbeki had “picked up stones and threw them at us”. The government put out full-page advertisements in Sunday newspapers defending its privatisation policy and criticising the strike, calling it “unnecessary”.

Wits University political scientist Tom Lodge was quoted as saying that it COSATU’s actions were “deliberately done to embarrass the government - the rhetoric is fiercer than it has ever been”. “Both sides will play hardball for some time but there’s not much either one can do. They will find some kind of face-saving language and the alliance will survive for the time being,” Lodge said. An editorial in the ‘Sunday Business Report’ said that “nothing could be healthier for the economy than an arms-length separation between the ANC and COSATU”. “Today, with the imperatives of development and integration into the global economy, the government cannot be all things to all men. It cannot promote strikes, bash unions and grow an economy at the same time,” the newspaper said.