Mbeki on warpath again

2002-10-06 08:50

Jimmy Seepe

Johannesburg - The strike by the Congress of SA Trade Unions this week, and its vow to engage in protracted protest action, has sent jitters through the ANC, which is concerned that the strike, staged 18 months before national elections in 2004, and others that may follow, could send confusing signals to voters.

With the elections coming in less than 18 months, the ANC wants its pending electioneering to be free of Cosatu strikes, party insiders say.

ANC leaders this week raised the concern that unless the party and government start tackling the union federation head-on, Cosatu's actions could have a devastating effect, especially if the public were led to perceive that the ANC had failed the masses.

This comes at a time when ANC President Thabo Mbeki continues his offensive against Cosatu leaders. On Friday, in his online column on the ANC website, Mbeki again threw down the gauntlet, questioning the political credentials of the strike leaders and asking "whose interests do they serve?" Mbeki warned the strike organisers that the masses would not be swayed against the ANC.

'Factional ally'

He accused Cosatu of sharing its headquarters with a former ANC councillor, "a factional ally" and now leader of the Anti-Privatisation Forum, Trevor Ngwane, and warned that, like Ngwane, Cosatu leaders would not succeed in their mission against the ANC.

Ngwane lost an attempt to win a seat in the local government election in Soweto in 2000 against an ANC candidate.

Taking the fight further, Mbeki said the protest action and constant vilification of the ANC by Cosatu leaders was an attempt to unseat the government. He said there was an aim to "objectively seek to defeat the ANC and the revolutionary masses of our country".

Former SACP leader and a close ally of Ngwane, Dr Dale McKinley, exacerbated the tensions by suggesting on Friday that "it is only a matter of time before the workers and poor take the future into their own hands". He said: "The strike confirms that workers are increasingly recognising the need for the political and organisational independence of the South African working class.

"No wonder the ANC has to resort to crude labelling, insinuation and demagoguery in their attempts to de-legitimise and marginalise those who stand in their way.

'Capitalist path'

"The capitalist path being slavishly followed by the ANC and government is already failing the majority, and it will continue to do so."

But Mbeki reminded both Cosatu and ANC adversaries that the ANC had dealt with similar challenges in the past and emerged victorious.

"They draw no lessons from even the simple fact that a leader of one of their factional allies against the ANC and the government, with whom they share not only hostility to our movement but also their headquarters' building, could not even win a municipal ward election in Soweto.

"This disastrous showing should have told them that they could never win the masses of the people to their side by engaging in a desperate gamble to detach the masses and turn them against their organisation, the ANC."

Numsa 'shocked and horrified'

Mbeki's pronouncement comes at a time when officials of Cosatu and its affiliates say the ANC is trying to engineer the ousting of the union leaders in the run-up to the federation's national congress next year.

Spokesperson for National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, Dumisani Ntuli, said the union was shocked and horrified by statements, including those by the ANC Youth League, calling for the removal of Cosatu's leadership.

An ANC leader told City Press that "unless the ANC deals with Cosatu and certain sections of the SA Communist Party now, it would not be farfetched to see the two organisations embarking on similar actions six months before the next general elections in 2004. If that happens, one wonders what impact it will have on the ANC".

But the ANC's NEC firebrand in KwaZulu-Natal, Dumisani Makhaye, was adamant on Friday that Cosatu would soon become an empty shell as workers see through the intentions of its leaders.

"We are not worried about them anymore. I challenge them to hold a strike anytime - they will not sustain it."

- City Press