Cosatu heavyweight Zwelinzima Vavi has warned of a split in the
tri-partite alliance if the ANC took disciplinary action against him.
“This has the potential of breaking the very basis of the alliance
(and) destroy the whole notion of dual membership,” he told the SABC.
The Congress of SA Trade Unions earlier said sources in the African
National Congress revealed plans by the party to lay charges against the
federation’s general secretary.
At a media lunch earlier in the day, ANC leaders would not be drawn
on the matter.
“Tell Vavi to give you a copy of those charges,” secretary-general
Gwede Mantashe said.
The Star newspaper reported that ANC National Working Committee
(NWC) members discussed the possibility of taking disciplinary charges against
Vavi.
According to the report, a potential charge is related to Vavi’s
comments last Thursday when he accused the government of not taking action
against corrupt ministers.
Cosatu spokesman Patrick Craven said the federation would seek an
urgent meeting with the ruling party in a bid to clarify the matter.
“We’ve got it from sources within the ANC. We haven’t been told
officially,” he said.
“As we understand it, it was a decision that charges would be
brought.”
Craven added: “If the decision is allowed to stand, it ... would
spell the end of the alliance, whose strength has always been that it is a
partnership of independent organisations with shared values.”
‘Small grouping’ behind it
Vavi told the SABC “a small grouping which happened to be in the
majority at the time” lay behind the ANC decision against him.
“(They are) intolerant and hell-bent on using the structures of the
organisation for personal gain, crass materialism and all of that, and hell-bent
on breaking the alliance itself.”
Mantashe earlier said Vavi would tell anyone that would ask he had
received no charges from the ANC.
“The reality is... Vavi will not say he has been charged and he
will not say he has been told by the ANC that he has been charged.”
He said the ANC did not want to talk about “speculation” or things
“under discussion”.
Craven said Vavi was concerned “but not intimidated”.
As far as Cosatu was concerned, he was speaking for the almost two
million members of the union federation and so could not be charged
individually.
Craven said ANC disciplinary steps against Vavi would imply any
member of Cosatu or the SA Communist Party, who joined the ANC, would have to
disown his original organisation and accept only the discipline of the
ANC.
This would mean such individuals would not be able to comment on
behalf of the members who elected them to the SACP or Cosatu.
“No leader of Cosatu can or will ever be disciplined by another
organisation for doing the federation’s work on behalf of its two million
members,” said Craven.
“Our suspicion is that this decision was pushed through by
representatives of a tendency within the ANC leadership who are hell-bent on
their agenda of self-enrichment and crass materialism.”
The Democratic Nursing Organisation of SA (Denosa) expressed shock
at “the so-called charges” against Vavi.
“We continue to witness the degeneration of the progressive body
politic, which is increasingly being replaced by the modern-day gold rush,”
Denosa said a statement.
“This self servicing tendency is solely aimed at purging and in the
process clears the way to capture power and therefore control of resources for
self-enrichment in the next ANC elective conference.”
Denosa said the attack on Vavi amounted to an attack on
Cosatu.
“We challenge those who want to charge the general secretary to
charge us as well.”
