After backing South Africa’s leader during his presidential campaign, unions now say their support has not been reciprocated
SOUTH AFRICA’S tripartite alliance, a unique political pact between the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the trade unions and the South African Communist Party (SACP) that stretches back to the anti-apartheid era, appears to be in trouble.
Comments made by Congress of South African Trade Union (Cosatu) leaders this month in the wake of the state of the nation address by President Jacob Zuma, and the budget speech by his finance minister, would suggest the tensions that exist will not be resolved easily.
After consistently supporting Zuma during his legal woes in the run-up to his election as the ANC’s leader in 2007, and during last year’s presidential campaign, the trade unions say their support has not been reciprocated now that he is South Africa’s leader.
Some unions that come under the Cosatu umbrella are saying they feel duped, as the Zuma-led ANC’s macroeconomic policies have remained fiscally conservative.
In many ways these policies are a continuation of Zuma’s predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, the man Cosatu helped Zuma to replace as head of the ANC, and ultimately as South Africa’s president.
Many observers see this as a betrayal as they believe Zuma would have found it more difficult to overcome the setbacks of being fired as the country’s deputy president by Mbeki in 2005, after being charged with graft, without the support of the unions and the SACP.
The severity of the cracks in this three-way union emerged last week after finance minister Pravin Gordhan revealed his 2010 budget in Cape Town, which ignored union demands to scrap the targeting of inflation targeting and to increase public spending to help create jobs.
Indeed, many of the budget proposals were not even discussed with Cosatu or the SACP, according to both groups, who had hoped a labour-intensive approach to transforming the economy would be adopted.
As far as Cosatu is concerned, the ANC government’s budget is pandering to big business and the ideals of a free market economy rather than focusing on creating proper jobs for the 25 per cent of the adult population that is unemployed.
Although the ANC would deny such accusations, the reality of who came off better was reflected in the immediate strengthening of South Africa’s currency, the rand, after the budget was delivered.
“The most positive dimension of the budget is the fact that government has retained the 3-6 per cent inflation target,” Ulrich Leuchtmann, chief currency strategist at the German Commerzbank AG, told the Bloomberg news agency.
He added: “Government is sticking to market-friendly policies and is not giving in to union demands, which is extremely positive for the rand.”
Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi, who represents the two million-strong labour federation, didn’t mince his words last Thursday about the ANC government’s decision to maintain many of its economic policies.
“The gloves are off,” Vavi told ETV before adding, “there’s no more honeymoon.”
Is this payback time, perhaps? Vavi’s colleague, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) general secretary Frans Baleni, went into more detail, telling reporters the perception is the ANC only takes the unions seriously around election time.
Once another term in office has been secured, the ruling party proceeds to ignore their views.
“If the budget signals no real change from the past, it deepens the perception that we are [being] taken for a ride . . . We should have focused on policy rather than individuals. If we were more focused on policy we would have had better results,” he said.
If disagreements over budgetary policy among the tripartite alliance members were not enough to contend with, the struggle over who will take over the ANC leadership in 2012 is also increasing tensions.
Putting one’s own people at the ANC’s top table is the key to protecting alliance members’ interests, and the ANC Youth League wants to replace ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe with their man, deputy police minister Fikile Mbalula.
This move has upset Cosatu and the SACP because both see it as motivated by anti-communist sentiments, something that has not been denied by the ANCYL, which has publicly warned that the communist party is trying to infiltrate the ANC.
To further add to the simmering mix, ANCYL leader Julius Malema has been involved in a very public spat with senior SACP leader Jeremy Cronin over the former’s continuous calls to have the country’s mines nationalised.
So, does all this infighting amount to the end of the tripartite alliance affair? At this stage it is hard to say, but the reality is the unions and SACP would have more to lose by pulling out, if shaping the country’s economic future is their goal.
