'Numsa is gatvol' - Jim

As tensions between Cosatu and its largest affiliate, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA, continue to mount, it appears that the labour federation lacks the resolve to rein in the union's leaders.

Cosatu president Sdumo Dlamini yesterday lambasted Numsa for its plans to recruit members from the mining sector, in which another Cosatu affiliate - the National Union of Mineworkers - has a significant presence.

He rejected calls for Numsa's expulsion from Cosatu, despite the union blatantly defying the federation' s "one union, one industry" principle.

Dlamini said the move by Numsa warranted sanction but the federation would not be pushed into expelling it - yet.

"We know people are deliberately doing wrong things for us to expel them. We're not going to expel them," he said.

Dlamini said that if Numsa were to leave the federation it would be of its own accord because Cosatu still sought unity.

Speculation is rife that Numsa might decide to leave Cosatu and the ANC-led tripartite alliance and form a workers' party.

But the draft resolutions to be considered at its special national congress now under way in Boksburg, on the East Rand, indicate otherwise.

The drafts point to the mooted formation of a left-leaning "mass democratic" umbrella body in the mould of the defunct United Democratic Front.

Such a body would lead to the formation of a "movement for socialism" that would contest elections as a political party.

Cosatu would have to be part of this coalition of like-minded leftist organisations.

Numsa's regions have proposed that Cosatu, once captured, break away from the ANC and the SA Communist Party to establish an organisation that wouldcoordinate the pursuit of the interests of "communities and workers".

Numsa's general secretary, Irvin Jim, launched a vicious attack on Cosatu leaders and the federation's alliance partners - the ANC and SACP.

"We're now gatvol and we no longer care," he said. "We've been subjected to a sustained campaign of vilification. We are attacked and labelled by leaders of the ANC, the SACP and Cosatu affiliates."

Numsa leaders have made no secret of their unhappiness with the ANC's dominance of the tripartite alliance.

"The alliance is not the strategic political centre of the entire ANC-led movement [but] the ANC has flatly refused to embrace this view," the union said in a discussion document for the Boksburg congress. "The ANC is of the view that it is the strategic centre of power and of the alliance.

"We therefore have a situation [in which] it is the programmes of the ANC in government, and not a properly agreed alliance programme, that the government implements. The ANC continues to demand that it be recognised as the only political centre."

Jim said positions adopted at the ANC's Mangaung national conference, at which "a bourgeois leadership was elected", represented a defeat for "the workers".