Cosatu commits to ensuring ANC wins local elections

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has pledged its continued support for the tripartite alliance and to campaign for and ensure a decisive victory for ANC in the forthcoming local elections.

A three-day meeting of Cosatu’s’s central executive committee (CEC) that ended on Wednesday reaffirmed the trade union federation’s conviction that the tripartite alliance remained “the only vehicle available to advance a second more radical phase of the National Democratic Revolution”.

“We shall ceaselessly defend the unity of the alliance and ensure that its programmes are taken forward‚” the federation stated.

“The task is to build a fighting alliance beyond election period. The Alliance should continuously remain at the centre of planning and driving the revolution. The role of the Alliance Political Council and the Alliance Secretariat must be to pull the revolutionary forces together and ensure implementation of the Alliance Programmes‚ including ensuring that where necessary such programmes translate into implementable government programme.

“We are clear that merely calling and lobbying for the reconfiguration of the Alliance or that the Alliance be a strategic centre of power is not enough. This is a battle we will have to win on the ground through asserting our organisational presence‚ through visible campaigns in the workplace and in communities. It is a battle we will win through ensuring ideological clarity and by remaining consistent and principled in everything we do‚” Cosatu said in a statement on Thursday.

It added that the meeting had agreed that the municipal elections campaign must be an integral part of Cosatu’s 2016 programme of action.

“We shall campaign for the ANC as mandated by the 12th National Congress and ensure that it gets a decisive election victory. We shall participate in the drafting of the election manifesto in the coming local government elections. We also insist that communities be given a choice to elect their candidates without undue interference.

“The federation wants to make it clear that‚ we will also not support candidates‚ who have not been endorsed by communities‚ including those implicated in corruption and criminal activities. We must however be vigilant against agent provocateurs‚ who come from the opposition parties to infiltrate community meetings and create chaos exploiting and open and democratic processes of the ANC on the selection of candidates‚” the trade union federation added.