In preparation for the Cosatu central committee meeting later this month, the federation's general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, has written a political report detailing how the coalition that brought President Jacob Zuma to power has collapsed.
In the report, Vavi reveals what ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe accused the federation of during a meeting between the two parties in September last year.
According to Vavi, Mantashe said of the federation:
- Cosatu was far removed from ANC branches and had no clue what was happening there;
- There was silence of the role of trade unions in society;
- The majority of dysfunctional schools were run by teacher union Sadtu members and that Sadtu was less committed than the Suid Afrikaanse Onderwysers Unie (SAOU);
- The ANC won't be frog-marched and won't be blackmailed - Cosatu may walk if that is what it wants to do;
- It was dishonest to attack family business links as some union leaders also have family business links and that unions have investment companies engaged in business. Cosatu was not principled;
- Cosatu and other alliance deployees on the SABC board kicked out an ANC cadre (former GCEO Solly Mokoetle) in favour of a DA man (acting GCEO Rob Nicholson)".
The ANC has previously accused Cosatu of pushing an agenda for "regime change", after the federation convened a civil society conference last year; and
- Cosatu is driving a programme to collapse the alliance and that its attacks on "the predatory elite" has an effect of discrediting the ANC.
WHAT VAVI SAYS ABOUT THE ANC AND THE YOUTH LEAGUE:
- Agreed ANC and alliance positions continue to be ignored by government;
- Too many of the ANC leaders are either in business or government;
- There is a growing tendency to use "rooi gevaar" and the usual anti-Cosatu rhetoric in the ANC;
- Cosatu's relationship with the youth league "has become complicated";
- Some within the youth league and "tenderpreneurs" linked to the ANC work to undermine the ANC leadership and oppose closer alliance relations;
- There are attempts to isolate Mantashe;
- Conservatives in the Presidency and the National Treasury drive "old policies" and block new ones;
- There is an eagerness to "play the person" and not the ball by singling out the Cosatu general secretary in an attempt to isolate him from Cosatu decisions;
- ANC leaders believed a conspiracy theory that last year's public sector strike was part of a "regime change" agenda by the federation; and
- The major difference between the current ANC and its predecessors is "that of political zigzagging, and lurching between different political postures".