Vavi v ANC

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".