The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has urged its members to not only focus on the president when they decide on who to back for the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC).“The workers should not only be looking at the position of the president but at the leadership collective that will act as the centre and also be guided by the resolutions of the ANC‚” said secretary-general Bheki Ntshalintshali. Cosatu “also resolved to reiterate its call for an extended alliance meeting to discuss and resolve all the issues facing the movement and alliance in general”‚ he added.Ntshalintshali said the current political and economic challenges are happening in the midst of a raging contest over who should lead the ruling party out of its quagmire.“In dealing with the issue‚ Cosatu has urged that all discussions should take place with the intent of uniting the ANC and the alliance‚ but also to open a new path that will see the ANC abandoning the politics of slates that breeds the fallacy of composition.“…Slate politics has seen the movement dismissing many people as rotten or unfit on the grounds of one component that it did not like for belonging to a wrong slate.”Ntshalintshali said the federation had‚ in its special central executive committee meeting held on Monday‚ acknowledged that the popularity of the ANC is waning.“This is happening at workplace-level among workers‚ among politically active students and in our communities. The meeting accepted that the different components of the movement are not as strong as they should be and that the current political crisis faced by the ANC is symbolic of the state of our organisation and our alliance.”..