New Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi says the union federation will not be an ANC lapdog under her watch and vows to raise worker issues even if it meant clashing with President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Losi was elected this week as Cosatu's first female president. She was seen as a Ramaphosa ally after she campaigned for him to be ANC president last year and ran on his slate for the position of deputy secretary-general, which she lost to Jessie Duarte. She was, however, elected to the ANC national executive committee.
She said she would always carry out Cosatu's mandate without "saying 'but this is Cyril Ramaphosa'".
"Because I owe Cyril nothing; he owes me nothing. The only thing that I understand is that we are leaders of different components of the alliance. We must work together in advancing the national democratic revolution.
"If we don't agree on issues, Cosatu will give us a mandate on [how] we should deal with those matters and I will not shy away."
Losi spoke to the Sunday Times soon after the Cosatu conference resolved that it would ditch the ANC and support the SACP should the ANC fail to reconfigure the alliance to give workers an equal say.
She said it did not matter who was running the country because workers "have nothing to lose, except their chains".
Losi said if the ANC implemented policies that had nothing to do with "taking workers out of poverty, inequality and joblessness" it would mean the ANC was no different to any other party.
Should Cosatu ditch the ANC over the realignment of the alliance, that decision would be a move to look after the interests of the working class, she said.
Asked if the federation was not worried about a possible negative reaction to its resolution, she said the ANC should not get irritated when she raised the views of the working class because the governing party was a multi-class organisation.
"In the meetings that I have attended, I had always protected and defended Cosatu's decisions on a number of issues."
Losi said she was not elected because she was a woman, because workers were not looking for a female leader but one with leadership qualities to take Cosatu to new heights.
"Being a woman then puts a cherry on top and it also brings mixed feelings, emotions that the entire country, the entire continent of Africa, women are saying 'the ceiling now has been broken'," said Losi.
Her election, together with the new leadership, was a "new leaf" for Cosatu.
"It is a new leaf … it's a new era, an era of unity. An era if putting members first, going back to basics and where workers are united on common issues and are less interested in what divides them," said Losi...