Johannesburg - Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi says President Jacob Zuma’s call for a tripartite alliance special meeting to thrash out differences besieging the coalition can work only if accompanied by concrete action.
Vavi and SACP second deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila welcomed Zuma’s call for an indaba of leaders of the alliance on Monday.
Vavi said that while he and all those genuinely in search of unity within the alliance would welcome a special meeting, it could prove futile unless there was political will to implement whatever agreements or resolutions were made.
“This proposal for a week-long introspection in that context will work if accompanied by concrete action to make it happen,” Vavi told The Star on Monday, when asked for his response to Zuma’s proposal.
Zuma made the proposal for an alliance summit on Sunday while addressing hundreds of people at the reburial of SACP stalwart JB Marks in Ventersdorp, North West.
The president was quoted as saying that he, as the leader of the main alliance partner, the ANC, would summon the SACP and Cosatu leaders to a meeting.
“Our enemies are ready to destroy us, and if we’re not untied, we will be easy prey,” Zuma was quoted as having said.
“We can’t as leaders stand and say ‘I don’t care what happens as long as I disagree with so-and-so’; it is the end of the story,” Zuma added.
The president’s call for a special meeting could be construed as an admission that the ANC’s task team, which had been appointed to mediate between Cosatu’s warring factions, was failing.
Cosatu has been at the epicentre of the ructions within the tripartite alliance, with the labour federation fractured by differences between a faction aligned to Zuma himself and another opposed to his administration’s “capitalist and neo-liberal policies”.
Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini is seen as a strong Zuma ally, while Vavi has openly criticised Zuma’s administration for its alleged ambivalence in implementing Cosatu’s resolutions, notably those taken at the federation’s 11th national congress in 2012.
On Monday, Vavi wagged his finger at the ANC, laying the blame for the divisions paralysing the alliance squarely on the governing party.
He said: “Cosatu’s 11th national congress, like others before, developed proposals on how to make the alliance work as the engine of transformation.
“In the past, (we wrote) three letters, requesting a meeting on these proposals. (These) were not even acknowledged by the ANC,” Vavi said.
He added: “But to me, the most urgent challenge remains the unity of workers.
“Cosatu is imploding, and that’s a more urgent challenge, even though I acknowledge that these challenges are interconnected.”
Mapaila said the SACP was pleased with Zuma’s proposal, although it was not something entirely new as “the alliance secretariat” had been working on convening a meeting.
“The meeting is important in that whatever resolutions and programmes you implement on the ground, no (alliance) partner can dispute it,” he added.
The SACP, notably its general secretary Blade Nzimande, has often been accused of fomenting divisions with Cosatu.
Mapaila scoffed at this suggestion on Monday, saying the SACP has always been committed in the unity of the tripartite alliance and Cosatu.
The Star