Durban - Numsa was a “stinking corpse” that needed to be kicked out of Cosatu’s “house”, razor-tongued SACP secretary-general Blade Nzimande said in Durban on Sunday.
“If you keep a corpse in the house without burying it, it will rot and smell,” he told a Cosatu gathering at the city hall on Sunday.
At the same time that meeting was under way Numsa supporters were at a Durban hotel debating how to get Cosatu to reverse its decision to expel it from the federation. The Numsa meeting said it was planning a “Cosatu Bring Back Numsa” campaign that would bring Durban to a halt.
At the city hall, tripartite alliance top brass, including Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini, SACP provincial chairman and eThekwini mayor James Nxumalo, economic development MEC Mike Mabuyakhulu and Agriculture Deputy Minister Bheki Cele commended Cosatu’s decision to sack Numsa. But Numsa, whose meeting was attended by its provincial leaders, said it would not leave the federation without a court battle.
Cosatu has given Numsa 30 days to appeal against its expulsion. Numsa regional secretary Mbuso Ngubane said the metal workers’ union would not appeal but turn to court to fight for reinstatement.
Nzimande said the internal strife started after President Jacob Zuma rejected a plea by some Cosatu “comrades” to make Cosatu secretary-general Zwelinzima Vavi a deputy president.
“When they returned from this midnight meeting in Nkandla they started to blame the SACP. I don’t know whether Vavi had been consulted (about the request for him to be deputy president), but I don’t want to implicate him,” he said.
Numsa’s departure should not be celebrated, he said, but Cosatu should campaign to bring Numsa members back to the federation.
Cele said Numsa leaders should leave Cosatu as they had shown they were tired of being part of the alliance.
“In 1985 Cosatu was formed in Durban, now others (on Numsa’s side), are meeting in the same Durban today to plan the destruction of the same Cosatu.”
A few kilometres from the city hall, Numsa members debated heatedly about whether to leave or fight to stay with some saying that leaving Cosatu meant defeat.
“Let us exhaust all options before we resolve to form a new federation,” said one member. But another one said: “Let’s leave S’dumo and Gwede Mantashe (ANC secretary-general) with their Cosatu and form a new federation.”
Ngubane said that since Numsa had played a huge role in forming Cosatu and supported it financially it would not be an easy option to just walk away. Numsa and its aligned unions would hold joint national executive committee meetings on November 22 to take a final decision.
The Mercury