Durban - President Jacob Zuma has warned of dire consequences if the country’s largest trade union federation, Cosatu, continues to unravel.
He told a rally in Durban to mark Workers’ Day on Friday that tension in Cosatu could even lead to deaths and once again warned that a third force was at play.
“The war that we are confronted with is not with the people we see. But with the people controlling them from behind. We worked together with these people, we fell and rose with them and today they have turned against us. Now even the vision is no longer the same; it means we can even kill each other,” Zuma said in isiZulu.
Accusations of a third force being involved in the split of Cosatu continue to gain momentum. However, allegations of interference are not only coming from the side of the federation. Numsa and it allies have accused the state’s security agencies of coming down hard on unionists and community leaders who are in support of a new workers’ movement.
Earlier this week civil society organisations, including Right to Know (R2K) and the United Front, complained of being monitored by police and state security agency spies. Those in support of Cosatu have accused Numsa and its allies of being pawns of big international organisations which are advocating for the government’s demise.
Zuma’s utterances also come just weeks after the fatal shooting of an influential Gauteng secretary of the SA Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu). Chris Nkosi was gunned down in Germiston and on the same night the home of the president of the same union had been petrol bombed. The union believes Nkosi’s murder was politically motivated. His killers have not yet been arrested.
Zuma was speaking at Cosatu’s Workers’ Day rally at the Curries Fountain Stadium where the federation was launched 30 years ago.
The gathering was also addressed by Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini and SACP boss Blade Nzimande. Dlamini paid tribute to Nkosi and other leaders who have died recently.
He also used the event to lobby Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant and other stakeholders in government to fast track wage negotiations in the public sector and local government. He criticised the inflation-based salary increment offers currently on the table.
Thousands of workers applauded when he thanked the government for amending the labour laws so that now workers had to be employed permanently after working on contract for three months. While acknowledging that there has been some backlash since the implementation, he said this was motivation for even stricter reforms.
“The three months is not enough. Employers are already bypassing this law by retrenching or dismissing workers on the third month before they take responsibility of employing them permanently. So our call for a total ban remains very relevant,” he said.
Labour Reporter