Durban -
There was a well co-ordinated and “well-funded” effort to divide Cosatu and its affiliates, Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini said yon Wednesday amid reports that a rival public service union was to be formed.
It emerged this week that some former SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) members were planning to launch a rival union whose membership would be open to workers in the public sector.
Speaking at Sadtu’s provincial conference in Durban, Dlamini warned Cosatu members to take seriously the plans for the new union, saying doing otherwise would be a mistake.
“If as members of Sadtu we fail to read what it (the new union) represents, we will laugh it off. This is part of a big agenda to weaken the progressive unions through pumping more money to individuals who are willing to sell their souls.”
He said there were also Cosatu members who were part of this move to try to destabilise the federation.
“This is a well-engineered plan; it is well supported inside our union by people who have decided that the NDR (national democratic revolution) time is over and it’s time for socialism now. These are people who say the ANC has run its race and now it’s time for something new.”
The comment was seen as a swipe at Numsa, the Cosatu affiliate which has been leading calls for more radical transformation of the economy. Numsa has also withdrawn its support for the ANC at the polls while it plans an alternative workers’ party.
Dlamini said while some critics of the ANC believed it was time for a new party, history had shown that all the new parties, especially those that split from the ANC, had failed. These included parties like the struggling Cope and AgangSA.
“The EFF came in with a boom and got 1 million votes, but what are they doing every day? I pity the South African voter who voted for them, thinking that economic freedom will come in his or her lifetime. What has come are children who just go to Parliament to play”.
Dlamini said Cosatu unions should not be poaching members from each other as this was deepening the divisions at the trade union federation which was still trying to mend fences.
Speaking of divisions at Cosatu, Dlamini said he had been pained to witness Cosatu members fighting each other at a gathering in Durban earlier this year. In April members of Sadtu and Numsa nearly traded blows as they clashed at Durban’s Coastlands hotel. Both unions had booked various venues at the hotel for their respective meetings. Sadtu is firmly behind a faction supporting Dlamini while Numsa is leading the faction supporting Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.
“We saw comrades fighting each other instead of fighting the real enemy. But it had to be done because some among us had resolved to push us over the cliff. I don’t want you to defend me, but I want you to defend Sadtu and to defend Cosatu… once you resort to defending individuals you collapse the organisation,” he told the conference.
Dlamini said that at one stage the situation had become so bad that they had feared that the provincial secretary of Sadtu, Mbuyiseni Mathonsi, was going to be murdered.
“We just told ourselves that whatever happens, Sadtu will continue to live,” he said, without disclosing who had been behind the alleged plot to kill Mathonsi.
He urged Cosatu members to give the ANC’s intervention efforts at uniting Cosatu a chance.
The delegates were on Wednesday expected to elect the new provincial leadership of Sadtu.