Joahnnesburg - The Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Friday lashed back at the ANC Women's League (ANCWL) over the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) grants bungle, and labelled the league as having "no sense of reality due to its obsession with factionalism". The ANCWL did not seem to care about the almost 17 million grant and pensions beneficiaries who could be left with no income come April, said Cosatu.
"This is their most ridiculous statement so far, and for an organisation that claims to represent people who will be mostly affected by the Department of Social Development and Sassa’s bungling, they have proved to be abnormally unreflective," the trade union federation said on Friday.
"We admire their capacity to offer full-throated defence for bureaucratic arrogance and bungling, indifference, and flat-out incompetence ... they have reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the most fanatical mystifying nonsense."
On Thursday, ANCWL secretary general Moekgo Matuba accused Cosatu of "grandstanding and having consciously abandoned their roles of leading a federation" after the trade union federation called on Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini to resign or be fired over the grant and pensions crisis.
Dlamini is also president of the ANCWL.
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Matuba said Cosatu executive committee's statement that the looming grant payment bungle had a "smell of corruption" was mainly driven by some in Cosatu leadership who have an "uncontrollable ambition to be deployed into ANC-led government positions and cabinet positions in Parliament".
Sassa, which is under the Social Development Department, has come under scrutiny because the problematic contract it has with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) ends this month.
No new arrangements have been finalised to pay social grants in April to 17 million recipients.
As a result there are growing concerns about a possible crisis.
Cosatu said the grants and pensions debacle has caused alarm among South Africans, and went further to accuse Dlamini of previous wrongdoings.
"We insist on this because there have been times before this saga, where government’s wisdom to keep Minister Dlamini as the minister has not been obvious to the federation," said Cosatu.
"We have not forgotten that Minister Bathabile Dlamini was previously accused by senior managers at Sassa of meddling in an attempt to control R300 million worth of food parcel tenders.
"This is the same minister in response to a DA [Democratic Alliance] parliamentary question, who said that R753 a month was adequate for social grant beneficiaries. She also spent a night at the Oyster Box in Durban paying R11 000-a-night using taxpayer’s money ... we are still waiting for the Women’s League ill-tempered response on these issues."