South Africa: ANC’s Allies Gather to Counter the Youth League

Southern Africa Report (Johannesburg)

23 June 2011

The meeting of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) central committee next week (29 June 2011) will offer the first public response within the African National Congress-led alliance to the all-out attack on President Jacob Zuma by the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League.

Cosatu will close ranks behind Zuma – sending a powerful signal in the leadership struggle of its intentions ahead of the ANC’s elective conference in 2012.

The youth league is leading the charge against Zuma’s second term ambitions in the ANC and has given notice that it also wants party secretary general Gwede Mantashe replaced with former league president and Minister of Sport and Recreation Fikile Mbalula.

Both Cosatu and the league were central to Zuma’s ascendancy in the ANC and the state following former President Thabo Mbeki’s defeat in 2007. But both have since locked horns with Zuma’s administration. They have clashed with Zuma on key policy questions, appointments of senior officials in government and combatting corruption in the state. While the youth league has lost its patience with Zuma – with league leader Julius Malema committed to using his organisation’s infrastructure to oust Zuma at the conference – Cosatu is likely to continue to support his on-going leadership of the ANC and the state beyond 2012, but only conditionally.

Zuma is due to speak on the first day of the central committee meeting. While he is likely to be warmly received, the 500 delegates will not shy away from engaging him on issues, including the government’s New Growth Path and the role and function of the tripartite alliance between the ruling party, Cosatu, and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Cosatu has argued strongly for a reconfigured alliance, pro-poor economic policies and the need for speedy action against corruption in the state. Cosatu and the ANC also differ sharply about whether the ANC or the alliance constitutes the centre of power in South Africa. A common understanding of where the strategic centre lies has a direct bearing on how senior appointments are made in the state, and how economic and political resolutions adopted at the ANC’s Polokwane conference gets implemented as government policy.

The Cosatu secretariat report due to be tabled by Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi next week indicates the central committee will be relentless in its examination of what has been achieved for Cosatu members and the working class as a whole under Zuma’s stewardship of the ANC and the country. It will pull no punches in what it interprets as the reassertion of conservative, anti-Cosatu tendencies in the ANC.

What is less clear is the stance and tone Vavi himself will adopt in dealing with fractures within the left in the aftermath of the youth league’s offensive against Zuma, Mantashe and the Polokwane alliance. Vavi has previously not spared Mantashe when criticising the ANC leadership, particularly for its tardiness in dealing with corruption. How Vavi treats Mantashe – also SACP national chairman and a former general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) – will assume added significance in light of the league’s declared intention to remove him. Rather than take any action or use language that might deepen division among themselves, alliance leaders could choose to close ranks.

Already the youth league went for the gap last week to forge alliances with individuals inside Cosatu who view the current leadership in the left as having “sold out” to Zuma. Keen to forge a broad anti-Zuma platform, Malema launched an attack on the ANC’s left allies during the leagues conference, accusing them of “abandoning” the working class. He accused the SACP and Cosatu of becoming mere lobby groups concerned with securing positions in government. The attack could prove to be Malema’s key tactical error in his battle with Zuma. Both organisations appear determined to engage each other on their differences ahead of the central committee meeting.

A series of meetings between senior leftwing figures who have fallen out over the possibilities and limitations for the left under Zuma has been scheduled to avert a split. Several secretaries and other mid-level leaders in Cosatu affiliates and the SACP have expressed concern that the right-wing in the ANC could drive a wedge between the left and Zuma. A high-level bilateral meeting between the SACP and Cosatu has been scheduled for 23 June. Unity on the left, and a call by some in Cosatu for SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande to vacate his Cabinet post as minister for higher education and training to return to his fulltime post in the SACP, will top the agenda of the bilateral meeting.

Cosatu and the SACP have also differed in their critiques of economic policy such as the New Growth Plan, the nationalisation of mines, and government’s handling of corruption linked to ANC leaders in and out of government. Cosatu has led the campaign for tougher anti-graft measures and has singled out the immigrant Gupta family – Zuma’s financial backers of choice – for criticism. The SACP has taken a different stance, refusing to condemn Zuma-linked largesse and pleading for a focus on the crony capitalist system, which it says is a feature of black economic empowerment generally.

What may also cloud matters next week and heading into the ANC succession next year is Vavi’s own political future in and beyond Cosatu. By declaring his readiness at Cosatu’s last congress in 2009 to accept nomination in the leadership of the ANC and the SACP, Vavi has muddied the waters: his outspoken condemnation of Zuma-linked corruption has been reduced by critics to a consequence of his personal ambitions for leadership in the ANC. Cosatu’s smaller central executive committee has already questioned Vavi’s “premature” pronouncement on his future.

Succession battles in Cosatu will be increasingly unavoidable as lobbying has already begun. Succession scenarios include Vavi staying on for another term until September 2015, although it is understood that he would prefer exiting the federation. Front runners to replace Vavi include NUM general secretary Frans Baleni, his counterpart in the National Health and Allied Workers Union Fikile Majola, and general secretary of the National Union of Metal Workers Irvin Jim.

An ugly succession battle in Cosatu, running parallel to the ANC’s 2012 succession race and potentially distracting Cosatu leaders, is possibly the worst outcome for all concerned. Next week’s central committee meeting represents the first, and probably the most important, opportunity to avoid it.

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