COSATU May Split From Alliance
Following on from the SACP, who were making it clear they may be splitting from the tri partite alliance, COSATU have decided to do the same thing. In a discusstion paper released yesterday in preparation for their national conference in September COSATU lists the following options:
- Walking out of the alliance and calling on the third partner, the South African Communist Party (SACP), to contest political power or launch a working-class party. In this scenario, Cosatu would work with others to challenge the ANC in power.
- The alliance disintegrating in the absence of a clear direction, with the ANC pushing a business agenda and Cosatu and the SACP splitting “along ideological lines and loyalty to personalities in the ANC”.
- Continuing the tripartite alliance and Cosatu members being used as election campaigners for the ruling party.
- Signing an enforceable pact within the alliance partners on how the alliance should operate. As in north European examples, workers would be shown the ANC’s manifesto and if the ruling party did not deliver on election promises, they would support another party.
- Cosatu members work to influence the ANC from within the alliance and redirect it as a ruling party sympathetic to workers.
Options 1 and 2 are pretty much non-starters unless COSATU doesn’t mind being part of a two seat minority party in government. Option 4 a potential outcome with the ANC doing so to get COSATU to keep quiet, except that almost immediately after signing the ANC will once again ignore COSATU leading basically to option 3 anyway. Option 5 is what probably will be chosen despite the fact it’s been a losing strategy for COSATU since 1994.
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