Politics.za

Moeletsi Mbeki is the deputy chairperson of the South African Institute of International Affairs as well as a businessman and political analyst. He is also Thabo Mbeki’s younger brother. On certain issues he disagrees with his brother, for instance Moeletsi has described the current form of BEE, where a few politically connected businessmen are involved in the majority of large deals, as worse than colonialism.

Now when it comes to Jacob Zuma and his supporters amongst COSATU and the SACP I have a feeling their thoughts are more in sync. In fact I think Moeletsi might even be echoing the true feelings of Thabo, who has to self censor what he really feels due to his position as head of the ANC, which all but forbids public disagreement between senior members. In a recent interview Moeletsi tore into COSATU and the SACP accusing them of forgetting about their mandate to protect workers by focusing on getting Zuma into power.

Mbeki says Cosatu and the South African Communist Party (SACP) are pre-occupying themselves with the job of one individual instead of addressing the issue of the welfare of the masses. He says the Jacob Zuma corruption trial and whether he becomes the ANC president or not is an ANC matter and not Cosatu’s.

In another interview he states that Zuma, despite having no economic and political policies, is trying to pressure the ANC to elect him president:

If he had better policies he would have produced them long ago, but he hasn’t. He just wants the power.

He also accusses COSATU/SACP of using Zuma as a (seemingly willing) puppet in order to take control of the ANC.

What Cosatu is trying to do is to manipulate the leadership process of the ANC so that it ceases to be a transparent process and so that the leadership is open to appointment by secret groups operating outside the rules of the party
...
The best-case scenario is that they think they will manipulate him and dictate economic policy to him. The more cynical view is that these guys — [Cosatu general secretary] Zwelinzima [Vavi] and [South African Communist Party General Secretary] Blade [Nzimande] — want to put JZ in power because they expect to become ministers in his cabinet.

Update: Richard Calland also writes about COSATU abandoning their mandate to workers.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has urged Jacob Zuma to give up his pursuit of the presidency, stating:

I for one would not be able to hold my head high if a person with such supporters were to become my president…

This isn’t the first time Tutu has commented on the internal affairs of the ANC. In November 2004 Tutu and the ANC got into a war of words after he called them “unthinking, uncritical, kowtowing” yes men. At the time COSATU/SACP came out in support of Tutu’s statements.

Now that Tutu is criticising their man their response is a bit more muted. The SACP has stated that Tutu has “a right to air his views”. Even the ANCYL were suprisingly restrained with KZN leader Nhlakanipho Ntimbela saying that he was suprised but Tutu can “raise his opnions”. COSATU even used the opportunity to give themselves an out by claiming to never have actually endorsed Zuma in the first place.

This is all a bit strange I was expecting a full on attack mode response from COSATU/SACP/ANYL. Perhaps Zuma isn’t worth the effort to argue anymore?

The latest SACP central committee meeting seems to have indicated that there is a move to get rid of any SACP leaders who do not wish to throw their support in with the Zuma camp. Current SACP chairman Chales Nqakula, Ronnie Kasrils and Jeremy Cronin seem to be the ones targeted as they have all publicly stated some doubt, Cronin especially, about why the SACP must back Zuma. Expect the months leading up to the SACP national congress to be full of stories like this.

Meanwhile SACP secretary general Zwenlinzima Vavi has beefed up his bodyguard count because he believes there is a plot to assassinate him. The supposed plot against him is hilarious though:

The plot against him is three-fold. First to spread rumours that he has an affair with a married woman; secondly, to plant a woman who would later claim that she had been raped like they tried to do with (ANC deputy president Jacob) Zuma; and ultimately to assassinate him and play it out as if it was a love-triangle killing.

You really can’t make this up.

Well, not really. But if you consider that COSATU, the country’s largest trade union, don’t have enough to do that they can picket the KwaZulu-Natal offices of the NPA to try and force a spokesman to resign (Not the director, the spokesman!!) then I guess then there isn’t much else for them to achieve for the workers of SA. Right?

The Mail & Guardian has now released a list of Zuma’s key backers and it would seem that all of them are KwaZulu-Natal businessmen and politicians. Their main motive for supporting him seems to be to purely to have a Zulu as head of the country, something that is reinforced by Zulu King Goodwil Zwelethini and IFP leader Mongesuthu Buthelezi implicitly supporting Zuma as well.

One thing that has always puzzled me about Zuma’s popular campaign is the support that he has received from COSATU and the SACP despite Zuma never coming across as an ardent socialist sympathiser in his time in government. With this list coming out it seems their entire motivation is purely to get someone, anyone, who could replace a successor from the more business friendly camp in the ANC, which again is wierd considering the business connections Zuma has in that published list.

It’s not just NUMSA who are fighting with COSATU, it seems there might be some dissent within it’s ranks as well. Rumours are flying that COSATU President Willie Madisha is ‘at war’ with COSATU Secretary General Zwelinzima Vavi.

It seems that Vavi has been romancing a lady recently and has been putting a few luxury car hires and overseas trips on the COSATU expense account. If it’s true I guess it shows that when it comes to the ladies, nothing impresses more than flashing a little capitalist bling her way , something that Madisha does not seem to approve of.

No wonder Vavi seems to be an ardent Zuma supporter. A playa never leaves another playa in need!

I might have spoken a bit too soon when I said in a previous entry that Trevor Manuel has been keeping his head low in the intra-tripartite alliance fighting that has erupted over the past few months. In an article initially released on the ANC Today newsletter (and then taken off their website) and published in the Sunday Times, Manuel commits the ANC to carrying out the aims of GEAR, goverments policy for economic growth using business, and balancing it with the RDP and implies that the other members of the tripartite alliance agree with it.

COSATU disagrees and claim that GEAR was basically forced upon them and they would be much happier if the more ‘revolutionary programme’ of the RDP was the sole manner for government to address the country’s ills. Manuel seems to hope that GEAR, along with the Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative headed by Deputy Preisdet Mlambo Ngcuka, will grow the economy pass the 6% and actually help to fund the aims of the RDP.

The National Union of Metalworks (with a website with advertising?), a COSATU affiliated union, has come out strongly in a statement against COSATU leadership for “ignoring issues confronting the country’s working class” and instead attempting to “wage war” against government. It would seem some of the unions see COSATU leadership embroiling themselves in political leadership battles while neglecting their responsibility to their own members.

Now while everyone enjoys a fight between two groups of socialists (usually over who is more ‘revolutionary’ than the other) this also might indicate that some unions might not be so pro-Zuma as we have assumed in the past.

Despite being South Africa’s largest trade union (technically not correct as it is a confederation of unions but you get my point) and being in the media an awful lot, COSATU still has less than 2 million members nationwide. It’s been estimated that they have between 1.4 and 1.7 million although COSATU has never given concrete membership numbers. To put that into perspective, if COSATU had to break from the ANC and get every single one of it’s members to vote for it (or whatever form it took as a politicial party) they would get about 35 seats compared to the DA who have 47.

However the biggest concern for COSATU leadership is the fact that their membership is growing older. The largest age group in COSATU is men aged between 35-46 which kind of indicates that since the ANC took over in 1994 (when this age group would’ve been 23-34 in their prime working years) COSATU’s membership has not exactly exploded. Should this trend continue COSATU are going to be a shadow of themselves in a 15-20 years.

The ANC is reportedly about to embark on a ‘charm offensive’ program in order to regain goodwill from members and officials who are not happy with the recent infighting between the members of the tripartite alliance. Here is how the program is described:

The national executive committee (NEC) has charged ANC provincial leaders with convening “compulsory political schools” that will be held monthly for branch executives and quarterly for members of the provincial legislatures, provincial ministers and members of the ANC provincial executive committees. National ANC leaders will be deployed to the provinces to lead the debates.

“We want to re-educate members about the principles, tradition and ethos of the ANC to stop them from following individuals,” said Supra Mahumapelo, the North West ANC secretary. “When leaders go off the track, we must speak to the principle, not the individual.”

Compulsory political schools? Re-educate members? That sounds less like a charm offensive and more like the current ANC leadership doing some squashing of dissent in the ranks and weeding out of undesirables from position of power. When you consider this response the SACP received from the ANC after the SACP published their State Power from ANC high up and Mbeki ally Joel Netshitenzhe:

The [SACP] document posits an outdated proposition that South Africa could have had or should have a ‘socialist orientated’ or ‘non-capitalist’ path to socialism … this error is a consequence of a subjectivism that informs most of the treatise: great revolutionary things could have happened had it not been for the cadres who betrayed the revolution!

I wouldn’t be suprised if the ANC orients themselves even further away from the socialist bent of their (former?)tripartite allies.