Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - November 30, 2004
S'Thembiso Msomi and Brendan Boyle

PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki is to suffer another round of scathing public criticism this week, this time from Cosatu.

The labour federation believes that there are ANC leaders who want to force it out of its political alliance with the ANC.

Cosatu's criticism, to be published in a document this week, follows a harsh public attack on Mbeki by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who decried a "culture of sycophancy" in the ANC.

Tutu said this week a tendency of "unthinking, uncritical kowtowing and party-line toeing" was dangerous for South Africa's democracy.

Cosatu has backed Tutu's views and described as "dangerous" the tendency by leaders of the ruling party to portray those who criticise them as being in cahoots with the opposition.

Tutu, delivering the annual Nelson Mandela Lecture, told his audience about his disappointment at the lack of challenging debate over Mbeki's views on HIV/Aids and at the government's silence on the abuse of human rights in Zimbabwe.

In an angry response on Friday, Mbeki accused Tutu of mouthing "empty rhetoric" and derided him as being ignorant about how the ANC functioned.

Yesterday, Tutu refused to be drawn on Mbeki's angry response.

However, Cosatu, which is engaged in its own public war with Mbeki and the ANC over the government's position on Zimbabwe and the recent sale of Telkom shares to an ANC-aligned consortium, threw its weight behind Tutu, saying he had made "a very important intervention" that the federation would follow up.

Cosatu is about to release its analysis of South Africa in 2004.

It will reflect some of the discussions of the central executive committee meeting which spent many hours discussing the worsening relations between the ANC and itself.

In its report, to be made public on Wednesday, Cosatu alleges that the renewed public spat between itself and the ANC is being orchestrated by a section of leaders in the ruling party who want to force the trade union movement to storm out of the alliance.

The document will highlight the Cosatu central executive committee's concerns about the ANC government's "sidelining" of its alliance partners in major policy decisions.

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi yesterday told the Sunday Times that there were leaders in the ANC "who believe that we are a burden and that they would be freer to do as they wish if we were to walk out".

Vavi claimed that tensions in the alliance had risen to levels last seen in 2002 when senior ANC leaders, including Mbeki, warned that Cosatu and the SA Communist Party were in the hands of "ultra-leftists" and "counter-revolutionaries".

In recent weeks the ANC has lambasted Cosatu for organising a fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe.

The party was echoed by ANC Youth League president Fikile Mbalula, who said Cosatu was in cahoots with "imperialist forces" led by Britain and the US who wanted to effect "regime change" in Zimbabwe.

The ANC this week allowed US Ambassador Jendayi Frazer to write on its website denying Mbalula's claims.

This week, Home Affairs Deputy Minister Malusi Gigaba, who sits on the ANC's national working committee, berated Cosatu for its position on Zimbabwe and said the federation was seeking to turn South Africa into a "shop steward for colonialism".

ANC officials could not be reached for comment yesterday as they were locked in the party's crucial national executive committee meeting, where it is understood that Mbeki again attacked the government's critics.

Cosatu also praised Tutu's support for a basic income grant as a primary means of relieving poverty, a proposal that the government has repeatedly dismissed as unaffordable.

Vavi, however, refused to respond to Gigaba's accusations yesterday, saying this would play into the hands of those "who want to throw us out" of the political alliance.

"There is no more point ... in involving myself in gymnastics with the youth [which] is saying things some of the elders are not willing to say themselves. I would be playing into [the hands] of those not seeking solutions to the current ... public spat, those whose strategy is to lead us into a cul-de-sac," said Vavi.

"If the youth in Cosatu wishes to respond to Gigaba, they are free to do so."

Vavi refused to name the ANC leaders he believed to be behind the move.

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