Cosatu threatens to break link with its old ally, ANC

COSATU yesterday threatened to sever its long-standing alliance with the ANC and widen the State workers’ strike next week to key industries.

Thousands of striking State workers held marches in major cities nationwide calling on the government to meet their wage demands. About 1.3 million unionised employees have walked out in the standoff, shutting schools and cutting off medical treatment at hospitals. “The alliance is again dysfunctional,” Cosatu secretary-general Zwelinzima Vavi said. “The centre cannot hold.” The comments were some of the strongest signals to date that organised labour, which helped President Jacob Zuma ascend to the Presidency, may be ready to cut, or change, a relationship with the ANC that was forged in their struggle to end apartheid.

The State workers’ strike has had no major impact on rand and bond trading but market players said worries would mount if it extended into September and other labour groups joined in. Jasson Urbach, an economist with the Free Market Foundation, estimated the work stoppage was costing the economy R1084 billion a day.

Police fired rubber bullets when protests turned violent in Kimberley, while rallies slowed traffic to a crawl in major cities. Cosatu said it had filed seven-day strike notices yester day so that all its two million members could join the State workers in a strike they said would also target the mining and manufacturing sectors, a step which could grind the country to a halt.

On top of the wage dispute, the leader of the ANC’s Youth League, Julius Malema, fired what amounted to a warning shot at Zuma on Wednesday, questioning his leadership and implying the ruling party’s youth wing would not support Zuma for a re- election bid.

Cosatu also wants the government to reverse a R9 billion deal involving mining giant ArcelorMittal that transfers 26% of its local shares to employees and black investors including a consortium led by Zuma’s son, Duduzane. “We are heading rapidly in the direction of a full blown predator State, in which a powerful, corrupt and demagogic elite of political hyenas increasingly controls the State,” Vavi said .

Source: Daily Dispatch Online