Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) boss Zwelinzima Vavi has hit out at ANC president Jacob Zuma and the party’s national executive committee (NEC) for keeping quiet while ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has been attacked by the likes of the ANC Youth League.
“Not only President Zuma but the whole NEC has failed to defend Mantashe,” Vavi said yesterday.
He was briefing the media on the outcome of a three-day Cosatu central executive committee meeting.
He said the tensions were not tantamount to the crisis of the alliance, but they were driven by a few individuals who wanted to capture the ANC for a capitalist agenda.
“The small right-wing tendency led by materialists and tender-entrepreneurs within the ANC leadership that we identified in the last CEC is threatening to take us back to the pre-Polokwane days,” he said.
Leading up to the ruling party’s 2007 Polokwane conference, the former President Thabo Mbeki camp stood accused of trying to break up the tripartite alliance by attempting to drive away the South African Communist Party and Cosatu.
Vavi said they would swell the ranks of the ANC to stop the anti- communists elements in their tracks.
“As we have said before this small group is impatient and is not even prepared to wait for the normal process of nomination and, given the space, they may move a vote of no confidence to those they regard as sitting ducks,” he added.
The ANCYL has made it clear that it wants Mantashe replaced by its former leader Fikile Mbalula in 2012.
Turning his attention to the steep electricity tariff hikes, he said Nersa’s decision was undemocratic because there had been overwhelming objection to the increase.
He also questioned the ruling party’s investment wing’s involvement in Eskom. “If this is true that the ANC company (Chancellor House) has invested in Eskom, then God help us all,” he said.
Source: citizen online, 20100305
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