By GAYE DAVIS

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has called for a shift in attitudes and an ethical turnaround in the alliance, warning that a lack of quality leadership and sidelining the poor had opened the door for the DA to mount a serious challenge for power by 2019.

Vavi blamed leadership failures on a “dearth of political conscious(ness)” among “too many” union and political leaders who had become distanced from the people.

“Too many of our leaders stay in Sandton, in former whites-only suburb, and a lot of them have become visitors in the theatre of class struggle,” he told the almost 1 000 delegates at the National Union of Metalworkers’ congress in Durban/ eThekweni on Thursday.

Seduced by the comforts of capital, he said, many leaders had become distanced from those bearing the brunt of the jobs crisis and dysfunctional health and education systems.

Vavi put the ANC on notice that Cosatu would at its September congress discuss putting a single demand before the ruling party’s national elective congress in Mangaung in December: the full implementation of the Freedom Charter.

Cosatu had been calling for 18 years for changes that would lead to a non-racial, prosperous and democratic SA, but it was now the most unequal society in the world.

Numsa, Cosatu’s second-largest affiliate, has already vowed to put pressure on the ANC to fully implement the Freedom Charter by nationalising mines, banks and other key sectors of the economy.

This position is not shared by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), Cosatu’s largest affiliate.

A position on nationalisation will have to be thrashed out at Cosatu’s elective conference in September. Divisions within the federation and its affiliates were caused not by political or ideological differences but by a “battle for resources”. The ANC was also now “contested terrain”, Vavi said.

“We are at the point now where… if we don’t change (within Cosatu), this revolution is going,” Vavi said.

In Europe there were daily protests over rising levels of unemployment, but in SA, where the crisis was far worse – with almost one in four people without work – Cosatu and its affiliates were seen as being the crisis, Vavi said.

Where there were protests, such as “the 10 or so service delivery protests a day, the leadership of the alliance (is) not in the forefront”.

Within Cosatu, shop stewards committed to servicing the interests of workers without expectations of reward were “disappearing – fast”.

He called for “a new ethos” that would prevent the ANC from losing control to the DA as was the case in the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape.

Vavi said the DA was showing increased confidence. That it had been able to mount a march on Cosatu headquarters involving some 3 000 unemployed African youths “means they are saying they want to take us on at some point, perhaps in 2019. They say we will be so weak at that time…”

The ANC and its alliance partners were unable to “take back” the Western Cape, which it had lost through divisions and factional battles. It had held off the DA’s attempt to win Port Elizabeth (Nelson Mandela Bay metro) by the narrowest of margins. “Already the DA has five percent of people in the townships – something unheard of in the past.

“We fight for positions, our focus is on positions. We have to create a new ethos, a new principle in the organisation,” Vavi said.

Leaders accused of wrongdoing should rather step down than be forced to after “months of bringing the name of the (ANC) down”.

Vavi referred to, but did not name Humphrey Mmemezi, a Gauteng MEC still in his post despite claims he had abused his government credit card on luxuries.

He also referred to, but did not name, the Northern Cape ANC provincial chairman John Block, facing numerous fraud and corruption charges yet who was likely to be re-elected this weekend and who was supported by members of the provincial government at his court appearances.

“If we don’t change, so that a person like that can know he’s guaranteed of no support… knows that he must resign – if we can’t do that, we will continue to face own goals.

“Unless we change that, we are gone because our battles are about hands off and not about unemployment, poverty and inequality.”

Too many of our leaders “did not spend hours waiting for a Panado at a public hospital because they belonged to medical aid schemes”.

“It’s a distant issue for them, they are not affected immediately,” Vavi said, to loud applause.

With their children in private schools, too many leaders were unaware of the “pain of dysfunctional schools” and an education system that each year marginalises thousands more young people entering the labour market without hope of attaining a skill.

“And what do we do? We come to conferences and make (nice) speeches, yet the situation of the working class does not change.

“Year in, year out, people remain trapped in their poverty… yet we clap hands, we sing the praises of our leaders,” Vavi said.

“So we go to this (Cosatu) congress to say one central thing: there has to be a mindset change among the leadership and activists of the federation and in the leadership of the ANC and the SACP. We have to change, for the sake of our revolution and for the sake of our people.”

Political Bureau