The African National Congress (ANC) would drift to the right if the working class opted to abandon the party, Secretary General Gwede Mantashe said on Wednesday.

“You have made an assumption that if you decide to leave the ANC, the ANC will become static,” he told Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) members at their second national political school in Benoni, east of Johannesburg.

“[However] you will have an ANC that will grow more and more conservative and once it is more conservative it will be brutal on the working class.”

Mantashe said working class organisations, such as the unions and the SA Communist Party, influenced the standing of the ANC.

The liberation movement, led by the ANC, was a multi-class revolution and if the working class decided not to support the party other classes would take over the space and shift it.

“If you think it’s neo-liberal now… You will push it [ANC] to the right,” he said.

Mantashe urged union members to engage with Cabinet ministers, especially those who were former union members.

He used Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga and the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) as an example.

Motshekga was a former Sadtu member and now that she was a minister the union was fighting her.

Once you close your eyes to those fundamental principles you are going to see the battles that are running now

“I looked at Cabinet and I established that a big chunk of it can be traced back to the trade unions… but they [unions] cannot talk to their former members.”

Mantashe was speaking under the theme forms and content of the class struggle.

Mantashe also touched on the problems facing the Congress of SA Trade Unions.

He said the federation needed to focus on its principles.

“Once you close your eyes to those fundamental principles you are going to see the battles that are running now. Those battles are a function of many things.”

Mantashe said one of those things was the development of personalities in Cosatu.

“When you begin to worship individuals then you are going to kill the thing [Cosatu].”

Cosatu has been divided following allegations of rape against general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, and his subsequent suspension.
On Thursday, Cosatu announced Vavi had been put on special leave pending the outcome of a disciplinary hearing into an affair he had with a junior employee.

On Friday, Vavi vowed to challenge his suspension.
Source : http://www.sabc.co.za