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Cape Town – The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has warned its members not to engage with expelled general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, who is booked to address unions in Cape Town on Thursday.
Vavi will be joined by National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) general secretary Irvin Jim at the address of the Shop Steward Council.
The Shop Steward Council is convened by the Food and Allied Workers Union (Fawu), the SA Catering Commercial and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu), the Public and Allied Workers Union of SA (Pawusa), the South African State and Allied Workers Union (Sasawu), the Communication Workers Union (CWU), the SA Football Players Union (Safpu), the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), the Democratic Nursing Union (Denosa) and the SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu).
These unions publicly supported Vavi at his press briefing on April 1, where Vavi declared that his expulsion was “extremely irregular, illegal and completely unjustified”.
“This is the first in a series of meetings by the Cosatu general secretary and leadership of the above-mentioned unions to directly communicate our collective message to reclaim Cosatu as a militant, worker-controlled and independent federation of workers,” said Numsa spokesperson Castro Ngobese, clearly refusing to acknowledge Vavi's expulsion.
READ: Defiant unions ignore Vavi order
Freshly-appointed acting Cosatu spokesperson Ntai Norman Mampane told Fin24 on Wednesday that they had briefed unions about the federation’s code of conduct regarding not interacting with Vavi.
“Cosatu has advised its unions that it would take the necessary interventions if it found members were not acting in the spirit of the founding principles,” he said.
Cosatu said in a statement that Vavi should “henceforth stop speaking on behalf of the federation, as he is no longer the general secretary of Cosatu”.
Cosatu’s central executive committee said Vavi “continues to divide unions by addressing unconstitutional meetings”.
Mampane said Cosatu’s leadership was conducting meetings across South Africa with its unions and public servants to brief them on the situation at Cosatu.
