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Johannesburg - There has been a slight lull in the verbal salvoes fired in advance of Cosatu’s special national congress that starts on Monday.
But if the level of vitriolic rhetoric over recent weeks and months is any measure of concern, the current leadership of Cosatu and its supporters must be extremely worried.
Even by the usually robust and jargon-ridden standards of debate within the federation, attacks on affiliates supporting the call to debate the expulsion of the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) and of general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, have been exceptional.
The dissident unions have been labelled everything from agents of “external forces” to supporters of the opposition Democratic Alliance and of “international capital”. They are painted as renegades bent on the destruction of Cosatu and “our glorious alliance” with the ANC and Communist Party (SACP).
For the most part there has been little response, apart from some sniping from Numsa. However, Numsa plans to respond to “a number of slanderous, malicious and libelous attacks” at a press briefing at midday on Sunday.
The Numsa response will concentrate on the latest official verbal salvoes fired by big guns at the SACP’s special congress staged in Johannesburg last week. There it was alleged — not for the first time — that the dissident unions had budgeted R250 000 either to bribe delegates, or to “poison their minds”, apparently with alcohol.
Leading the attack was agriculture minister Senzeni Zokwana, immediate past president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and national chairperson of the SACP. He also directed his fire at the newly elected general secretary of NUM, David Sipunzi for having supported the return to Cosatu of Numsa and Vavi.
Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini, who is also a politburo member of the SACP, told the delegates that evidence existed of plans to disrupt the Cosatu special congress. He is also one of the authors of the draft discussion document to be tabled at the Cosatu congress on Monday afternoon.
This document claims that dissidents have accumulated a “war chest” of millions of rands and there are allegations that some of this money came from “America”.
* Don't miss Fin24 Inside Labour columnist Terry Bell's exclusive coverage of the special national congress.
