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Cape Town - Former Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi lashed out at the Tripartite Alliance, accusing the ANC of deserting the working class.
The current convenor of Numsa's steering committee for a new labour federation made it clear in an interview with Fin24 labour columnist Terry Bell at the 10th national congress of the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) held in Cape Town this week that the rift with the ANC is irreparable.
Vavi said the ANC has abandoned the working class. "There is no doubt about it that it now represents the class enemies of workers."
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel were speakers at the conference held over four days.
Vavi was of the view that the ruling party's programmes are designed to satisfy the narrow interest of accumulating profits at the expense of workers.
"The ANC has sort of ticked the box that workers can be exploited freely by capitalists in South Africa."
Vavi said there is no difference between the SACP and the ANC and pointed out that the SACP supports the government's programmes such as austerity measures and e- tolls.
Vavi recalled that in the mid 1990s a resolution was passed positioning the SACP as a champion for the rights of workers.
"The SACP and Cosatu, in my view, in retrospect, dropped the ball in 1996 when government embraced the neo-liberal programme through the Gear [Growth, Employment and Redistribution] project."
Gear, a macroeconomic policy framework, was introduced as a strategy to expedite economic growth which was required to provide resources to meet social investment needs.
"At that time, both the SACP and Cosatu should have said enough... we are walking our different ways," argued Vavi.
However, he added that Cosatu kept on believing that it can change the ANC from within. "In the end they actually changed Cosatu."
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