Decision to support ANC or SACP left to unions: COSATU

The Congress of Trade Unions of South Africa (COSATU) has left the decision on whether to support the African National Congress (ANC) or the South African Communist Party (SACP) i n the upcoming elections to its unions.

The trade union federation held its Central Executive Committee meeting ahead of its 15th National Congress next month.

The COSATU congress is tasked with electing a new leadership and coming up with resolutions on political developments that affect workers.

Cosatu President Zingiswa Losi says the alliance partners, the ANC and SACP, going into the local government elections separately must not serve to divide workers.

“On this question, we are not going to rush ourselves because our political parties that we are in alliance with have resolutions and they are going to elections.

COSATU must be thorough first the unity of the workers must be sacrosanct, the unity of affiliates is important, so every union has a responsibility to canvass this discussion within itself and the unions, and we’ve set ourselves a path that takes us to the 15th national congress where this discussion will be on the congress debate floor.” Cosatu says it can’t be business as usual in the country when workers continue to bear the brunt of unemployment, poverty, inequality, rising living costs and the deterioration of public services compounded by corruption.

Cosatu 1st deputy President Mike Shingange says they are also worried about migration developments in the country.

“It is because we’ve got fewer police in this country, because the policy of our state is that there was a few police, public servants, to be in every corner, to police.

We only have 2 300 labour inspectors in this country, which means all the workplaces can’t be inspected by a labour inspector on a daily basis, because we don’t have enough labour…the border management changes that we have established, only operating at 25% capacity.

So, it can’t police all the borders.

The Home Affairs that is supposed to have more migration officers to inspect immigration, they are only at 40% capacity.

So, that on its own, it’s a problem of our own government, not to have enough capacity to fight crime on this term of migration.” Video: COSATU to hold its CEC meeting next month