Johannesburg — The Congress of South African Trade Unions rejects and deplores the vicious, personal and totally unjustified attack on its General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, in the Letter from the President in ANC Today on 25 May.

At a recent bilateral meeting between COSATU and the African National Congress, it was proposed by President Thabo Mbeki himself, and agreed by the meeting, that none of the Alliance partners should believe, or respond to, a media story which makes allegations about another partner, without first confirming the truth of the story with the organisation or individual concerned.

This arose from a media story alleging that certain ANC leaders had a financial interest in the consortium which won the bid to construct the Gautrain, a story that was disputed by the ANC members. The allegations, as the President himself said, were unfair.

The President has unfortunately not complied with his own advice and the resolution of that bilateral meeting. He has once again chosen to launch an attack on COSATU General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, based purely on a report by the SABC, repeated in the Sowetan on 21 May, that he had said that “reports of an economic boom in South Africa was government propaganda similar to that of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany”.

This is despite the fact that this report was clarified by COSATU in a statement on the same day. Of course the President is not interested in the correction – he smelt blood and jumped at the golden opportunity to launch a personal attack on the leader of another Alliance partner he is supposed to lead.

He did not bother to check with COSATU or its General Secretary if the reports were true, contrary to the advice he gave to COSATU leaders in this bilateral. Whilst this is disappointing, we are not surprised at all at this inconsistency in the application of principles.

COSATU rejects the style of tackling a man instead of playing the ball. President Mbeki has on countless occasion personalised debates, questioned the bona fides of countless leaders and misrepresented facts in order to deliberately ridicule the genuine concerns of others.

No one has escaped this, including other leaders he served with in the NEC, some of whom he accused on national television of plotting to stage a coup. On previous occasions we have pointed out that this is the major weakness of the President. As a result of this the ANC and the Alliance is facing serious divisions that it will take many years to address.

The central point that COSATU has been raising, and which it will continue to raise, is that the main beneficiaries of economic growth or the so-called economic boom have not been the workers and the poor but white monopoly capital, in particular the Chief Executive Officers who have raked millions of rands in salaries and bonuses.

Workers’ wages have stagnated, unemployment is at crisis level at just below 40%, inequalities are growing and poverty levels remain extremely high. This has resulted in the share of wages in the national income to continue to decline whilst the share of profits is continuously on the rise. The naked truth is that the much-celebrated economic boom has not benefited workers and the poor.

That is the truth about the economic boom, as confirmed by the ASGISA report, Stats SA and statistics on poverty and inequality. COSATU is certainly not saying that workers have made no gains at all, but will not stop insisting that unemployment and poverty are still far too high and the progress in addressing this crisis is far too slow. The failure to address this crisis with the necessary speed it demands has much to do with the failed economic strategies pursued by the government, in particular from 1996.

To continue presenting the current situation as a breakthrough or to make such claims about a country with such levels of poverty, unemployment and growing inequalities is to be economical with the truth. That is the basic point that the COSATU General Secretary was making.

Relating to this phenomenon the General Secretary said the continued claims that we have turned the corner and that we live in an age of hope made him remember the strategy of Adolf Hitler who told his minister of propaganda to repeat lies so often until they settle as the truth in the minds of ordinary people. He was not of course suggesting that the ANC government is comparable to that of Nazi Germany.

We totally agree with the President that the ANC government is “the very antithesis or opposite of Nazism”. It should go without saying that COSATU rejects any comparison between the two governments in any other respect.

We endorse the President’s arguments about the evils and atrocities of Nazism, but they are totally irrelevant to the points raised by the General Secretary, as clarified in the statement, on the propaganda about the economic boom.

The President however makes no attempt to respond to the real arguments we are making - that the benefits of economic transformation has largely gone to capital and not labour and the poor - but instead launches a bitter personal attack against an individual - who was not speaking in a person capacity but representing COSATU’s 2 million members and the policies democratically agreed at its national congress.

President Mbeki even insinuates that the General Secretary’s remarks are serving the interests of those who wish to “discredit our movement and government, our political platform and transformation programme, and mobilise the entirety of our population, as well as the global democratic movement, to join in a concerted struggle to defeat our movement and government”.

This outrageous accusation is totally groundless and defamatory. It is the worst example of labelling opponents and questioning their bona fides, rather than answer their arguments - precisely the things that the bilateral meeting agreed must stop.

COSATU, and its General Secretary, are the staunchest supporters of the transformation programme. Our record in defending our democracy - and fighting any attempts to undermine it - is second to none, and we will not be deflected from our struggle by attacks like this one.