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South Africa: ANC, Cosatu to Talk Amid Push to Left
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Business Day (Johannesburg)
28 March 2008
Posted to the web 28 March 2008
Amy Musgrave
Johannesburg
SENIOR delegations of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the African National Congress (ANC) will meet on Monday in their first bilateral meeting since Jacob Zuma's election as the ruling party's president.
SENIOR delegations of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the African National Congress (ANC) will meet on Monday in their first bilateral meeting since Jacob Zuma's election as the ruling party's president.
The meeting comes at a time when members of the tripartite alliance are attempting to redefine their relationship against a strong ideological push to the left from within.
The gathering also takes place ahead of the all important alliance summit from April 18 to 20 which will see Cosatu and the South African Communist Party (SACP) making a push for the ANC's resolutions adopted at its elective conference .
The summit, which will discuss a range of issues, is also significant because it will have to decide how the alliance partners are going to approach the general elections next year. So far the SACP and Cosatu have supported the ANC without any preconditions, but Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has warned that the time of the "blank cheque" is over.
Monday's bilateral will be attended by the powerful national working committee (NWC) of the ANC and Cosatu's five national office bearers.
It comes at the request of Cosatu following public spats between the union federation and the ANC over a number of issues.
At the top of the agenda will be Cosatu's push for unionists to be represented on the ANC's 86-person national executive committee (NEC) to keep the interests of labour alive.
The federation has also started naming who it thinks should be voted on to provincial ANC leadership structures.
The ANC is opposed to Cosatu's aggressive approach to the matter. Party secretary- general Gwede Mantashe has warned that this approach could alienate ANC factions in the provinces.
Also likely to be discussed is the electricity crisis and Eskom's proposed 60% tariff hike. Although ANC member and Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin has defended the power utility's request, the party, like Cosatu, is opposed to the hikes, saying they would have adverse effects on the daily lives of poor people .
The ANC's report on the arms deal may also come up for discussion seeing that the party issued a statement saying that it was loath to discuss the issue with its alliance partners via the media. Last week, Cosatu called on the ANC to make public the report it is compiling on the arms deal because of legitimate public interest.
The bilateral will also serve as a precursor to the summit. ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe suggested the summit in December "to align the outcomes of all the partners' conferences/congresses and to consolidate strategic approaches and programmes".
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The agenda for the three-day meeting is being compiled.
The meeting will decide on ways to speed up the government's implementation of the ANC's resolutions. The party adopted far reaching socio- economic resolutions such as increasing the child grant to 18-year-olds and free education up to matric. The government has since announced that children up to 15 years old would be eligible for the child grant, up from the previous cutoff of 14.
The summit will also see Cosatu and the SACP pushing for a greater role in policy making.
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