Durban — The SACP and Cosatu have ditched President Cyril Ramaphosa ahead of the crucial ANC elective conference next month.
This is a major shift from the alliance partners who are known to have thrown their weight behind Ramaphosa towards the 54th conference in 2017 where he narrowly defeated Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. Although these partners have no voting powers, they wield a significant influence on their members who are also ANC members.
Speaking to the Daily News exclusively on Wednesday, both ANC alliance partners said this time around they had decided not to endorse any party candidate because the working class and poor people had not benefited from previous endorsements.
KwaZulu-Natal Cosatu provincial secretary Edwin Mkhize said he did not think the labour federation would endorse any candidate since all candidates Cosatu supported ended up disappointing them and left workers divided.
He said the federation felt it should leave it to the workers to decide who they felt would better serve their interests.
“In 2007, we supported former president Jacob Zuma and he won, but workers later regretted supporting him. In 2017, we threw our weight behind Ramaphosa, but again, we later realised that the better devil became the worst devil, so now we have chosen not to pronounce. Although I’m not saying we will not pronounce, it is likely we will not support any candidate.”
Mkhize added that workers thought Ramaphosa would better understand workers’ challenges since he was a unionist himself, but they continued to suffer under him as currently they were at odds with his administration over salary increases.
The government angered public service workers after unilaterally implementing a 3% increase while workers demanded between 7% and 10%. Workers are still at loggerheads with the government and have rejected the government’s final 3% offer, vowing to bring the country to a standstill until their demands are met. Cosatu is yet to decide whether it will campaign for the ANC in the 2024 general elections.
SACP national spokesperson Alex Mashilo said his party never supported Ramaphosa, even in 2017, but it was a coincidence because both the SACP and Ramaphosa had a common vision of fighting corruption by calling for a state capture commission.
He said there was nothing on paper where the SACP took a resolution to support any candidate in 2017.
Mashilo said neither Ramaphosa nor Dr Zweli Mkhize had talked about a fundamental economic change that would create jobs in the country, so the SACP felt since neither candidates had announced any policy shift, the party would not support anyone. He said the SACP’s main concern was policy politics rather than individual candidates.
Daily News