Monday, 08 March 2010 15:02
WHO are the true, natural allies in the chaos pervading South African politics?
When the country's first ANC government came off the starting blocks in May 1994, a new labour dispensation topped its list of business.
The framing of relevant legislation (the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, the Employment Equity Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Act) raised temperatures between the business sector and the unions - the two biggest camps in civil society - to record levels.
The organised business sector for years blamed labour legislation for the country's high unemployment rate. Today it is actually part of the country's economic and industrial culture, although there will always be a degree of dissension about it.
Last week Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi again made a startling pronouncement.
If it is true that the ANC's investment arm has invested in Eskom, he said, "then God help us all".
This was no idle statement. This was the wording of the statement that he read out on behalf of the trade union's central executive committee, which consists of Cosatu's six office bearers and the national office bearers of all the affiliated unions. Every word is thoroughly considered before release.
The entire statement was a well-thought-out attack on the government of President Jacob Zuma: it berated the disgraceful education system, the equally deplorable health system, the apparently unstoppable corruption seemingly driving the new administrators to new lows rather than containing it, and the fact that criminals continue terrorising the population unhindered.
Vavi and Cosatu well know that the ANC's investment company, Chancellor House, has a 25% stake in Hitachi Africa, a consortium that won the contract to provide the pressure vessels at Medupi and Kusile, the two giant power stations that Eskom is building for R120bn and R140bn respectively.
The pressure vessels for a coal-fired power station are among its largest and most expensive pieces of equipment. They involve massive contracts from which Chancellor House would receive enormous amounts - which Cosatu finds totally unacceptable.
Yes, the spectre of a predatory government enriching itself from the misery of its citizens will become a reality if Chancellor House holds on to its interest in Hitachi Africa.
Three years ago, when he became the ANC's head of finance, treasurer-general Mathews Phosa said as far as he was concerned it was unacceptable for Chancellor House to have a stake in Hitachi Africa.
Among other things he promised that auditors Ernst & Young would undertake a forensic investigation into Chancellor House's activities.
Phosa is a progressive and well-to-do attorney, among other things the former president of the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut and a published poet in Afrikaans. For a long time he was an ANC "weapon" deployed to win support among Afrikaners.
These days he reckons it's no-one's business where the ANC gets its money. He can reportedly even be rude when questioned about the Chancellor House stake in Hitachi Africa.
As everyone knows, Vavi was one of Zuma's most faithful supporters when Zuma was struggling for political survival against former president Thabo Mbeki. Vavi has probably more than once been offered a cabinet post.
It's very telling that he is again at the vanguard of a massive campaign against the government of the very man for whom he spearheaded so many demonstrations.
Vavi does not know when he was born. He grew up in appalling poverty, born to a migrant-labour family in rural Eastern Cape. His earliest childhood memory is of riding with his parents, brothers and sister on a donkey-cart after having been driven off a mountain farm.
He rose through the ranks of Cosatu to where he is today and was even on occasion targeted by Mbeki's attacks and campaigns.
That is why he believes unshakeably in Cosatu's independence from the ANC. He is also a great admirer of Che Guevara, the Argentinian revolutionary who, together with Fidel Castro, led the Cuban revolution.
Yes, he is THE Communist, and a dedicated one - not one of those former communists who now live in Sandton and drive big black cars.
With Cosatu, he is furious with government for allowing private investors into the electricity industry, and for allowing inflation-targeting to continue unchanged.
The dispute within the ruling alliance over economic policy has existed for more than 15 years. Zuma is apparently going to "explain" the reasons for his administration's decisions to Cosatu after his official visit to Britain, but Cosatu has already heard those explanations times without number.
There is no chance of Cosatu's leaders taking the same explanations back to their to their mandators.
Something is brewing within the alliance, but no one knows what the outcome will be.
But I do know that the only way to tackle, head-on, the problems of open, parasitic government corruption, an education system that gives not a hoot about the future of children, and the disgusting, filthy state hospitals, is to have an opposition party backed by the votes of 35% to to 45% of the country's citizenry.
