The Tripartite Alliance is tearing at the seams, and it showed on Monday when ANC national chairperson Gwede Mantashe dramatically walked out of COSATU’s 15th National Congress after refusing to be downgraded on the programme.
Mantashe, who was leading the ANC delegation to the federation’s reconvened congress at Emperors Palace in Kempton Park, east of Johannesburg, took offence at being told he must speak first, followed by the South African Communist Party and then SANCO.
COSATU spokesperson Matthew Parks confirmed the incident to Africa Daily.
“Yes, the national chairperson was called but he didn’t go to the stage. I think he may have wanted the SACP to speak first,” Parks said.
Before Mantashe stormed off he reportedly told those with him that the tradition of these conferences is that the ANC deployee speaks last.
What followed was reportedly a desperate scramble on the sidelines of congress to prevent a full-blown public fallout.
ANC Veterans League President Snuki Zikalala and COSATU General Secretary Solly Phetoe tried to block Mantashe at the door, pleading with him to stay and address the 2,000 delegates. He refused.
“He was not happy at all. He said you cannot put the leader of the Alliance first as if we are an afterthought. He walked,” a senior insider who witnessed the drama told Africa Daily.
Just hours earlier, COSATU president Zingiswa Losi had dragged the federation back from self-destruction, using her opening address to admit the movement had humiliated itself with factions and adjourned congresses.
She invoked Nelson Mandela to defend the Alliance, declaring: “We are one movement. We will not abandon it when times are tough.”
The incident lays bare the glaring cracks inside the Alliance just weeks before the most difficult local government elections since 1994 on November 4.
Insiders say President Cyril Ramaphosa was advised at the last minute not to attend the COSATU congress himself precisely because of this toxicity.
The fear inside Luthuli House, according to two senior ANC officials, was that Ramaphosa would be booed or cold-shouldered by angry workers over austerity, job losses and the Government of National Unity, which Ramaphosa has defended.
So they deployed Mantashe instead – a former COSATU general secretary and former SACP chairperson.
For 35 years, the ritual has been the same: SANCO speaks, then SACP speaks, then COSATU’s ally and leader, the ANC, closes.
The ANC and the SACP have been at loggerheads in recent years after the communists decided to contest municipal elections alone, demanding a reconfigured Alliance where it is treated as an equal, and accusing the ANC of selling out to neo-liberalism.
The ANC, in turn, accuses the SACP of wanting to eat from both sides – serving in Cabinet while campaigning against ANC policy.
Mantashe is ANC chairperson, but also former SACP chairperson and former head of the South African Communist Party’s bible, the Umsebenzi.
The ANC had not issued a formal statement by late Monday.
This fight is 100 years old. The ANC and the SACP have been in bed since the 1920s, formalised into the Tripartite Alliance with COSATU in 1990, but they have never wanted the same thing from the relationship.
The ANC says it is a broad church, a nationalist movement that must balance workers, business, rural chiefs and the black middle class while managing a capitalist economy.
The SACP says it is the vanguard of the working class and accuses the ANC of protecting white monopoly capital and embracing austerity.
The ANC says the SACP wants to be in government and in opposition at the same time – enjoying ministerial blue lights while issuing statements attacking ANC policy.
Now the SACP wants to contest elections on its own, even while remaining in the Alliance.
