Cape Town - Talk of next year’s elections and the state of the tripartite alliance dominated the speeches at Monday’s national Workers’ Day rally in Bethlehem in the Free State, with the SACP warning the ANC of trouble ahead if the governing party failed to change its ways with regard to corruption and austerity measures.
In a combative 10-minute speech, SACP general secretary Solly Mapaila repeated his recent call for a reconfiguration of the tripartite alliance ahead of the 2024 elections. Mapaila first made this call at the ANC policy conference last month.
At that event, Mapaila proposed two scenarios for the 2024 national and provincial elections, saying the SACP would either back the ANC at the elections within a reconfigured alliance, or contest elections independently if that move failed.
Yesterday, Mapaila said entering into alliances or fronts with others should not compromise but serve as part of the means to achieve the aims of the working class.
“Our efforts to secure the reconfiguration of the alliance therefore aims to re-assert the aspirations of the working class.
“The change in policy direction that we seek to achieve, having no interests of our own apart from the interests of the working class, is essential as part of the reconfiguration of the alliance,” he said.
Mapaila said such a reconfiguration would have to ditch what he called “neoliberal policy prescripts” and by doing so make austerity measures, state capture and other forms of corruption a thing of the past.
“Instead of accountability only to one alliance component, there must be accountability to the alliance under the principle of collective leadership, with common discipline.
“The alliance must function as a political centre of our shared strategy, the National Democratic Revolution, the attainment of all the goals of the Freedom Charter, and not least the economic goals.”
Mapaila was followed by President Cyril Ramaphosa who said the tripartite alliance was the only vehicle capable of solving South Africa’s problems of poverty, unemployment and inequality. He said the ANC would have to sit down with the SACP and Cosatu in a bid to strengthen the alliance.
“The unity in the alliance is continually being strengthened and will continue ahead of the 2024 elections, and we will show everyone what this alliance is,” he said.
Ramaphosa said despite some in the labour movement being doubtful, the ANC was fully committed to the issue of collective bargaining.
“I want to make it clear to you, as regular people in our country, that our commitment to collective bargaining is irrevocable.
“Whatever disputes we have had or will have in the future, they have to be addressed through negotiation, through talking together, through reaching agreement. That is the commitment that we as the ANC will put forward.”
Referring to the energy crisis, Ramaphosa said Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa was working closely with the unions in the energy sector to resolve the problem of load shedding.
The day’s keynote speaker was Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi, who voiced the federation’s support for the ANC ahead of the elections next year, and said: “We must all work together to ensure the ruling party retains power.”
Losi said it was important for the tripartite alliance to mobilise support for the ANC as the 2024 elections were likely to be the most difficult elections the ANC has faced, since the dawn of democracy in 1994.
The rally, which was a joint event of Cosatu Free State and Northern Cape, was preceded by a wreath-laying ceremony commemorating the 20th year since the Saulspoort Dam May Day Bus Disaster of 2003.
Fifty-one passengers were killed when the bus they were travelling in drove into the Saulspoort Dam near Bethlehem on May 1, 2003, becoming one of the worst bus accidents in South Africa’s history at the time.
Sixty-one trade union delegates, mostly from Kimberley, were travelling on the bus to attend May Day celebrations in the Free State town of QwaQwa when the accident happened.
The dam has since been renamed the Sol Plaatje Dam in their memory.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za