(Numsa) notes with extreme sadness the  letter sent by Minister Siphiwe Nyanda to our federation's General Secretary Comrade Zwelinzima Vavi threatening to sue the Cosatu General Secretary.

Mr. Nyanda is demanding that the General Secretary of Cosatu should apologise publicly for implying that Minister Nyanda is corrupt.

The threats by Nyanda are counter-revolutionary and sheer grandstanding. The bourgeois media has been consistently running stories on alleged corruption within government and other prominent public representatives, including on Nyanda. At no stage did our dear Nyanda threaten to sue or demanded an apology from these bourgeois media houses.

This raises a serious suspicion that Nyanda is using this matter as a ploy to silence Cosatu and its affiliates on the alleged corruption within our movement and the State. Clearly Minister Nyanda is gravely mistaken in his objective - the leadership of the South African working class in general and Cosatu and its affiliates in particular cannot be intimidated nor silenced by such ploys!

Needless to say, Minister Nyanda should be reminded that Comrade Vavi was not speaking on behalf of himself or his extended family. Comrade Vavi was speaking or communicating on behalf of the Cosatu CEC and more than two million of its members.

Should Minister Nyanda wish to persist in his futile personal struggle, he is best advised to be suing Cosatu, directly. Then he will learn, first hand, the wrath of workers some of whom catapulted him into the ANC NEC leadership in Polokwane.

It is unheard off in the history of revolutionary movements to resort to courts to silence the voices of the working class, as this action by Minister Nyanda will be viewed by all conscious workers.

However, in the event that he still persists in suing Comrade Vavi in his personal capacity, Minister Nyanda must know that the workers of this country are ready to defend their leadership!

We of NUMSA stand firmly behind the comments made by the General Secretary of Cosatu.  We would venture to advise Minister Nyanda to seriously reconsider the perilous legal route he has chosen. It will lead him to no good.

As for the broader democratic and revolutionary Alliance, we wish to remind ourselves that history is littered with loaded lessons on how popular revolutions similar to ours were aborted or derailed because of entrenched personal accumulation interests accompanied by greed, corruption and conspicuous consumption.

We believe that it will be suicidal for the Revolutionary Alliance as led by the ANC not to deal with this cancer in defence of the revolution and our movement. If our movement fails to deal with greed, conspicuous consumption and corruption, our people will retaliate in the ballot box (and by other means!) for our lack of decisiveness.

We repeat: we wish to advise Nyanda to rethink his threats and deal with the issue politically. At one point, his fabled organic military status and ideological standing had earned him the name Gebhuza, amongst the rank and file in the people's army - uMkhonto weSizwe. It is that status - as a revolutionary-combatant for the people, not for petty-bourgeois privileges - that he should remain forever.

We have learnt with shock the death threats on the life of Comrade Vavi. We urge Cosatu to swiftly review and enhance the security arrangements for our General Secretary. The police and all other security structures in the country must track the sources of the threats and work to protect our General Secretary. For warned is fore armed - the working class and Cosatu will not take kindly to any physical harm that will before our General Secretary.

Let the tenderpreneurs, the fraudsters, the rent-seekers, those who grow fat from stealing from the people, let them tremble when the leadership of the revolutionary working class speak!-

Statement issued by Castro Ngobese, NUMSA national spokesperson, June 4 2010

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