Unite against corruption – a response to the Cosatu President by Zwelinzima Vavi

17 September 2015

“The meeting agreed that the priorities for Cosatu in 2013 were as follows… Step up the campaign against corruption and speak out without fear or favour consistent with COSATU successive national congresses resolutions.” - Cosatu Central Executive Committee statement 26 November 2012.

“We have never discussed this thing in Cosatu, it has nothing to do with Cosatu. We have said to all Cosatu affiliates they must stop supporting Vavi’s programmes.  That remains our decision as the central executive committee of Cosatu – that no union of Cosatu must be seen in public or privately supporting anything that the expelled general secretary of Cosatu is doing.” - COSATU president Sidumo Dlamini’s warning to those planning to join Zwelinzima Vavi in the Unite Against Corruption marches on 30 September in Pretoria and Cape Town (quoted in the Sowetan, 16 September 2015).  

This statement by Cosatu President ordering the federation’s affiliates and members not to support the Unite Against Corruption marches on 30th September, and its complete rejection of the federation’s commitment in the first quote above, illustrates the factional depths to which this one proud organisation has sunk under its present leadership.

The Unite Against Corruption marches have already secured the support of more than 300 South African organisations – from unions, churches, mosques, community groups and NGOs - and countless individuals who are sick of the continuous revelations of corruption, fraud, bribery, misappropriation of public resources, price-fixing and monopoly collusion by private companies.

The anti-corruption campaign has deliberately been built as a broad-based coalition, to which Cosatu were invited to participate on numerous occasions from the outset but refused. The labelling of this initiative as a Vavi/Jim initiative to embarrass or attack Cosatu is nonsense, and indicates just how deep the factional paralysis is inside the leadership of Cosatu.

Dlamini’s statement is an absolute outrage which must be wholehearted condemned and disowned. He would grow to be a better person if he were to stop his obsession with Zwelinzima Vavi and recognise that corruption is a bigger enemy than Vavi. He should acknowledge that it is the imposed paralyses that moved Cosatu from its own resolutions that has created the implosion that has made it the pale shadow of itself - domesticated and hollowed out. 

As the top quote shows, Cosatu itself campaigned relentlessly against the cancer of corruption, which threatens the foundations of our democracy.  It has condemned those in the business sector, whose principle is “an injury to one is an opportunity to another”, and the ‘tenderpreneurs’ and corrupt officials who loot the public’s money. The federation has warned that we are heading rapidly in the direction of a full-blown predator state, in which a powerful, corrupt and demagogic elite of political hyenas will increasingly control the state as a vehicle for self-enrichment.

The ANC itself shares these concerns, as its document for the forthcoming National General Council show:

“The legitimacy of the state and the polity as such are undermined. Indeed, over the past few years a general impression of systemic corruption has been created, ranging from unsavoury developments in State-owned Enterprises, strange machinations within security and tax authorities, to unconvincing responses to admonitions for accountability by relevant Constitutional bodies.

“National Conference was resolute that the ANC… needed firmly to deal with “public officials, leaders and members ... who face damaging allegations of improper conduct”. Processes to set up Integrity Committees have largely been undertaken and some work has started in this regard. However, there has been a retreat from the letter and spirit of the Conference resolution, given the manner in which the matter is formulated in the Election Manifesto, where the onus is shifted back to decisions by courts of law.”

This shows that ANC members are as concerned as everyone else about the lack of progress on implementing their own resolutions on corruption. Cosatu union members remain overwhelmingly in support of the fight against the scourge.

So who does that leave opposing the aims of the Unite against Corruption marches? Corrupt business leaders who fix tenders, the public officials who they bribe and… Sidumo Dlamini!

Dlamini’s statement proves that he has totally cut himself adrift from the interests of the workers he was elected to speak for and we urge every member of very Cosatu-affiliated union and every ANC member and supporter to reject his call and join the thousands who will be on the streets of Pretoria and Cape Town on Wednesday 30th September!

Statement issued by Zwelinzima Vavi, Unite Against Corruption Campaign, 17 September 2015