It’s about time Zwelinzima Vavi moved on with his life
The Congress of South African Trade Unions has noted the media statement by the dismissed former General Secretary, Mr Zwelinzima Vavi ,announcing that he will not be appealing his dismissal. As usual, his long statement contained the usual emotional spasms and the self congratulatory rhetoric from the {self coronated } Napoleon of the working class. There was nothing new that he said except the usual self-advertising and political striptease.
It came as no surprise to us that he withdrew his appeal. After all, Numsa had previously announced their decision not to appeal their dismissal, and so we expected him to follow suit. After all, as their adopted “super revolutionary” he does everything that they do these days. When they took us to court, he did the same thing and when they appealed to the Special National Congress, he was right behind them.
Like all those, who lose themselves in wishful thinking, and with an exaggerated sense of self importance, we were not surprised by his sanctimonious catharsis and self pitying rants. It is sign of a camouflaged surrender by a man, who is struggling to adjust and define himself outside of COSATU.
He belongs to that unique breed of leaders, who can lead an organisation for fourteen years {14} and allow it to collapse in front of his eyes and still with a straight face, say it is not their fault. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind into believing that he has genuine beliefs and that he cares about anyone except himself.
But we want to take responsibility because he did not create himself, we did so when we treated him with exaggerated respect, but we admit our fault and we have learned our lessons.
We want to make it clear that our focus is our coming 12th National Congress. We are focused on rebuilding the unity of COSATU and strengthen its capacity to wage serious battles for the workers and the working class both in our country and beyond our borders.
We are going back to our foundations of a strong shop floor organisation with the ability to defend worker rights and collective bargaining. This country remains confronted with the challenges of persistent poverty, unemployment and extreme inequalities. It remains trapped in a colonial and apartheid ,economic and social policy paradigm. The arrogance and bullying tactics adopted and demonstrated by National Treasury are what worries us the most.
We are worried about the current economic down turn that has enhanced the power of white monopoly capital, with the support of sovereign rating agencies. We are worried about the conservative macroeconomic policies that are still pursued by our government.
We are moving away from the nightmarish period that agonised and seized the focus of our federation for five years. We are continuing to act decisively in restoring discipline, democratic centralism, worker control, unity and cohesion as well as the ideological and political orientation of our federation. Mr Zwelinzima Vavi needs to do the same for himself. We know he is still nostalgic about the past but it is gone. Workers have made it clear that they only need unity, solidarity and each other, not prophets , saviours and messiahs.
Statement issued by Sizwe Pamla, COSATU national spokesperson, 19 November 2015
