Cosatu calls on ANC’s new leadership not to take alliance partners for granted

Labour Federation, Cosatu, has called on the African National Congress (ANC) newly-elected leadership to refrain from taking its alliance partners for granted and to work on the reconfiguration of the party’s partnerships.

The ANC has announced its 80 additional National Executive Committee members following its conference in Nasrec, Johannesburg.

Cosatu’s General Secretary Solly Phetoe says, “We need a reconfigured alliance and we don’t want that on paper. We want a real and practical reconfigured alliance on the ground. We want programmes. If we want to say that we want to deal with issues of unemployment. We must all put our heads together as the alliance leadership with the ANC. We don’t want the ANC to be the only centre, we want the centre of the alliance to take up all the issues.”

Cosatu happy with the outcome of ANC national conference: Solly Phetoe

Plight of workers

Earlier this week, the labour federation said strengthening collective bargaining is one of the priority issues that it will raise when it engages with the newly-elected ANC leadership.

Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi explains, “The first thing on the agenda will be the issues that we raised here. The plight of workers, the plight of public servants, the plight f public servants in general in South Africa. Workers who are working in the retail sector are on strike.”

Losi added that it’s important for the new leadership to make workers understand the importance of the transition. “We have workers in the mining industry and the value chain who don’t know where the future lies in terms of the Just Energy Transition. So, we have a whole lot of issues that we need to put on the table of this leadership.”