The tripartite alliance is not merely used for garnering votes for the African national Congress (ANC), party secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said in Johannesburg on Tuesday.

Mantashe was speaking in Boksburg after bilateral talks with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).

After the "brutal" and "candid" talks between the partners who had been feuding over a host of issues in recent months, Mantashe said that Cosatu was not being sidelined.

Rather it was involved in drafting the ANC's election manifesto and putting the Cabinet in place. Its input on the industrial action plan was also taken on board.

"Therefore, it cannot be factually correct to say the federation is abused for just votes. Factually there is no such a thing, we are engaging, we may be irritated by one thing or the other and that is what we should be debating," Mantashe said.

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi last month told a South African Clothing and Textile Workers' Union meeting in Durban that the federation would not be a "lapdog" to the ANC.

"They want us to be a lapdog. They say you can make noise during election campaigns and now they say keep quiet," Vavi said at the time.

He was absent from the joint media briefing owing to other commitments on Tuesday, including addressing a student movement, and was represented by his deputy Bheki Ntshalintshali.

Mantashe told the briefing: "To exaggerate when we are irritated by one thing, to say we are ignored, would stretch things too far."

No agreements were reached on key issues such as economic policy, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's budget and the State of the Nation address. However, the parties agreed to further dialogue.

Mantashe, who reportedly criticised Cosatu for behaving like an opposition party at the meeting, said that the ANC agreed with the union federation on almost 90% of the issues raised.

The debate on the alliance's political centre unfolded at the meeting. Mantashe said that it was best summarised by ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe at the meeting's close.

"The issue is not whether the ANC is the political centre... the issue is on the task and the operations."

While there was no "pecking order", the ANC was the governing party.

"The ANC is the leader of the alliance, there is no question about that. Nobody ever questioned that including Cosatu, including the South African Communist Party.

"The issue was the phrase 'political centre'. That is the issue and the point we are coming to, is the ANC the strategic political centre?

"Over the past ten years... we tended to actually governmentalise the authority of the ANC and therefore we are re-instating the ANC as the strategic political centre that would provide leadership to its deployees in government."

Ntshalintshali agreed with Mantashe, saying, however, that its members were confused by comments made by "unmandated" members of the ruling party.

"It's more the interpretation made by other people who come unmandated and say we'll never agree to be led by decisions of the alliance summit, for example... Interpreted in the minds of people... the alliance summit is just a question of going through the motions, it is not?"

There was a need perhaps to "operationalise it so that everybody feels part of the decision making", he said.

Cosatu members were also upset by ANC decisions failing to filter into government.

On lifestyle audits, another sticking point between the ruling party and its labour ally, Mantashe said he "imagine[d]" that Cosatu agreed with its position after Monday's talks.

"All we did is to explain our position on lifestyle audits because there is nothing wrong with lifestyle audits. But it should be done institutionally by the relevant institutions and that work is being done.

"We don't think we need a special institution to deal with lifestyle audits, but generally the concept of a lifestyle audit, there was nobody who had a problem with that."

Allegations by Cosatu affiliates of a plot to have President Jacob Zuma and Mantashe removed from their posts raised the ire of the ANC. It felt that these charges should not have been aired publicly.

ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu likened the alliance to a "family", who sometimes did not view things the same way.

"What is important is that we have come together to iron out and see how best we resolve whatever issues we do not see eye-to-eye," he said.

"There was blood on the floor. We didn't mince words."