The Congress of SA Trade Unions axed Willy Madisha as its president on Wednesday over his involvement in a missing donation scandal.

This, after a commission probing the matter presented its findings and recommendations to Cosatu's central executive committee (CEC) at its meeting this week, said spokesman Patrick Craven. "... The manner in which the president (Madisha) managed the issue of the donation to the (South African Communist Party) damaged his reputation and that of Cosatu," the commission found.

His conduct had caused divisions within the federation, implicated him and by association Cosatu in "what has all the trappings of an unseemly financial scandal". "It has reduced his level of acceptability to important constituencies in Cosatu and its alliance partner, the SACP. It has exposed the president and Cosatu to ridicule," the Commission found.

Malawian businessman Charles Modise laid a complaint against the South African Communist Party (SACP) last year in connection with a R500,000 donation he claimed to have made to the party in 2002.

He claimed he gave the money, packed in black plastic bags, to Madisha, who in turn swore he transported the money in the boot of his car to SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande. However, Nzimande denied ever receiving the money.

The Commission emphasised that its brief was not to investigate whether the money was indeed handed over. Madisha voluntarily stepped down as Cosatu president in October when the probe started into the missing donation to allow it "to continue without my interference".

At the time, Madisha suggested that alliance leaders were "plotting against each other" in the run-up to the African National Congress national conference in December.

It was in December that Madisha was suspended as president of the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu) for apparently telling members not to vote for then deputy president of the African National Congress Jacob Zuma, who went on to win the presidency.

Reports this week suggested Madisha's fate was "sealed" long before the commission presented its findings. "His expulsion will signal the intensification of a campaign to rid Cosatu of leaders who backed President Thabo Mbeki's failed bid for a third-term as ANC leader," City Press reported on Saturday

However, the commission could find "no evidence" to support Madisha's contention that the matter was "transported into Cosatu to settle unresolved scores by individual leaders and to cast the president as destructive."

Instead, it criticised his conduct in relation to the donation as falling "well short" of expectations. The Commission found it was not the pending criminal investigation of the matter which would leave Madisha incapable of discharging his duties, but his "complete isolation" from the congress's leadership. "In circumstances of a complete breakdown of any effective working relationship between the president and the (national office bearers) it is difficult to imagine how the president could do justice to the responsibility accorded him under the constitution," it held.

In a statement on Wednesday, Craven said the CEC had accepted the Commission's findings and recommendations. "The CEC unanimously resolved to remove Willy Madisha as president of Cosatu... An Acting President will be elected at the next CEC in May 2008."

He said Cosatu had decided to publicly release the commission's report "in light of the misrepresentation by some in the media and unauthorised sources in the federation which all combined to misinform the public about the real facts behind the establishment of the commission and its terms of reference."

In its report, the commission noted the testimony of Cosatu General-Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, who submitted that the breakdown of trust in Madisha was paralysing the organisation.

Cosatu's previously intimate relationship with the SACP was "not possible at all" under Madisha's leadership, he told the inquiry. Asked whether this trust could be rebuilt, Vavi replied: "I guess it can, but will I ever be able to discuss very sensitive things that I discuss with Blade (Nzimande)? I will not. Will I discuss with him what I have discussed with Zuma and (ANC deputy president) Kgalema Motlanthe which I have continuously as the general secretary? I will not".

The four-member Cosatu-appointed commission, chaired by Charles Nupen, heard the testimony of nine witnesses, including Vavi and Madisha. It was "unable to accept" Madisha's assertion that his comments to the media were in his capacity as an SACP member and not as Cosatu president.

It also described as "highly surprising" Madisha's failure to see any degree of urgency in consulting with Cosatu's collective leadership on "a controversial issue which implicated very senior leaders in Cosatu and the SACP".

"From the president's perspective, it is clear that he felt let down by the SACP and was driven to reveal more and more information in an attempt to defend himself.

"From Cosatu's perspective, it witnessed its president being drawn ever deeper into a public drama the ultimate proportions of which it was, and arguably still is, unable to gauge."