Cosatu General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has responded to an article that appeared in a recent edition of ANC Today. The article, entitled “Signalling left, turning right”, was signed by Fikile Mbalula of the ANC Youth League. Below is a full text of the response by Vavi.

The article in ANC Today, on 12 November 2004, entitled “Signalling left, turning right” signed by Fikile Mbalula, President of the ANC Youth League, raises some very serious questions for the Alliance.

The article represents the worst kind of childish, schoolboy misrepresentation of facts. The extensive use of quotes in order to insinuate that COSATU criticises Zimbabwe from the same standpoint as right-wing personalities and media smacks of a narrow point-scoring mentality that does not belong in mature, principled and constructive debates between comrades.

Handling differences in a manner that seeks to rubbish opponents through misrepresentation of facts, in order to feed paranoid fears is the worst form of engagement. The article is such a sad piece of work that its author should be ashamed of himself.

One of the critical lessons that we had hoped the author had learned from the 2001/2 tensions in the Alliance is that whilst all of us have a right to disagree with one another but no one has a right to question the bona fides of, or cast aspersions on, the other Alliance partners. Unfortunately the Mbalula article is a systematic attempt to do just that. Regrettably he does so on behalf of the ANC, that has a responsibility to lead the Alliance towards a more constructive engagement and more constructive management of differences at the public level.

COSATU has never supported a regime change in Zimbabwe in the manner that the article seeks to misrepresent. In fact, the only reason we don't consider suing for defamation is that the article is too childish for a serious response. Besides, most of the ANC's members are workers and the poor, and should not pay the price of poor judgment by some of its leaders.

The article does point to the need for the Alliance to develop a common understanding on what is actually happening in Zimbabwe. Maybe the Alliance must send a joint fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe so that we can read from the same page.

All along, we thought the differences between COSATU and the government were over tactics. We thought we all agreed that there is a serious political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe that demands an intervention to assist that country out of the quagmire.

Now, however, this author comes up with a radically different perspective. His article is not a defence of government's attempt to reach a diplomatic solution, but an ideological defence of Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF government and a denial that there are any serious problems in the country.

We never knew until now that the real issue raised by the situation in Zimbabwe is the need to defend South Africa's 'Growth, Employment and Redistribution Strategy' (GEAR), which every left intellectual worth his or her salt agrees was a discredited neo-liberal programme premised on the prescriptions of the IMF and the World Bank. Who is truly signalling left and turning right? The article suggests that anyone who opposed the GEAR must have favoured totally irresponsible fiscal and monetary strategies. This is the type of misrepresentation and woeful discrediting of the opponents views, which is aimed at closing the space for a rational dialogue and debate. Only those who have something to hide stoop to this level and twist facts.

Misrepresenting COSATU's position to suggest that we were pushing our government in the direction of an economic crisis, comparable to Zimbabwe's, is the kind of cheap propaganda that you would expect from students at a higher-primary-school debate trying to outsmart each other in a class debate to impress a schoolmaster.

The ANC and the South African government have embarked on a policy of diplomacy over Zimbabwe. COSATU fully supports these efforts. However COSATU is not a government but a trade union and a civil society formation. Unlike the government, it has no diplomatic channels through which to raise its concerns, and its protest letters go unanswered.

COSATU has obligations of solidarity towards workers. COSATU must, and will continue to, speak out every time workers in Zimbabwe or anywhere else ask us to do so, or when we believe the situation demands that we speak out. In this process, we have a responsibility to our members and to the international labour movement to act in a manner we would expect them to act if we faced similar challenges. Trade unions are a product of global solidarity and can only survive if they receive and provide global solidarity. That is why one of the founding principles of COSATU is international solidarity. The international slogan and motto of workers is an injury to one is an injury to all.

We believe that these approaches - government diplomacy and trade union and civil society solidarity - are complementary rather than contradictory. Diplomatic initiatives will be more effective if there is also public activity on the ground to highlight the problems and dangers that Zimbabwe workers faces.

Surely it is not a problem for civil society groups to speak out against the routine beatings, arrests and harassment of workers in Zimbabwe. Why then did the author feel compelled to surf websites to find statements on Zimbabwe by right-wingers around the world just so that he could argue that COSATU is somehow in cahoots with these forces?

To ensure a proper, open and comradely debate in the Alliance, we need clarity from the ANC leadership.

Do they agree with the author of the ANC Today piece that the Mugabe government still represents a progressive national liberation movement? Should the ANC's diplomatic efforts be directed towards defending it and strengthening it against imperialist interests? Should it therefore engage all other forces in Zimbabwe from the perspective that opponents of ZANU-PF's disastrous policies must be agents of imperialism?

Or does it agree that the violence directed against government critics represents the kind of intolerance and repression that have plunged many parts of the world into bloody conflicts?

Does it agree that routine disregard of court orders constitutes an attack on the rule of law and the principle of separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary that underpins all democracies?

Does it agree that the frequent arrest, torture and harassment of labour leaders and restraining of trade union activities represents an attack on basic human rights?

Does it agree or not that the current electoral process in Zimbabwe contravenes SADC electoral guidelines and that it does not satisfy the conditions for free and fair elections set by the South Africa Observer Mission to Zimbabwe?

Does it agree or not that holding elections under conditions contrary to these guidelines would deepen the political crisis of Zimbabwe, hence the need to speed up interventions?

Does it support the chaotic nature of the Zimbabwe land reform that ended up with the government leaders having more than one farm whilst peasants and workers remain trapped in landlessness and grinding poverty?

Does the ANC support the Public Order Security Act of 2004, requiring unions and all others to seek police permission if they hold workshops or meetings of more than five people?

Would the ANC leadership feel comfortably seeking police permission and submitting their agenda to the local station commander when they meet every Monday as a group of six officials?

Do the leadership support the current bills being pioneered in the Zimbabwe Parliament that would stop unions and civil society from receiving any money from outside the country in pursuance of their work, and deny them the right to comment on anything that is under the administration of government?

Does the leadership not agree that results from the last elections were controversial and have only helped to further polarise Zimbabwe society, and that this type of mistake must be avoided in future in order to maintain the legitimacy and integrity of the elections process and therefore democracy itself as envisaged by NEPAD?

Does it agree or not that the Zimbabwe Constitution is flawed, in particular the clause that allows the President to appoint 20 out of 150 MPs up front before elections, and that this clause should be changed?

Finally, does Mbalula accept that an unemployment rate of 75% to 80% indicates a massive attack on the living standards of the poor? Does he not agree that shrinkage of more than 20% of the economy and inflation of over 300% a year constitutes a major economic crisis?

Does he agree that the estimated 3 million Zimbabweans living in South Africa and the total estimated 5 million in the Diaspora from a population of 12 million are mostly economic refugees who would prefer to work in Zimbabwe and closer to their families?

If the situation is normal and all that is needed is to defend Zimbabwe against the imperialists - why is diplomacy on the cards at all? Of course most ANC leaders would agree that the diplomatic intervention is premised on the need to help Zimbabwe out of its crisis.

Mbalula must take his head out of the sand. The childishness displayed in his irrational defence of what is clearly wrong is shocking.

Mbalula's words are a chilling warning that events in Zimbabwe could be a foretaste of what could happen in South Africa, if the author had his way. Civil society groups and trade unions could be accused of guilt by association with imperialist forces, which would then be the pretext for the sort of attacks on human rights we see in Zimbabwe.

The only buffer to prevent such a scenario is a strong ANC, SACP and COSATU and our democratic and progressive constitution. If they fail to protect us, then God help us all!

Thanks to our struggle, however, Mbalula and other like-minded people will never have the unfettered power President Mugabe has in Zimbabwe.