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The Congress of South African Trade Unions has taken note of the Mail & Guardian article (14 January 2011) trying to find reasons behind Zwelinzima Vavi’s absence at the ANC 99th anniversary celebrations.

The story is deliberately design to manufacture schisms that do not exist. For example it makes claims that the COSATU General Secretary said that President Zuma is presiding over a predatory elite. We challenge Mail & Guardian to produce evidence that COSATU GS ever said so.

Even when President Sidumo Dlamini corrected this error the writers, for their political reasons, chose to use this distortion of a COSATU statement to feed into the predetermined slant of the article.

The Mail & Guardian claims that the COSATU GS did not respond to telephone and text messages. This is not true. One of the journalists, Mandy Rossouw, sent an SMS only on Thursday, received after 5pm. This message was returned both telephonically and through SMS, but she did not respond to it.

Knowing the deadlines of the Mail & Guardian these were long passed when they approached COSATU for comments. In this case the writers wrote a story and as an afterthought sought comments from the GS in order to satisfy the rulebook.

Unless the Mail & Guardian issues a clear apology to the GS and COSATU, we will be left with no option but to report the paper to the Ombudsman.