African National Congress (ANC) leaders under President Jacob Zuma risk losing Cosatu's support if they do not pull up their socks, it said on Tuesday.

"Help us help you. We don't like the space we are in now," Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said after delivering his secretariat report at its central committee meeting.

"We don't like the politics of this moment," he said.

As "selflessness" was replaced by a "me first" attitude, there was a battle to contain and maintain the ANC alliance with Cosatu and the South African Communist Party as one which led society on moral issues, he said.

Vavi said the ANC's elective conference was 18 months away and that "everybody has a chance to change".

He said Cosatu had been instrumental in propelling Zuma to power.

Its "project" now was to ensure that ANC leadership took forward the five priorities outlined in the party's 2009 election manifesto.

"We want our leaders to succeed... [but when] we are unable to show the result [to Cosatu members], we get compromised politically," he said.

"How does the leadership of the ANC help Cosatu, so it can look at its members and say we have taken the right direction?" he asked.

Vavi said the country's leaders had to guide it in a new direction which enabled it to meet the challenge of an economy which was not working.

They had to tackle corruption and poor performance head on, because soft tact in dealing with faults in the government was not working.

"We need the leadership to go to the Eastern Cape and ask who was responsible for the collapse of the education department," he said. "Make them resign."

He asked why no action was taken after reports that Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Sicelo Shiceka visited his girlfriend in a Swiss prison.

"... It can only tell our people there is no-one prepared to act decisively," he said.

Vavi said delegates' muted reception of Zuma at the central committee meeting was indicative of workers' dissatisfaction with him.

"Usually when he comes, the whole hall catches fire. Yesterday, we didn't get that."

Delivering the ANC's message of support to Cosatu on Monday, Zuma used the opportunity to indirectly chastise the ANC Youth League by speaking out against ill-discipline and the circumvention of party processes on policy-making.

"They [Cosatu delegates] want more decisive leadership... you don't deal with that in speeches," said Vavi.

He said Cosatu would respect the ANC's wish not to debate its leadership succession this far ahead of its elective conference next year, but said this would not stop Cosatu from assessing the current leadership.

In the secretariat report, Vavi described the past three-and-a-half years as "the most dynamic and volatile" in South African politics.

During this period there had emerged a "powerful, corrupt, predatory elite combined with a conservative populist agenda to harness the ANC to advance their interests", he said.

A "political paralysis" had developed in the state and in the alliance which had resulted in "wild zig-zagging in the political direction of the country".

In the report, Vavi said Cosatu had erred in focusing on the ANC's top six leaders at its last elective conference and leaving the national executive committee (NEC) – the ANC's top decision-making body – "for others to decide on".

He said Zuma and ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe should be defended when the ANC elected new leaders in 2012.

The ANCYL wants them replaced.

"Currently, the only people running a campaign for the removal of the two are the elements of the new class of tenderpreneurs.

"If they succeed in this campaign, the ANC as we have known it will be history."

Afterwards, Vavi said a "contestation" was underway on the direction of the ANC. This would be fought only "by the conscious ones". "We are conscious," he said.

The secretariat report will be discussed at the meeting on Wednesday.