The governing African National Congress (ANC) should avoid morphing into a party of ‘Absolutely No Consequences’ and regain its political legitimacy by heeding lessons from Brazil and particularly its former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general-secretary Zwelinzima Vavi argued on Friday.

Speaking at the Daily Maverick’s Gathering 2.0, Vavi argued that there were remarkable similarities between the two countries: both were former colonies, rich in natural resources and have massive problems of poverty and inequality.

By making the government's top priority the raising of the incomes of the poor, Da Silva assisted the giant wheel of the economy to start turning, Vavi asserted.

“South Africa suffers from exactly the same problem as Brazil – what economists call under-consumption or the low level of effective demand for goods and services. In simple terms, it means too many people have no money to spend.

“In their short-sighted obsession with short-term profits, South African businesses, and their economic commentators, cannot see that their preferred option – low wages, no collective bargaining and weak trade unions – will make our economic crisis even worse. We need the opposite policies which Lula has proved could work [they appear to argue]."

He appealed for delegates to the upcoming ANC conference, in Mangaung, to “stop listening to rating agencies, neoliberal economists and multinational big businesses, and instead to begin listening to the people, as Brazil had done.

“The [Brazilian] government organised no fewer than 74 consultative conferences on all the major issues, to hear the views of the people, and rally the whole population behind them.

“We need to listen to the mine and farm workers, the residents of shack settlements, and all South Africans, instead of ramming unpopular decisions like e-tolling and the demolition of houses in Lenasia down their throats.

“The ANC must also move away from being a party that stands for 'Absolutely No Consequences' and regain its identity,” Vavi emphasised, while warning that there were a number of "ticking time bombs" beginning to explode.

“We should not be where we are today. Unemployment has risen to the outrageous level of 36.3%. Among Africans, it is now 40%, up from 38% in 1995. There is a particularly severe crisis among the youth, which makes up for 72% of those that are unemployed.”

South Africans had become too used to its challenges, he said. “You won’t see marches in cities, of people demanding jobs and demanding the realisation of the dreams of decent work [you find] elsewhere in the world.”

He added that 22.5-million people were living on below R10 a day.

BRAZIL A CASE STUDY

Arts and Culture Minister Paul Mashatile responded by saying that the ANC was currently studying the Brazilian leadership situation to see what it could learn and how it was relevant to the ANC’s leadership.

“We are going to Mangaung to implement organisational renewal. We have realised over the last 18 years that there have been a number of challenges and there are things we didn’t do right, such as the lack of political training. This [renewal] will change how the ANC operates, the way it is structured and the way it functions. This would also include the renewal of leadership,” Mashatile averred.

“[But], when we go to the conference, we do not want to remove everybody. There are people with experience who are currently in the leadership that you want to retain.”

He said that change was needed, and that a new generation of leadership, particularly young and future generation leaders, would come to the fore.