NUMSA KZN CONDEMNS SUNDAY INDEPENDENT ARTICLE!
29 April 2012
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) in KwaZulu-Natal strongly condemns the actions of faceless leaders within COSATU who use the media to distort or undermine internal and organizational engagements. This is the worse form of cowardice.
The article in today's Sunday Independent, "ugly exchanges at COSATU meeting", is highly poisonous and seeks to create a false impression that COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi is at war with NEHAWU General Secretary Fikile Majola, informed by ANC internal battles going to the 53rd National Conference to be held in Mangaung.
We view the Sunday's Independent article as nothing else, but a journalistic ghost resurrection of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebells. The Independent's stories are no different from once revered Sunday newspaper which played a factional role within our movement in 2007. Such a Sunday newspaper served as a mouthpiece of the once powerful and dominant faction in the movement and the State.
This alien behaviour poses a danger not only to COSATU, but to the entire Mass Democratic Movement (MDM), as led by the African National Congress (ANC) and vanguard party of the working class, the South African Communist Party (SACP). If this is not confronted or nipped in the bud, it might develop a sense of mistrust or personality clashes.
We firmly believe that planting of stories by these faceless leaders or sources is politically motivated and it is not even class neutral. These cowardly acts are being carried out in order to capture COSATU and in particular to isolate COSATU General Secretary Comrade Zwelinzima Vavi.
We call on those who have made it their profession to be faceless sources and spew to the media sensitive organizational engagements whenever COSATU meetings are taking place to disengage from this anti-organisational and divisive behaviour.
We want to totally reject any insinuations that our federation, COSATU, including its affiliates is divided along factional lines as led by General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi and President Sidumo Dlamini. This a figmentation of imagination by those opposed to COSATU's principled posture on the many class battles faced by the working class and the poor in the current conjecture.
Lastly, as NUMSA we are fully behind COSATU's position that premature discussion of ANC leadership contestations might divert the ANC and the Alliance in advancing and implementing the five priority areas of the 2009 electoral manifesto commitments and the pro-working class 2007 Polokwane resolutions.
Statement issued by Mbuso Ngubane, NUMSA KwaZulu-Natal Regional Secretary, April 29 2012
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