JOHANNESBURG - The recent manoeuvring by mutually hostile factions within the African National Congress (ANC) and its allies in the tripartite alliance raises questions about whether the alliance can survive in its present form and, if not, what its future might be.
Such disputes generally provoke speculation as to whether one of alliance's three members, the ANC, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) will walk out.
The most frequently talked of scenario is one in which Cosatu withdraws from the alliance and serves as the god-father of a worker's party in opposition to the ANC.
This was a possibility articulated more than a decade ago in a report by Connie September, the then deputy president of Cosatu. The report anticipates three possible future scenarios for Cosatu, one of which, codenamed The Desert, anticipated the withdrawal of Cosatu from the tripartite alliance.
Unlike the scenarios codenamed Skorokoro and Pap ‘n Vleis, The Desert does not have a happy ending. It leads to either revolution or the rise of a rival workers' party to the ANC. The scenario needs to be seen as a prediction that might yet occur, but not a prediction of what will inevitably take place.
Cosatu is highly critical of the ANC today. It accuses the ANC leadership of not fulfilling its promises to the poor. Its strategy is to re-orient ANC policy in a pro-poor direction by a mixture of cajolery and coaxing.