COSATU+response+to+Sunday+Independent+article

Media statement
=COSATU response to Sunday Independent article – 7 August 2005=

The Congress of South African Trade Unions wishes to correct the false impression created by an article in the Sunday Independent, 7 August 2005, entitled, “New UDF to challenge the ANC”. **COSATU is not creating an organization called the United Democratic Front and it is not challenging the ANC.**

The planned collaboration with other civil society groups on unemployment and policy is a continuation of a strategy which COSATU has pursued throughout its 20 years of existence. Indeed its constitution contains the clause, as one of our aims and objectives, that the federation will “Encourage democratic worker organisation and leadership in all spheres of our society together with other progressive sectors of the community.”

The main way in which this clause has been implemented has been through COSATU’s long-standing alliance with the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party and the South African National Civic Organisation.

We have however worked with many other progressive organisations, including the South African Council of Churches, the Treatment Action Campaign, the South African NGO Coalition, Black Sash, and many others, around such issues as the People’s Budget Campaign and the Basic Income Grant.

The decision to involve these and other groups in COSATU’s current Jobs and Poverty Campaign is therefore a logical continuation of a long-established policy, since all share a common concern at the high levels of unemployment and poverty which scar the lives of too many South Africans. These are not just problems for workers but for every South African and to resolve them we must build as broad-based a campaign as possible.

While the new organisation may well share some of the aims of the former UDF, no decision has been taken on using this name.

The decision to form this new grouping is totally compatible with our continued involvement in the alliance with the ANC, SACP and SANCO. Indeed we assume that they will all be key players in the forthcoming campaign, which in no way is intended to “challenge the ANC”, as the Independent’s article, and particularly its headline, seek to suggest. We shall aim to work closely together with the ANC to solve the crisis of joblessness and poverty, about which they share the concerns of all the other civil society groups who will be involved.

This campaign is emphatically not intending to establish a new political party, as the article suggests. COSATU remains 100% committed to support the ANC and that will remain its policy so long as that is the mandate of our members, the workers.

Congress of South African Trade Unions 1-5 Leyds Cnr Biccard Streets Braamfontein, 2017
 * Paul Notyhawa (Spokesperson)

P.O.Box 1019 Johannesburg, 2000 South Africa

Cell: 082 491 1591 Tel: +27 11 339-4911/24 Fax: +27 11 339-5080/6940 E-Mail: patrick@cosatu.org.za**