New+UDF+to+challenge+the+ANC,+Sindy

Sunday Independent, Front Page, August 7, 2005
=New UDF to challenge the ANC=


 * //Unemployed and disenchanted workers hope to revive the extra-parliamentary pressure group//**


 * By Christelle Terreblanche**

The United Democratic Front (UDF) is set to be revived this month and could be the forerunner to a political movement to the left of the governing ANC.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has joined forces with civil society, religious bodies and social movements to build what it hopes will result in a formidable extra-parliamentary pressure group against poverty and unemployment, based on the 1980s coalition of anti-apartheid organisations.

The first provincial chapter of the new UDF is scheduled to be launched at a mass meeting in Cape Town on August 22, 22 years after the UDF was born in Cape Town on August 20 1983.

Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu's national general secretary, confirmed that other provincial chapters were in the pipeline along with a national coalition between civil society and labour.

"This is the working class on the run," said Vavi. "We are trying to reverse the economic setbacks of the past 11 years."

He could not be drawn on the future of the movement, but said a coalition against unemployment was the most important immediate objective for Cosatu, which was planning another national stayaway against job losses on August 29.

Plans are afoot to forge a new Freedom Charter-type document of key demands to underpin campaigns. It is also understood that a number of former UDF patrons are to be invited to join. They have not been named, but surviving candidates include clerics the Reverend Allan Boesak, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, now Tshwane's mayor.

Tony Ehrenreich, Cosatu's Western Cape secretary who is spearheading the revival, said the new UDF had grown out of Cosatu's jobs campaign.

"It might not have been a stated objective of Cosatu, but once we started working with other organisations to define the programme, one was affected by their aspirations," he said in an interview.

"And so ordinary people in landless organisations, churches, social movements, backyard dwellers, the New Women's Movement and a number of NGOs all came on board with cross-cutting issues. So now what you have is essentially the makings of a UDF against unemployment and poverty."

Ehrenreich said the new UDF aimed to increase pressure on the ANC government to change policies affecting the poor and the working class. It was also expected to up the ante on policy and ideological confrontations between Cosatu and the ANC over the growth, employment and redistribution policy, Gear, and its consequences.

He said a unifying factor among the organisations that met weekly to prepare for the launch was a shared view that economic structures and ownership patterns were left intact after 1994 and that poverty was deepening as a result.

"There's an urgent need to confront the economic construct and change it," he said. "And so this is going to bring about a much more robust and abrasive engagement, within the alliance and between civil society and the government, and much more pressure by a much more unified people."

The proposed "new Freedom Charter demands" included a basic income grant, higher spending by the state on transport, education and health care, and changes to other policies that had led to "deepening poverty, lack of delivery in public services and increasing levels of inequality".

Said Ehrenreich: "If we don't respond to these [poverty] issues within the ANC and alliance, this [movement] has the potential to be the new left party. That's not our objective at this stage, but nobody can say that [a party] won't be a consequence of people with a common interest coming together at a mass level and saying the present construct is not serving their needs."

Peter Dwyer of the Alternative Information and Development Centre, one of the groups prominent in the relaunch, said: "It is obvious that we are trying to build on the rich history of the UDF, although we are acutely aware that we cannot be the UDF. It is a different time."

Ehrenreich added: "Certainly there are contradictions and differing agendas. But what we want to pull together with this freedom charter-type list of demands is the minimum platform [of demands] to improve the lives of working families."

While Cosatu was one of the new UDF's architects, it was "the kind of movement that will grow way beyond itself, way beyond Cosatu, and will have an identity of its own".

At this stage it is uncertain whether the ANC would be asked to join, although Cosatu leaders insisted that all who shared the interests of the working class would be welcomed.


 * From: http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=2820211**