Citizen+Vavi,+Editorial,+Business+Day




 * Business Day, Johannesburg, Editorial, 28 September 2005**

=**Citizen Vavi**=

HOW ironic that labour federation Cosatu’s hard-hitting critique of government’s response to HIV/AIDS should be met with exactly the denialism that Cosatu lashed out at. Ironic, but sadly all too predictable.

The health department has accused Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi of being irresponsible and ignorant, and of being no more than a mouthpiece for the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which it has (yet again) tried to write off as a lobby group for the antiretroviral drug industry. This kind of cheap political rhetoric, and a smattering of figures on the antiretroviral roll-out, was the best the health department could come up with by way of a response to the speech Vavi made at the TAC’s congress at the weekend. Even if Cosatu were a TAC mouthpiece, it could do a lot worse. The TAC is widely regarded as one of the most effective civil society organisations SA has. Without it, there might not be a government-sponsored antiretroviral roll-out, even an inadequate one — it was the TAC’s successful Constitutional Court challenge that forced government into taking action.

But urging stronger action to combat HIV/AIDS doesn’t make Vavi, or anyone else, a TAC puppet. His comments at the TAC congress were eminently sensible and constructive, and government, employers and Cosatu’s own members ought to listen carefully — and to avoid denialist temptations to ignore the effect of the epidemic.

Vavi urged a comprehensive education and prevention campaign, by every department and sphere of government as well as by every civil society organisation. He called for serious sex education in our schools, and openness and honesty on the subject in the media, government and clinics. He called on government to address the fundamental problems of poor management and underfunding in the public health sector.

But Vavi also urged his own federation to gear up for the battle against HIV, ensuring every Cosatu affiliate take it up, that shop stewards play their role in counselling and prevention, and that every workplace has policies to deal with HIV/AIDS. Cosatu agreed with the TAC on a co-ordinated campaign.

It was sensible and timely stuff, and exactly the kind of thing a trade union federation should be saying as part of the politics of advancing and protecting members’ interests. Cosatu’s position on HIV/AIDS is an example of how it can play a constructive role as a political force of the left within the ruling alliance, putting pressure on government to do the right things for SA. Nor is this the only area where Cosatu plays this role. The position it took on Zimbabwe earlier this year was also sensible enough, and it did what it could in the circumstances — again in the face of an irrationally defensive response by government.

But it’s precisely when Cosatu is being its most sensible and useful as a political force that we have to wonder again why it has painted itself into such a destructive corner over the Jacob Zuma affair. It is surely not a trade union federation’s role to take up positions on the legal niceties of a criminal trial — as Cosatu did recently when it came out in support of the high court judgment that found against the Scorpions’ raid on Zuma’s former attorney, Julekha Mahomed.

Nor does it befit a federation whose primary role is to advance workers’ interests to decide that Zuma (or anyone else) “cannot possibly have a fair trial”. Undermining the prosecution authorities and the judicial system in the way that Cosatu has could well one day come back to bite the very workers the federation is mandated to defend.

That apart, there is no evidence to indicate Zuma would adopt particularly working class-friendly policies. Cosatu is playing dead-end politics on the Zuma issue. It’s high time it quietly let this one go.

From: http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=2893242&fSectionId=560&fSetId=662