It was billed as the main Workers’ Day celebration in the country, with President Jacob Zuma choosing it over nine other events countrywide.
But Tuesday’s event in Botshabelo, outside Bloemfontein, failed to get going.
First, SA Communist Party general secretary and Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande used Gauteng’s controversial e-tolling project to call on tripartite alliance members to rally together in their opposition against the project to prevent the DA and others from exploiting it for their own interests.
“We must remember that a postponement of e-tolling is exactly that – just a postponement… The delay gives us some space as the tripartite alliance to find a united way forward,” said Nzimande. “It is absolutely essential that we now unite ourselves – otherwise we will abandon this issue to the DA, AfriForum, the Automobile Association and other essentially right-wing, middle-class interest groups.”
He and Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini went on to dismiss reports of deepening rifts within the alliance ahead of the ANC’s elective conference in Mangaung in December – but, strangely, made impassioned pleas for unity in the alliance at the same time.
“There is no war between Cosatu and the SACP… We are not ganging up against the ANC,” said Dlamini.
When Zuma did speak, he lulled the paltry crowd of fewer than 2 000 with a long, winding and rather uninspiring and incoherent speech laden with repetitive chronicles of some of the historic moments in the workers’ struggle against exploitation and apartheid.
In what appeared to be an attack on former Gauteng premiers Mbhazima Shilowa and Paul Mashatile, Nzimande condemned the multibillion-rand Gautrain rapid rail link between Pretoria and Joburg.
“The Gautrain… doesn’t go anywhere near the major townships of Gauteng – Soweto, Orange Farm, Mamelodi or Soshanguve. When it does come closer to Tembisa or Alexandra, it does its best to skip around them. It is focused on white suburbs and business districts.”
Meanwhile, a group of about 200 disgruntled ANC members protested outside the ANC’s Free State office in Bloemfontein on Tuesday. They said they did not want Free State Premier Ace Magashule as ANC chairman. Their branch leaders were addressed by ANC executive member and the party’s head of policy, Jeff Radebe. One by one, he invited the branch leaders to the nearby Protea Hotel. - [email protected]
The Star