By Simon Nare
With months to go before the 2026 Local Government Elections, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is still caught between a rock and a hard place as the stand-off between alliance partners the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP) persists.
The trade union federation was thrown a curve ball when the SACP resolved in its special congress in December 2024 to contest for state power, and now it finds itself at a crossroads about who its members should vote for at the ballot box.
COSATU national office bearers and ANC national officials held a bilateral meeting on Monday, and the federation’s parliamentary spokesman, Matthew Parks, said although the issue didn’t come up in the discussions, it remained a sticky point in the alliance.
Parks said the bilateral discussions centered around the state of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR), reconfiguration of the alliance, and the role of the labour movement in driving economic growth.
He told Inside Politics that COSATU put some proposals forward on how to grow the economy, noting that 1% economic growth in the past two decades was not enough to create jobs and lure investors.
Parks denied that the ANC was trying to twist its arm to campaign with the liberation movement and have its members vote for the ANC and not the SACP.
He said although the federation’s resolution in its last congress was to vote for the ANC and that it was bound by it, the SACP’s resolution to be on the ballot had rocked the boat.
In this regard, COSATU’s central executive committee has mandated its leadership to engage both alliance partners with a view to unite the alliance ahead of the elections.
“What we made clear in our central committee and beyond is that we don’t want COSATU to be divided by the ANC and SACP, we don’t want workers to be made to make that choice, hence our mandate by the central committee is for COSATU to intervene and to call the alliance partners together and see how we resolve this issue,” he said.
Parks said of greater concern was that there were only months remaining until voters went to the polls, and yet the impasse remained unresolved.
The SACP has been unwavering on its resolution to contest for state power, despite poor performances in by-elections.
As an example, in Seshego Ward 13 in Limpopo, it only secured 1.9% compared to the ANC’s 48.9% in a ward won by the EFF.
Its support in the by-elections has been underwhelming overall and indications are that it will not make a significant dent to the ANC’s performance.
The ANC has called for cool heads in the impasse as the party’s Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula cautioned that SACP’s contestation would further weaken its already shaky support at the polls following its failure to win majority support in the national and provincial elections in May 2024 for the first time since democracy.
Mbalula warned the ANC not to be arrogant in trying to persuade its alliance partner not to contest and in the same breath sounded the alarm to SACP leadership that contesting for state power was an uphill climb.
The secretary general said the implication of the SACP contesting the elections needed to be interrogated and whether this would strengthen or weaken the alliance, without even debating the reconfiguration of the alliance.
“[I]f we reach an agreement on reconfiguration like some comrades are saying there is an agreement, how do we then see that reconfiguration unfolding in the context of a possibility of the party, as a political party, standing on its own.”
“These are hard questions that must be answered, not emotionally. We had very good discussions with the party. We are going into a discussion this coming weekend at the national executive committee,” he said.
Parks told Inside Politics after the meeting that the federation was still hoping that a solution could be found which would unite the alliance before the elections.
“We don’t know what are the modalities but they must make sense to the electoral law and the elections landscape….What we can’t do is not to work together as a single unit on elections day,” he said.
In a joint statement released after the bilateral meeting, the ANC and COSATU said both parties committed to the unity and strategic coherence of the alliance.
“Both organisations affirmed that the ANC-led Alliance remains the primary political instrument for the realisation of the people’s aspirations, and that renewal, discipline, and revolutionary morality must define its cadres in this phase of struggle,” said the statement.
INSIDE POLITICS