THE national executive committee of the SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) on Sunday confirmed it had suspended four of its national office bearers with immediate effect.
The four national office bearers, who include SAFTU president Mac Chavalala, were suspended for their role in seeking to illegally suspend Secretary General Zwelinzima Vavi.
SAFTU said the four abused their powers and brought the union federation into disrepute.
The union federation said their decision to place Vavi on suspension was unconstitutional, arguing that only SAFTU’s NEC and its central committee had the powers to suspend the general secretary.
Vavi, who is general secretary of the federation, told the media this week that Irvin Jim, head of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), was behind the “trumped-up charges” that his Saftu colleagues have cited as reasons to suspend him.
Vavi, former general secretary of the Cosatu trade union federation, said his relationship with Jim soured after the Saftu leadership rejected his plea to endorse the Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party (SRWP), which was launched by Numsa to contest the 2019 elections. Numsa is a Saftu affiliate.
Jim and Vavi were close allies at Cosatu before they were both expelled in 2015, after which Saftu was launched. Before his departure from Cosatu, Vavi was accused of, among other things, having misused a union credit card to pay for flights for his wife and ex-wife.
Committee for a Workers International said in a statement this week that the suspension of Vavi was “a cynical attempt, ahead of Saftu’s May congress and especially Numsa’s June congress, to distract attention from the revelations of eye-watering corruption in the Numsa Investment Company (NIC) whose insurance and funeral underwriter subsidiary, 3Sixty Life, has been placed under provisional curatorship. It is an attempt to ensure comrade Ivin Jim’s re-election within Numsa, and, through Vavi’s ouster in Saftu, ensure his control of the federation’s NOBs.”
“The Saftu NOBs are sowing division in the working class at the worst possible time. This is why the capitalist media has seized on Vavi’s suspension with glee. It takes place against the background of the capitalist ruling class’ most serious attack on the working class since the dawn of democracy.”
- Inside Politics
