Last dance? ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma with his daughter Duduzile at his 65th birthday party at 
Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre in Durban on Friday night. Picture: Thembinkosi Dwayisa 

 Insiders say Zwelinzima Vavi’s about-turn is the result of a central executive committee meeting  

There is pressure on Cosatu to back ANC Secretary-General Kgalema Motlanthe

The Congress of South African Trade Unions’ leaders have demanded that the federation drop its support for Jacob Zuma as its preferred candidate for the presidency of the ANC.

Zuma’s candidacy came under debate at a heated Cosatu central executive committee meeting held at the federation’s Johannesburg headquarters from February 26 to 28. The contents of the meeting were a closely guarded secret, until now.

At the meeting, Cosatu General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi faced a barrage of questions from fellow executive committee members about the “wisdom” of continuing to back Zuma in the face of the ANC deputy president’s legal woes.

Cosatu leaders said the move arose out of “serious considerations” that Zuma might be facing corruption charges by December, when the ANC’s national conference takes place in Polokwane, Limpopo.

This is a big blow for Zuma’s presidential ambitions because Vavi and other Cosatu leaders have been at the forefront of advocating his candidacy ­ alongside the ANC Youth League and the South African Communist Party.

Cosatu leaders who attended the meeting told the Sunday Times that most executive members had expressed reservations about backing a corruption triallist.

“Imagine a situation where we will have an ANC president who will spend most of his time attending court hearings,” said a Cosatu official this week.

Vavi was told that “the workers” never took a formal resolution to support Zuma for the ANC presidency, but rather to give him support in the face of a perceived abuse of power by the state.

In recent months, the National Prosecuting Authority has made clear its intentions to press ahead with corruption charges against Zuma ­ applying to courts for access to documents that could implicate him in corruption.

The NPA was last week granted permission by the Durban High Court to seek access to a 2000 diary of Alain Thetard, the former chief executive of Thales International’s South African subsidiary, Thint.

The order, granted on April 2, allows NPA prosecutors to travel to Mauritius in search of Thetard’s diary, which the NPA believes contains details of a meeting that took place in March 2000 between Zuma, Thetard and Schabir Shaik. It is alleged that a R500 000 bribe for Zuma was allegedly discussed and agreed upon at that meeting.

Shaik is serving a 15-year sentence for fraud and corruption, related to his relationship with Zuma and Thint.

The Pretoria High Court last month also granted prosecutors permission to request information from British banks that might lead them to discover cash flows between Thint, Shaik and Zuma.

According to senior Cosatu officials, Vavi told the executive committee that he had never said that Zuma should become the next president of the ANC.

This was the position that Vavi took yesterday, when he denied that names of potential candidates had been discussed at Cosatu’s February central executive committee meeting.

“This is not true. The discussion in Cosatu is still limited to the framework and to what we want corrected, what the problems are as we see them and what ideological content we need from the leadership collective.”

Vavi said the creation of a pool of potential candidates for the ANC national executive committee would be discussed at the coming central committee meeting in September. “We are still at the framework stage. The central committee is a broader body than the central executive committee and includes lower-ranking leaders,” he said.

Union insiders said this about-turn by Vavi ­ who said two years ago that a Zuma presidency was “an unstoppable tsunami” ­ was a result of the central executive committee meeting.

According to the Cosatu leaders, Vavi had suggested to the committee that the federation should consider having an alternative candidate. Insiders said there was growing pressure on Cosatu to officially back ANC Secretary-General Kgalema Motlanthe.

Cosatu’s KwaZulu-Natal Secretary, Zet Luzipho, said yesterday that the federation had not decided who to support. He added: “I doubt that the leadership of Cosatu would ever have a problem in terms of the name of Kgalema ...”

Cosatu’s revision of its stance comes as SACP General-Secretary Blade Nzimande also faces stiff opposition in party ranks over his relentless support for Zuma.

With acknowledgement to Moipone Malefane, Paddy Harper, Wally Mbhele and Sunday Times.