Union Leader Warns: South African Political Alliance Fractures as Rivals Turn on Each Othe

CAPE TOWN BULLETIN

Cosatu Fights to Hold Fractured Alliance Together as ANC and SACP Clash Over Elections

Solly Mapaila has a pointed observation: the alliance council has not met even once since Cyril Ramaphosa took office. That single fact captures how far the tripartite alliance, the political structure anchoring South African life for three decades, has drifted from any semblance of unity.

The immediate flashpoint is the South African Communist Party’s decision to run candidates independently in November’s local government elections. That move has opened a chasm between the SACP and the African National Congress. With both parties now competing for the same voters and the same constituencies, ordinary alliance members face an impossible choice at the ballot box. The verbal exchanges between senior leaders have grown increasingly sharp, with no sign of reconciliation.

Cosatu emerged from a two-day central executive committee meeting this week with a stark message: the alliance can still be saved, but only if the parties commit to serious dialogue. “The federation will continue engaging its partners and will intensify its efforts to convene the alliance and develop a common programme before and after the local government elections,” the organization stated in its post-meeting statement.

Yet the federation’s own words reveal how dire things have become. Cosatu expressed particular frustration that the alliance political council and summit have never been convened, despite repeated requests. “The current challenges confronting the alliance cannot be wished away or postponed indefinitely,” the CEC noted, a pointed acknowledgment that the problems run far deeper than scheduling conflicts.

The SACP shows little willingness to back down. The party remains firm in its refusal to cooperate with the ANC in post-election coalitions, arguing that the ANC has abandoned working-class interests in favor of neoliberal policies. Its leadership has also made clear its opposition to the ANC’s partnership with the Democratic Alliance in the government of national unity. Mapaila, the SACP’s General Secretary, has placed blame directly on Ramaphosa for the alliance’s paralysis.

Meanwhile, Cosatu is fighting a crisis of its own. The federation’s membership has collapsed from nearly three million workers in 2012 to approximately 1.5 million today. The causes are multiple: the rise of the SA Federation of Trade Unions as a rival organization, widespread retrenchments across the economy, and a growing shift among workers toward alternative dispute resolution mechanisms rather than traditional union representation.

Cosatu’s leadership has refused to treat this decline as a background statistic. “This cannot be treated as a statistical problem,” the organization said bluntly. “It represents a weakening of the organised power of workers at a time when employers are intensifying attacks on collective bargaining, employment security and workers’ rights.” For the workers those words describe, the erosion is not abstract. It is felt in weakened bargaining positions, reduced job security, and a shrinking institutional voice in national politics.

The federation’s push to preserve the alliance appears partly rooted in that vulnerability. A fractured alliance means a weakened voice for organized labor at precisely the moment that voice is already diminished. Yet Cosatu’s ability to broker peace between the ANC and SACP remains uncertain. The SACP’s ideological objections to ANC policy run deep, and neither party has signaled willingness to compromise on the fundamental issues dividing them. Whether Cosatu’s calls for unity can hold as the local government elections approach, and what a permanent split would mean for the workers the federation represents, is the question neither party has yet answered.