The Congress of South African Trade Unions’ 15th National Congress is once again on the verge of total collapse on Tuesday, with its 16 affiliates split down the middle on whether to pull the plug on the entire gathering after two days of chaos, insults and legal wrangling.
What was supposed to be a show of working-class unity has descended into farce.
By Tuesday afternoon, the four-day meeting at Gallagher Estate had not even started – marred instead by violence, shouting matches, and bitter disputes over its legality.
National office bearers were forced to send delegates to lunch and call yet another Central Executive Committee meeting after talks on the way forward broke down completely.
At the heart of the meltdown are the disputed credentials and the legal standing of first deputy president Mike Shingange.
Shingange, who wants to stand as Cosatu’s next president and is backed by powerful unions including the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), was placed on precautionary suspension on the eve ofbthe conference by his own union, Nehawu, where he is president.
Nehawu accuses him of violating its constitution by accepting nomination for the Cosatu top job without permission.
The matter is now in the Labour Court, according to insiders.
Because of that suspension, a majority of affiliates refused to submit their credential documents by lunchtime on Monday, demanding clarity first.
Now unions are using that very delay to argue that the congress is unconstitutional.
The NUM and the SA Municipal Workers Union are leading a push to postpone and dissolve the congress, invoking Section 3.4.2 of Cosatu’s constitution, which states: that If after three hours of the time fixed for the meeting, a quorum is not present, the meeting must stand adjourned to a time and place decided upon by the president, provided that the meeting must be held within a month.
A quorum was never reached on time on Monday. Therefore, the meeting must be adjourned for up to a month.
General secretary Solly Phetoe told delegates that a special CEC meeting, which sat late into Monday night and again on Tuesday morning, had resolved that Shingange’s suspension was under Nehawu’s constitution, not Cosatu’s — meaning he remains the federation’s first deputy president and is eligible to contest.
Nehawu itself told the floor it had no objection to Shingange contesting the election, insisting its issues with him were an internal union matter.
But the compromise was rejected.
A senior Cosatu official said NUM deputy president Olihile Kgwari was at the center of the arguments after he dismissed the CEC decision as legally worthless.
“It is not a ‘tested legal opinion’,” Kgwari said.
While admitting “a lot of money” will be lost by postponing the meeting, he insisted: “We must do things right.”
“We want to do justice to the resolutions… We don’t want to turn this congress into a battle of muscles. We move to evoke that clause [of the constitution] on the quorum,” he said.
While NUM and several affiliates are backing Shingange for president, Nehawu is understood to be throwing its weight behind SADTU deputy president Mabutho Cele – a proxy war that has paralysed the federation.
SADTU made an appeal for the congress to proceed, saying its members — bussed in from across the country — cannot afford the cost of another gathering if this one collapses.
No official slates for the top six positions have yet been announced.