COSATU Media Monitor, 8 December 2009

Cosatu and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) have thrown their weight behind a class action suit by lawyers representing survivors of apartheid to hold multinational companies who collaborated with the apartheid regime to account for their actions.

1.2 Infighting splits Sadtu

Sowetan, 08 December 2009

SOUTH AFRICAN Democratic Teachers Union president Thobile Ntola has been asked to resolve a dispute among union members in the Umlazi district in Durban, the union said yesterday.

Ntola will address hundreds of teachers in Umlazi this morning, according to Sadtu Umlazi deputy chairperson Bukhosi Mzolo.

“We have called in the president to address our members because there is a group of Sadtu members who want to weaken our organisation through smear campaigns,” he said.

The divisions emerged recently when Sadtu provincial leaders called for the resignation of KwaZulu-Natal education head Cassius Lubisi and four other senior officials.

Sadtu leaders accused the officials of misappropriating millions of rands of the department’s funds.

One of the officials, Umlazi district director Mlu Ntombela, has been suspended pending a probe by the provincial department of education.

Some union members want all five officials to be suspended. Others believe the investigation is a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Some union members feel that the Sadtu leaders who took office this year are trying to replace the five officials with their friends.

Sadtu provincial secretary Mbuyiseni Mathonsi said only a few Sadtu members were opposed to the investigation.

“We have been told that they are doing this to help (former Sadtu president) Willie Madisha to form a Cope-linked teachers union in Durban,” he said.

It was recently reported that Madisha, a Cope leader, was in the process of forming a teachers union aligned to his party . Sadtu is aligned with the ANC.

However, this was denied by Sadtu member Nhlanhla Ngcobo.

“It is not true at all. We are just raising concerns about the behaviour of our leaders. We will not leave Sadtu.”

He said many Sadtu members were leaving the union because they were not happy with its leadership.

“We have leaders who are very arrogant. They are only interested in pursuing their own personal goals and they neglect teachers ,” he said. – Sapa

1.3 Popcru ‘no’ to private prisons

Sowetan, 08 December 2009

THE Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union reiterated its opposition to privatised prisons yesterday following its national executive meeting at the weekend.

“Popcru maintains a strong stance to oppose at all cost privatisation of prisons as it will compromise labour rights of our members,” the union said .

The government is planning to start the construction of several new prisons next year.

Correctional Services Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula in August said the first new prison, the Kimberley Correctional Centre, was expected to be commissioned in January.

Four smaller prisons should be completed in Klerksdorp, Nigel, East London and Paarl by 2012. – Sapa

1.4 Shocking matric exam report leaked

By MSINDISI FENGU, Dispatch online, 8 December 2009

A LEAKED report on irregularities at various exam centres revealed that some pupils in the Eastern Cape wrote their 2009 matric exams while drunk.

This is after this year’s exams were given the thumbs-up by unions and departmental officials last week.

The report said one pupil, who was found drunk at a school in the Engcobo district, was even “moving in and out of the exam room for the rest of the writing”.

However, this pupil and two others from another school in the district were allowed to continue writing separately from other candidates, while others were closely watched by invigilators.

The names of the schools and pupils involved are known to the Dispatch.

The report also said a pupil at a former Model C school in East London was caught cheating . “She was found with crib notes and she was then given a new answer book, but she decided not to continue writing and left the examination room,” states the report.

Another pupil was arrested for assault and robbery, while yet another ran away when he saw a police vehicle entering the school’s premises during his history exam.

Yesterday, South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) in the province slammed the pupils’ “unbecoming behaviour” and called for stricter rules to be enforced at exam centres.

Sadtu provincial secretary Fezeka Loliwe said a programme was needed to deal with the “unbecoming behaviour” of pupils. “There is a need for a clear programme to assist schools in dealing with these matters.”

However, provincial Education Department spokesperson Loyiso Pulumani said there was no need for any specific rule to deal with drunk pupils. “Schools have codes of conduct which pupils have to adhere to and it is never permissible for pupils to be drunk at school.”

Pulumani said there would be an investigation. “They were allowed to continue writing, but a specific irregularities committee will determine the outcome … This depends on the seriousness of each case and its merits,” he said.

2. South Africa

2.1 ANC ‘demands’ meeting with Ginwala

IOL Political Bureau, 8 December 2009

The ANC is insisting on a meeting with former National Assembly speaker Frene Ginwala despite her attempts to clarify her reported comments about the country's "poor leadership" carried in a Sunday newspaper.

The party said yesterday it was "utterly disappointed" in the comments attributed to her in the Sunday Times report and castigated her for not having "the decency to call the ANC leadership or the president to tell her side of the story".

"In our meeting with Miss Ginwala, we want her to clarify what she said and the context in which she did so," ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu said.

Ginwala - who until former president Thabo Mbeki was ousted as party boss in 2007 was a member of the ANC's national executive committee - was quoted as questioning the quality of political leadership in the country.

Mthembu yesterday suggested her comments were a result of her suffering "Post-Polokwane traumatic stress".

In the Sunday Times report, she criticised the ANC for failing to rein in ANC Youth League president Julius Malema for showing disrespect to his elders. She said the failure indicated poor leadership.

"We don't teach our youth to respect elders. And it is worse when the young political leadership doesn't respect leaders. You do not get senior leadership complaining about it."

Ginwala also highlighted President Jacob Zuma's decision to award public office bearers a 7 percent increase as an example of poor leadership, in contrast to belt-tightening by Mbeki and his predecessor, Nelson Mandela.

Ginwala yesterday tried to clarify her criticism of Zuma in a letter to the Sunday Times, which she released to the media.

She said the discussion with the reporter had taken place at an international meeting that praised "President Zuma's policies on HIV/Aids and in particular his statement that he had taken and would be taking an Aids test."

Mthembu said the ANC wanted to remind "Doubting Thomases" that Zuma was "his own man" and "not a copycat" when it came to the issues.

2.2 Nationalisation not fatal: Malema

By NIVASHNI NAIR, Times Live, 8 December 2009

ANC Youth League president Julius Malema has admitted he was no economist and that his "low low" matric results reflected his highest qualification. But it did not stop him predicting that markets would accept the nationalisation of mining.

Mobilising support for nationalisation at the 16th national congress of the South African Students' Congress in Durban, Malema dismissed the "excuse" that the markets would reject a state-controlled mining industry.

"The markets are not easily scared. They will show signs of reluctance in the beginning, but in time they will come around.

"When Trevor Manuel took over finances, the markets were scared but then [after] a very short time, and I mean a short time, Trevor was the darling of the markets," he said yesterday.

Malema wants foreign investors to be taught politics. "They invest in countries with civil war. If [President Robert] Mugabe was not literally chasing them from Zimbabwe they would have been continuing to mine blood diamonds. So I can't understand why they would be afraid to invest in a country where there is a robust debate over nationalisation.

"You don't get killed in a democratic debate yet they will invest in every country where there is oil, but people are being killed in war every day," he explained.

Delegates applauded when he questioned why Anglo Platinum would be afraid to invest in a stable South Africa: "They were not scared to invest when there was apartheid. They were comfortable with apartheid, yet the country was volatile. They invested when our rights were being violated and we were being killed."

When Malema met representatives of the world's largest platinum miner last year, he told them the gap between rich and poor in South Africa was becoming too great.

"The rich keep getting richer and it is white males that continue to own the means of production in the country. Not even Tokyo [Sexwale], who is the minister of human settlements, is an owner. Tokyo is owing the white baas because he wants to borrow from the banks. Who owns the banks? Tokyo is a rich man, but he doesn't own," Malema said.

He said the "faces of colonialism" might have given up political power, but they refused to give the economy to the people.

"You can vote until you are purple in the face, but your vote will be useless unless the doors to the economy are opened for you," he said.

2.3 Hospital slam after father’s death

Sipokazi Maposa, IOL, 8 December 2009

The ex-wife of late ANC stalwart Imam Gassan Solomon is furious with Constantiaberg Medi-Clinic after a nurse allegedly removed his life support machine in front of their 12-year-old daughter Aminah.

Nazly Solomon has accused the hospital of negligence and insensitivity, saying it acted "unethically and irresponsibly".

Hospital manager Clive Lake said the hospital had the family's permission to turn off the life support machine, adding that the incident was being investigated.

"The feedback will be given directly to Mrs Solomon. We repeat our sincere condolences to Mrs Solomon, to her family and friends on the passing of Mr Solomon," he said.

The anti-apartheid activist and a co-founder of the Muslim radio station, Voice of the Cape, died about five weeks ago after a battle with prostate cancer.

He was a member of the United Democratic Front and an ANC MP who served in three administrations.

His former wife now claims that Aminah had suffered such bad anxiety attacks after watching her father die that she had not been able to write her exams.

Solomon said she was also disappointed to discover that the hospital had no policy about minors being present when family members' life support machines were turned off.

She alleged that the hospital had not warned Aminah about the procedure or offered her counselling. The girl fled the hospital in tears after apparently watching a nurse remove the oxygen pipes that were keeping her father alive.

"Since the episode of witnessing her father's death, Aminah has suffered from insomnia, anxiety attacks and restlessness. She has become a nervous wreck and she always wants to throw things around and break glass."

The child is seeing a psychologist, she said.

Aminah said she had been holding her father's hand when a nurse came into the room and started to remove the oxygen pipes.

Nazly Solomon said she had complained to hospital management about the incident but her concerns had been brushed aside.

"The lack of concern displayed was very disappointing.

"My daughter is suffering post-traumatic stress disorder due to their negligence and, after telling them about what happened, the management didn't even have decency to offer her counselling or pay for the therapy she's getting from the psychologist."

2.4 ANC notes report on bid for shift power in the alliance

Business Report, 7 December 2009

The ANC on Monday said a weekend media report on a discussion document which effectively sought to shift power from the ruling party to the alliance was a work in progress.

Spokesman Jackson Mthembu said the document, on which the City Press article was based, was not a Congress of SA Trade Unions document, but was sponsored by the alliance secretariat.

At an alliance summit last month, the alliance partners -- the ANC, Cosatu and the South African Communist Party -- resolved to return the document to the secretariat for proper processing through alliance structures.

Once the document was reworked, it would be distributed to alliance structures.

City Press reported that the "top secret lobbying document" put forward by Cosatu leaders suggested that policies and deployment should be determined by the alliance and not the ANC alone.

According to the article, the ANC had rejected the document "Draft alliance programme of action for fundamental transformation of society".

According to the newspaper, the document stated that: "A qualitative shift in our politics and practice will entail a functioning alliance that determines strategy and deployment jointly."

The document called for the creation of a structure to "manage the day-to-day affairs of the alliance", and which was likely to parallel the ANC's national working committee. – Sapa

2.5 The rise (and denied fall?) of Baleka Mbete

By Stephen Grootes, Eye Witness News, 7 December 2009

Baleka Mbete once ruled the roost. Where is she now?

There was a time when Baleka Mbete quite literally set the public agenda. She could chuck you out of the National Assembly. She decided whether your motion got much airtime. She would sit and tut-tut her way through a parliamentary sitting. In essence she ruled the roost. Then quite suddenly, in a series of events that are still not really explained, she was gone. Back to Luthuli House.

She will utterly deny any claim that she’s lost political power in any way. But she has departed the public political stage … and is now hardly heard.

Mbete is a tough nut. She doesn’t take nonsense and has no patience with someone she sees as opposed to her own agenda. Many see her as a very unsympathetic, selfish figure. She was elevated to the post of Speaker of the National Assembly (which, under certain constitutional conditions can be acting president in a crunch) after the 2004 elections. Then President Thabo Mbeki was in a foul mood at the time, and he became frustrated after Frene Ginwala ummed and ahed a little about whether she wanted another go at the job. From nowhere, it seemed, Mbeki just appointed Mbete.

Mbete said thanks in the best political way possible. She protected Mbeki and the ANC using the powers of her office. Debates seemed to be one ANC MP after another saying roughly the same thing about the same issues. Tony Leon’s Democratic Alliance became more and more frustrated, and couldn’t really do much about it (its caucus was much smaller than it is now). Mbete’s supporters will say that that’s all nonsense, and that she had no part in stifling debate within the chamber. But it must also be remembered, that one of the things President Jacob Zuma promised when he took over at Polokwane was a return to the days of Parliament actually exercising its oversight role. Clearly many people within the ANC felt this had been lost and the executive was getting away with murder. Mbete must surely carry the can for some of that.

Two incidents serve to demonstrate the mood of the green-benched chamber during this time. One was the announcement by Mbete of Parliament’s theme for the year 2007. It was “Asijule Ngengxoxo Lusha Iwase Mzansi”. For the linguistically challenged that’s “Let’s deepen the debate, South Africa”. It was met with open guffaws. The sight of her, the ANC’s hatchet-woman on the Speaker’s chair suggesting that debate wasn’t open enough when she had done so much to stifle it herself, was just too much.

But in another way, another side of Mbete was also apparent. She agreed to an interview on the subject. This put me in a difficult situation. If you’re English speaking, try saying “Ngengxoxo”. It’s a tongue breaker, it moves around a little towards the back of your palate. And she’s so not the person to get that wrong with. Having spent the better part of an afternoon practicing, we went to air. And she was absolutely charming, funny, intelligent, completely coherent. I was glad when the interview was over, but I was completely flummoxed by how much I’d enjoyed it.

Someone who didn’t enjoy her at all was the DA’s Mike Waters. It was he who perhaps more than most pushed her buttons, and ended up being thrown out of the National Assembly for his trouble. At issue was that person who had pushed some buttons herself, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. Waters asked a parliamentary question about reports that she’d been out on the piss with her new liver. It was ruled out of order, he protested, and, trembling with anger and frustration, he was kicked out. It was a black day for our democracy. It was obvious to everyone that the question, going to the heart and liver of possible corruption, misuse of resources and plain old abuse of power, was perfectly legitimate. Perhaps it could have been put more sensitively, but it was all quite correct and proper.

Mbete just acted on instinct, and didn’t think everything through. In the end we had the spectacle of her chucking him out. It really showed that for her, the office of Speaker wasn’t a purely neutral one.

There were also two scandals that involved her, one primarily, one peripherally. In 1997, just a year after being appointed deputy speaker, it was found her driver’s license wasn’t legal. This was uncovered during a routine Mpumalanga scandal involving other fake licenses. Her response was typical Mbete; she “didn’t have time” to stand in queues. One presumes the queues in Mpumalanga could have been pretty long, but it demonstrated her vociferous style when confronted with wrong-doing. It also showed that she doesn’t seem to do shame very well. That led to another mini-scandal, when the Sowetan and Sunday Times claimed she’d also lied on an ID application. It appears she was on much stronger ground there and survived, despite headlines screaming that “her career was on the line”.

The other scandal, which perhaps showed how far she was willing to go for the ruling party was Travelgate. It emerged that MPs, mostly from the ANC, but from other parties as well, were skimming money from travel agents. It was the classic making-money-from-the-system scam. Of course, the money that was stolen was ours. She was one of them. Here, she engaged brain, paying it all back. But what she didn’t want to do was take harsh action against the other MPs.

It can be difficult to know what the right things are in cases like these. On the one hand, MPs had clearly benefited at our expense. On the other, it was a bit more complicated, with the travel agents not playing the game entirely legally themselves either. But what was clear was that if Mbete had literally said this was something she couldn’t countenance, wouldn’t accept, and felt was completely illegal, the outcome could have been different. Of course, she had cocked it up by being involved. To put all of this another way, it’s pretty easy to think that if Ginwala had still been Speaker, this could have turned out very differently.

But behaving in the way she did was unlikely to stop her from getting a good spot on the Zuma ticket at Polokwane. There was a little bit of horse trading involved, but in the end Tokyo Sexwale stopped his campaign to become chairman of the party. Everyone saw through him when he claimed he was standing down “in the name of gender transformation”. It was pretty funny actually. Anyway, she took the job, and the power to set the agenda at ANC conferences. Remember how Mosuia Lekota was the person who had to call Polokwane to order? He also got to ban the “100% Zuma” shirts, order people around and generally run the show. It’s a top job. And it was pretty similar to her day job.

Her position was rising pretty quickly then, and she didn’t seem to suffer at all from the fact that she’d been one of Mbeki’s favourites. During the Mbeki recall saga her star was at such a height that she was even mentioned as a possible acting president. I was on the same SAA flight to Cape Town as she was the night before Parliament formally elected Kgalema Motlanthe to occupy Thuynhuis. The captain felt compelled to mention that his plane had the Speaker on board. When we landed, she was met by a rather large Mercedes-Benz that drove right up to the landing stairs. I had to put aside my copy of “Animal Farm” to watch her make her way down to it.

It was a long journey for Baleka Mmakota Mbete from her birthplace in Durban that started in 1949. In those days one of the best ways for someone in her position to rise up the social ladder was to become a teacher. She qualified from the teachers’ training college in Lovedale in the late 1960s, and got involved in the ANC at around the same time. After teaching for a couple of years in her hometown, she moved to Swaziland, perhaps under the orders of the ANC. Many other senior ANC leaders were there at the time - both Zuma and Mbeki knew that part of the world very well. From there she spent the late 70s in Tanzania, deeply involved in the ANC and became one of the more prominent exiles. She also had three sons and two daughters. By the time she returned following the ANC’s un-banning she was in a good position to be the secretary general of the ANC Women’s League and then, in a way that seems quite bizarre now, was one of the main spokespeople for the ANC during the 1994 elections. From there she became an MP and then deputy speaker.

But her trip up the slippery pole really seemed to have climaxed when she was appointed deputy president, after the Mbeki recall. After this year’s elections it seemed she might stay in the job under Zuma, especially as the smear campaign was raging against Motlanthe (it included claims about his private life and slightly younger women). But then one of the bigger political mysteries of the last year occurred.

Zuma had been elected president and Mbete was sitting in the front row with all the other MPs. They were being sworn in five or 10 at a time. When it was her turn, she didn’t stand up. Her name was called, but she simply stayed where she was and gave some kind of brief wave. It was claimed later that day by the ANC’s spin staff, that she couldn’t take the oath because she was still deputy president. But, of course, that was nonsense and her gesture was simply not defensible; five years earlier, one Jacob Zuma had taken the MP’s oath while still deputy president in 2004. Mbete’s career had clearly taken a bad turn on the road to power.

Yet, what really happened is still a mystery: that Friday afternoon, just 12 hours before Zuma’s inauguration started, the ANC put out a statement saying she would “remain at Luthuli House”. No explanation was given apart from a brief claim that she wanted to concentrate on ANC duties. That’s still the line from ANC insiders. She wanted to look at rebuilding the organisation, and perhaps, they hint, her age played a part. That’s possible, although with a stated age of 60, that seems unlikely. Zuma is six years older for a start. Before we haul out the usual chunk of salt, the party did say, quite consistently since Polokwane, that Mbeki had erred by taking all the party’s talent into government. They’ve always said they wanted to keep some of its brains in the party, to focus on rebuilding it. Hmm, okay, let’s now look at the salt.

Mbete has always been fairly ambitious. Maybe she was simply unable to accept that she can’t be Number Two in the country, a job clearly reserved for Motlanthe. She’s always pushed herself and others. She appeared to enjoy her time as Speaker, and the power it gave her. Did she suddenly lose the oomph? Unlikely. Was she being punished for being too close to Mbeki? Also unlikely. So what is going on now?

She does report for work at Sauer Street every morning, and there’s no doubt plenty of work to keep her busy. The ANC could do with some rebuilding at branch and provincial level. But on a public level, she’s virtually disappeared. She’s rarely seen during photo opportunities at NEC meetings. Perhaps she can’t face us. Perhaps she just generally doesn’t like the media (that strikes us as particularly likely), or has lost her appetite for the spotlight. That strikes us as against most of what we already know about her. But to her spending her day in Luthuli House’s corridors of power rather than ruling those of Parliament must be frustrating. And what is pretty clear is that this is probably how it’s going to end for her. This is probably her last job, real or not. It is difficult to see how she’ll come back to national office now. And even if she did, many people have already jumped ahead in the queue.

But, as always with the ANC, it’s not that simple. In fact, she gets to chair meetings of both the National Executive Committee and the National Working Committee. And we all know who really runs the country.

Mluleki Mntungwa (Communications Officer)

COSATU ICT Unit

1-5 Leyds Cnr Biccard Street

Braamfontein

2007

P.O.Box 1019

Johannesburg

2000

South Africa

Tel: +27 11 339-4911/24

Fax: +27 11 339-5080/6940

E-Mail: mlu...@cosatu.org.za

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