COSATU Media Monitor, 30 September 2010
Mluleki Mntungwa
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Contents
1.1 Strike action to hit Kumba Iron Ore
1.2 Kumba planned strike won't affect output
1.4 Vavi denied public sector 'sold out' claims
1.5 A big day for wages in the clothing industry
1.6 Election Commission to source locally produced t-shirts
2.3 Vavi could take up another position in ANC - Mantashe
2.4 Firm paid R22m for partial job
3. Comments
3.1 The life and death of a township tenderpreneur
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1. Workers
1.1 Strike action to hit Kumba Iron Ore
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Fibre2fashion, 30 September 2010
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2. South Africa
2.1 'Cosatu must cool it'
Mantashe spells out role for unions
By DOMINIC MAHLANGU, The Times, 30 September 2010
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has called on trade union federation Cosatu to focus on grooming future national leaders instead of constantly arguing about the "strategic political centre" of the tripartite alliance
Mantashe yesterday told delegates to the elective conference of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union, in Boksburg, on the East Rand, that trade unions were the best schools for developing "revolutionary leaders".
He said a number of ministers in President Jacob Zuma's administration were products of Cosatu.
"It is a contradiction to say that the ANC leads a revolutionary alliance, but the alliance led by the ANC is not a strategic political centre [centre of political power]," Mantashe said.
He said trade unions should consider how they could strengthen their influence in the ANC. He said their failure to do so could lead to other social classes steering the ruling party away from the Left.
"Trade unions are the best schools for developing future leaders. They are schools for revolution," he said.
Mantashe told the conference that unions should be prepared to release for other duties the leaders that they produced.
Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi on Tuesday told the conference that the ANC's failure to affirm that its alliance with Cosatu and the SA Communist Party was South Africa's strategic political centre has resulted in the members of the federation feeling that they were being used merely to garner votes for the ruling party.
He said the union would continue to ask the ANC for answers.
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2.2 ANC to make use of Vavi
By Carien Du Plessis, The Star, 30 September 2010
The ANC is considering a suitable position for Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi when he steps down in 2012, says ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe.
But Vavi yesterday said he did not want to comment or “open a succession debate” in Cosatu with two years to go before the end of his term.
Speaking on the sidelines of the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) national congress in Boksburg, Mantashe told journalists the ANC should look at where it could deploy Vavi, if he told the labour federation in two years’ time that he was not available for re-election.
“We don’t plan for individuals, but as a cadre of the movement, there is a lot of investment made in him and we don’t want to throw that investment away. We must think about it.”
Vavi’s next job did not have to be a leadership position in the ANC or government, but could be in “farming, a college or political school”, Mantashe said.
Vavi, however, told The Star he did not want to speak about plans to step down, despite announcing at his re-election last year that he would resign in 2012.
He has been in the Cosatu leadership for more than a decade.
“I am carrying through the mandate of Cosatu for the next two years, that’s all,” he said, adding he had been criticised last year for announcing his intention to step down, and would rather not talk about it anymore.
The ANC last week affirmed its ban on any premature campaigns for leaders to be elected at its next conference in two years’ time.
Mantashe, who addressed the Nehawu delegates on behalf of the ruling party, after both President Jacob Zuma and his deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe, cancelled their appearances at the conference this week, said trade unions were “a school for communism and not an end unto themselves. They must continue generating leadership for society.”
Mantashe, a former National Union of Mineworkers leader, lamented that many former trade union leaders who were now in the cabinet were not recognised for their experience in the unions.
They included Social Development Minister Edna Molewa and Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga. Instead, only Women’s Minister Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya and Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel nowadays appeared to get recognition as former union leaders, Mantashe said.
To applause from delegates, he urged unions to “release leaders gradually so that we do not have a crisis of quick turnover of leadership”.
He said “unions must grow up leadership and release it for 2012”, and that those leaders should not “water down” what they had learnt in the trade unions.
Mantashe also stressed that the ANC and Cosatu “need each other”, but, turning to smile at Vavi and Cosatu president Sdumo Dlamini, added that the ANC remained the “strategic centre” and the “leader” of the ruling alliance.
Vavi said yesterday that although he recognised the ANC as the leader of the alliance, it could not be the only “strategic political centre” as it had to consult its alliance partners in decisions on policy and government deployments.
Cosatu has also expressed unhappiness that the ANC did not adopt a stance more in its favour at the party’s national general council last week, and warned that an alliance summit planned in the next two months could “implode” if no agreement was reached on this. - The Star
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2.3 Vavi could take up another position in ANC - Mantashe
Stephen Grootes, Eyewitness News, 30 September 2010
ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe said on Wednesday the party could deploy Zwelinzima Vavi to any kind of job if he does not run for another term as Cosatu General Secretary.
Mantashe told the Nehawu conference in Boksburg that the liberation movement must use people it has invested in.
Mantashe said he was not talking about the ANC’s top six positions when he said the party should deploy Vavi after 2012.
He also said last week’s ANC national general council showed the party was unified.
Mantashe also said a state mining company will be properly up and running in two years’ time.
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2.4 Firm paid R22m for partial job
Olebogeng Molatlhwa, Sowetan, 30 September 2010
THE North West Department of Public Works will pay a contractor that failed to complete a multi-million rand hospital project.
The departments of public works, roads and transport, along with the provincial health department and treasury, announced yesterday that it was willing to pay Tsogo Developers R22 million despite the company's failure to complete construction on the R456,5m Brits Hospital.
Tsogo and llima Projects were awarded the R456,5 million contract in 2005 and construction began on November 25 2008.
But work stopped in May this year after Ilima was liquidated.
At the time Ilima had a portfolio of construction projects worth more than R1-billion and employed about 700 people.
Public works spokesperson Roberta Makhambeni told Sowetan yesterday that the department had good reason to pay.
"In order to fast-track the re-appointment of the new contractor, the department opted for a settlement instead of the final account, which would have delayed the process," Makhambeni said.
Now a new contractor - JR Stock and Stocks, who lost out in the initial bidding for the contract - has been hired to complete the project. The hospital is scheduled to open in July 2012.
Makhambeni said "they were second-best (in the initial bidding process) and had the right grading".
Tsogo and Ilima were paid R57 million before construction was stopped in May.
Ilima's financial problems affected other projects, among them:
- The R137 million for a government office complex in Vryburg, North West;
- About R35 million for the construction of a psychiatric hospital in Sterkfontein, Krugersdorp, Gauteng;
- R16 million for the construction of a taxi rank in Mabopane, north of Pretoria;
- More than R60 million for the construction of 1500 houses for Mogale City municipality; and
- R450 million worth of construction work in Eastern Cape.
In September 2008 Gauteng cancelled a R692-million contract that it had awarded the company Ilima, for the construction of the Jabulani Hospital in Soweto.
An investigation by the South African Revenue Services in September 2008 revealed that Ilima submitted a fraudulent tax document, when it tendered for the construction of the 300-bed hospital.
The Gauteng government is currently locked in litigation with Ilima to recover more than R56 million it paid out to the contractor for the Soweto hospital.
While giving his department's first quarter progress in August, Gauteng finance MEC Mandla Nkomfe said the province would begin naming and shaming contractors who failed to complete projects.
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3. Comments
3.1 The life and death of a township tenderpreneur
Jacob Dlamini, Business Day, 30 September 2010
THERE must have been a time when, like many of his generation, Themba Phungula saw the African National Congress (ANC) as cause rather than opportunity. There must have been a time when he saw ANC membership as part of a righteous crusade. Sure, he grew up in the Pan Africanist Congress, something some of his ANC comrades always held against him, but he paid his ANC dues many times over.
By the time Phungula died last Thursday at the hands of one or more gunmen who made off with his laptop, he had likely come to see the ANC as opportunity rather than cause. He had probably come to see the ANC as a means towards self-interested ends. He was like many people of his generation, for whom the struggle for social justice had long become, as one of Phungula’s comrades told me last year, a “struggle for the stomach”.
I met Phungula early last year while serving as an outside observer at an annual board meeting of the Katlehong Resource Centre, an important site for the provision of social services and a haven for intellectual exchange and political activity in the East Rand township. Phungula was, if memory serves, also an observer at the meeting. But that did not stop him from participating like a full board member. He had strong ideas about how the centre could improve its services.
He had a habit of calling everyone and prefacing every remark with the expression “ntazinga” — township Zulu for thingy or thingamabob. He meant no harm by it. “Ntazinga” was a verbal tic , something he said without thinking. It never added to or took away from his point. It merely gave everything he said a signature unique to him. Comrade Ntazinga, some called him.
Phungula was also an active member of the Fanyana Banda branch of the ANC and a member of our ward committee. But a pillar of the community he was not. He was a community liaison officer, one of the most sought-after political jobs in township politics. Community liaison officers are appointed by ward councillors to serve as a bridge between communities and companies delivering services. The post comes with a salary and a community liaison officer provides companies with political insurance in the event of “service delivery” protests.
Community liaison officers have the power to dish out the jobs that come with development projects. They are not supposed to derive benefits other than their salary from the projects they oversee.
Somehow, Phungula managed to land himself gigs as both a community liaison officer and a subcontractor for one of the projects he was overseeing. The project was for the extension of an old age home, the same place where he was when he was shot dead at about 9am last Thursday.
When the project started, Phungula had 30 employees. By July last year, he had cut his workforce to 15. There was some resentment over how he hired the 30 and subsequently laid off half of them. A community liaison officer is supposed to hire locals, especially young people, for work on construction projects. However, locals claimed that Phungula recruited his workforce from a shebeen in the neighbourhood, figuring drunks would accept paltry pay and be easy to fire.
It did not come as a surprise when Phungula’s old age home became the target of a “service delivery” protest in July last year. A group of young men stormed the project, forcing the construction company responsible to seek police protection.
The man behind the protest was the secretary of the Fanyana Banda branch and one of Phungula’s bitter political rivals. The secretary was unemployed. Rumour had it he was trying to use the protest to get at Phungula and, by extension, the ward councillor, Phungula’s patron.
When I asked Phungula about the conflict of interest between his role as community liaison officer and his job as a tenderpreneur, he pretended he did not hear my question.
But Phungula could speak his mind when he wanted to. This made him a valuable source when I researched the Fanyana Banda branch last year. His frankness was also a constant source of irritation for some of his comrades. When he went to cast his ballot during last year’s general elections, he came across a group of fellow ANC members, including the secretary, in ANC regalia milling outside the voting station. “You are intimidating us,” he said to them, half in jest, half seriously. That joke was all the evidence the secretary needed to show that Phungula was Coping, meaning he was a member of the renegade Congress of the People. “Why would an ANC member feel intimidated by members of his own branch?” the secretary asked when I interviewed him.
During an interview, Phungula said: “The branch is dead. People are only in it for what they can get out of it.” By the time he died, he was certainly in it for what he could get out of it. Now he’s dead. May he rest in peace.
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