Mbeki at Cosatu congress

[Hylton White <hjwhite1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From the Daily Mail and Guardian (www.mg.co.za), September 18, 2000:

PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki has played down tensions between labour federation
Cosatu and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in the opening
address at Cosatu's annual congress, where "serious policy differences"
between government and the unions are expected to emerge. Addressing the
delegates in Midrand, he instead joked about media reports that a major
reshuffle of his cabinet was on the cards and that "comrade premiers,
comrade cabinet ministers and all sorts of people" would be redeployed.
Mbeki also announced that Cabinet had decided that poor families would not
pay for the first 6000 litres of water they used a month.

Organisers say the congress will tackle various bugbears for the nation's
economy, including high unemployment and sluggish foreign investment. But
analysts believe the meeting will turn into a platform for the federation
to analyse the ANC government's economic and social policies. It broadly
coincides with plans for a fresh strike by the nation's biggest state
employee union - the 240 000-strong National Health Education and Allied
Workers Union (NEHAWU) - over demands for more pay and better conditions.
Central to workers' worries are the government's plans to speed up
privatisation and liberalise labour laws, along with its business-friendly
macro-economic strategy, and its controversial stand on HIV/AIDS.

COSATU and its communist allies have become increasingly angry with the
government's four-year-old Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR)
strategy, which aims to boost growth by curbing spending and bringing
inflation down. They feel that its policies are responsible for the loss of
nearly a million jobs since South Africa opened up its economy to global
competition with the demise of apartheid in 1994. The alliance is also
critical of the growing centralisation of power and decision-making within
the government, and its reluctance to acknowledge a link between the HIV
virus and AIDS, which is seen as the main threat to the country's economy.
Another key issue is the plan by Mbeki's government to restructure key
state enterprises by 2004, generating at least R40bn over the coming three
years. It has pledged to relax labour laws in line with business demands
for policies to lure foreign investment. But COSATU and its allies say the
moves could bleed jobs, exacerbating unemployment, which affects an
estimated third of South Africa's 15 million workforce. - Reuters